Pilloried in the press for being wealthy, aristocratic and out-of-touch with ordinary voters, and dubbed the new Iron Lady by the tabloids, Alexia De Vere’’s sentencing reform bill had been savaged by MPs on both sides of the house for being ‘compassionless’ and ‘brutal.’ No parole sentences might work in America, a country so barbaric they still had the death penalty. But they weren’t going to fly here, in civilized Great Britain.
That’s what they said. But when push came to shove, they’d all voted the bill through.
Cowards. Cowards and hypocrites the lot of them.
Alexia De Vere knew how unpopular the bill had made her, with colleagues, with the media, with lower income voters. So she was as shocked as everyone else when the Prime Minister, Henry Whitman, chose to appoint her as his Home Secretary. But she didn’t dwell on it. The fact was, Henry Whitman had appointed her. At the end of the day that was all that mattered.
Reaching into a box, Alexia pulled out some family photographs. She preferred to keep her work and home lives separate, but these days everyone was so touchy-feely, having pictures of one’s children on one’s desk had become de rigeur.
There was her daughter Roxie at eighteen, her blonde head thrown back, laughing. How Alexia missed that laugh. Of course, the picture had been taken before the accident.
The accident Alexia De Vere hated the euphemism for her daughter’s suicide attempt, a three story leap that had left Roxie wheelchair bound for the rest of her life. In Alexia’s view, one should call a spade a spade. But Alexia’s husband, Teddy insisted on it. Dear Teddy. He always was a soft touch.
Placing her husband’s photograph next to their daughter’s, Alexia smiled. An unprepossessing, paunchy middle aged man, with thinning hair and permanently ruddy cheeks, Teddy De Vere beamed at the camera like a lovable bear.
How different my life would have been without him. How much, how very much, I owe him.
Of course, Teddy De Vere was not the only man to whom Alexia owed her good fortune. There was Henry Whitman, the new Tory Prime Minister and Alexia’s self-appointed political mentor. And somewhere, far, far away from here, there was another man. A good man. A man who had helped her.
But she mustn’t think about that man. Not now. Not today.
Today was a day of triumph and celebration. It was no time for regrets.
The third picture was of Alexia’s son, Michael. What an insanely beautiful boy he was, with his dark curls and slate-grey eyes and that mischievous smile that melted female hearts from a thousand paces. Sometimes Alexia thought that Michael was the only person on earth she had ever loved unconditionally. Roxie ought to fall into that category too, but after everything that had happened between them, the bad blood had poisoned the relationship beyond repair
After the photographs it was time for the congratulations cards, which had been arriving in a steady stream since Alexia’s shock appointment was announced two days earlier. Most of them were dull, corporate affairs sent by lobbyists or constituency hangers-on. They had pictures of popping champagne bottles or dreary floral still-lifes. But one card in particular immediately caught Alexia’s eye. Against a stars and stripes background, the words ‘YOU ROCK!” were emblazoned in garish gold. The message inside read:
‘Congratulations, darling Alexia! SO excited and SO proud of you. All my love, Lucy!!!! xxx’
Alexia De Vere grinned. She had very few female friends – very few friends of any kind, in fact – but Lucy Meyer was the exception that proved the rule. A neighbor from Martha’s Vineyard, where the De Veres owned a summer home – Teddy had fallen in love with the island whilst at Harvard Business School –, Lucy Meyer had become almost like a sister. Lucy was a traditional home-maker, albeit of the uber-wealthy variety, and as American as apple pie. Alternately motherly and child-like, she was the sort of woman who used a lot of exclamation points in emails and wrote her I’s with full circles instead of dots on the top. To say that Lucy Meyer and Alexia De Vere had little in common would be like saying that Israel and Palestine didn’t always see exactly eye to eye. And yet the two women’s friendship, forged over so many blissful summers on Martha’s Vineyard, had survived all the ups and downs of Alexia’s crazy political life.