Standing by the window, Alexia gazed down at the Thames. From up here the river looked benign and stately, a softly flowing ribbon of silver snaking its silent way through the city. But down below, Alexia knew, its currents could be deadly. Even now, at fifty nine years of age and at the pinnacle of her career, Alexia De Vere couldn’t look at water without feeling a shudder of foreboding. She twisted her wedding ring nervously.
How easily it can all be washed away! Power, happiness, even life itself. It only takes an instant, a single unguarded instant. And it’s gone.
Her phone buzzed loudly.
“Sorry to disturb you Home Secretary. But I have Ten Downing Street on line one . I assume you’ll take the Prime Minister’s call?”
Alexia De Vere shook her head, willing the ghosts of the past away.
“Of course Edward. Put him through.”
South of the river, less than a mile from Alexia De Vere’s opulent Westminster office but a world apart, Gilbert Drake sat in Maggie’s café, hunched over his egg and beans. A classic British ‘greasy spoon’, complete with grime encrusted windows and a peeling linoleum floor, Maggie’s was a popular haunt for cabbies and builders on their way to work on the more affluent north side of the river. Gilbert Drake was a regular. Most mornings he was chatty and full of smiles. But not today. Staring at the picture in his newspaper as if he’d seen a ghost, he pressed his hands to his temples.
This can’t be happening.
How is this happening?
There she was, that bitch Alexia De Vere, smiling for the camera as she shook hands with the Prime Minister. Gilbert Drake would never forget that face as long as he lived. The proud, jutting jaw, the disdainful curl of the lips, the cold, steely glint of those blue eyes, as pretty and empty and heartless as a doll’s. The caption beneath the picture read ‘Britain’s new Home Secretary starts work.’
Reading the article was painful, like picking at a newly healed scab, but Gilbert Drake forced himself to go on.
‘In an appointment that surprised many at Westminster and wrong footed both the media and the bookies, junior prisons minister Alexia De Vere was named as the new Home Secretary yesterday. The Prime Minister, Henry Whitman, has described Mrs De Vere as ‘a star’ and ‘a pivotal figure’ in his new look cabinet. Kevin Lomax, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who had been widely tipped to replace Humphrey Crewe at the home office after his resignation in March, told reporters he was ‘delighted’ to hear of Mrs De Vere’s appointment and that he ‘hugely looked forward’ to working with her.’
Gilbert Drake closed his newspaper in disgust.
Gilbert’s best friend Sanjay Patel was dead because of that bitch. Sanjay who had protected Gilbert from the bullies at school and on their Peckham public housing. Sanjay who’d worked hard all his life to put food on his family’s table, and faced all life’s disappointments with a smile. Sanjay who’d been imprisoned, wrongly imprisoned, set up by the police, simply for trying to help a cousin to escape persecution. Sanjaywas dead. While that whore, that she-wolf Alexia De Vere, was riding high, the toast of London.
It was not to be borne. Gilbert Drake would not bear it.
The righteous will be glad when they are avenged, when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.
Maggie, the café’s eponymous proprietress, refilled Gilbert’s mug of tea. “Eat up, Gil. Your egg’s going cold.”
Gilbert Drake didn’t hear her.
All he heard were his friend Sanjay Patel’s voice begging for mercy.
Charlotte Whitman, the Prime Minister’s wife, rolled over in bed and stroked her husband’s chest. It was four in the morning and Henry was awake, again, staring at the ceiling like a prisoner waiting for the firing squad.
“What is it Henry? What’s the matter?”
Henry Whitman covered his wife’s hand with his.
“Nothing. I’m not sleeping too well, that’s all. Sorry if I woke you.”
“You would tell me if there were a problem, wouldn’t you?”
“Darling Charlotte.” He pulled her close. “I’m the Prime Minister. My life is nothing but problems as far as the eye can see.”