Jasmine stirs under his gaze.Is this a hint to be gone?she thinks. Despite Sean’s protestations, is she unwelcome in the house? It does not fit with Richard’s previous words of gratitude. But if she is not to stay here, where can she go? She cannot stand to be in Larkford, where every stone, every tree, every person reminds her of Petey. Where else is there, if she won’t go back to her parents? She realises it might be by her own choice, but she is truly homeless and, having spent her annual allowance helping Gillian, almost penniless.
“I haven’t thought about it,” she replies. “I haven’t really had time. I’m sorry.” She thinks she might cry and casts about wildly for a tissue box. Surely Emily, the pristine homemaker, would have one somewhere, a pastel cube, scented probably.
Noticing her distress, Richard leans over, his large, warm hand falls on her knee. Jasmine focuses on the liver spots mottling the back of it and blinks rapidly.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says. “It’s just that I had a thought. One of my researchers wasn’t supposed to start her maternity leave for a couple of months, but this morning she gave birth prematurely. It’s going to leave us short-handed and we are swamped at the moment.” Richard smiles up at her.
“I have a vacancy and need someone at no notice. I had hoped Sean …” Richard trails off.
Jasmine can imagine the horror with which her friend would regard such a request. Years of studying for a degree in politics had turned his vague interest into a hardened dislike. She cannot help but smile internally at the thought. Sean would wait tables before he took a job in politics.
Richard continues. “So I thought of you?” A statement, but the little lift in intonation at the end turns it into a question.
She hesitates. Jasmine deplores nepotism on principle, but this is a job, albeit temporary, in Westminster – the ultimate dream. She has never longed for celebrity in any form, but to be the power behind the throne, that is what appeals. She chews her lip. She is tempted.
But the idea of compromise is unfamiliar. Jasmine has her principles. “It’s very kind of you to consider me. But surely you have no shortage of better-qualified candidates?”
He lifts the hand lying on her knee and then pats her. In other circumstances, Jasmine would find it patronising.
“It’s true. Westminster is besieged by the brightest and best, all waving their first-class Honours from Oxford or Cambridge.” He chuckles at his own image. “And I know from Sean you don’t have that.”
Jasmine blushes as he alludes to her degree result. Sean has obviously shared her disappointment with his father. Looking after Petey cost her two grades off her degree. While she has passed, she has achieved far lower than the top result she was on track for at the start of her final year. It doesn’t bode well for her job search. Politics degrees abound. A first-class degree would have helped her through the initial CV sift. She will now have to lower her sights dramatically.
“But what you have is better.” Richard sits back in his chair, removing his hand. “What every MP wants is someone they can get along with, but what every MP longs for is loyalty. What you did for your friend …” He pauses, and Jasmine is supremely grateful when he continues without uttering Petey’s name: “Well, that speaks volumes for your loyalty. And I know we can rub along.” He waves his hand vaguely in the air. “Besides all that, I also know you’re organised and hardworking. In my opinion, all that blue sky thinking nonsense is overrated. I need good, clean, factual research. Think about it, eh? I know this post is only temporary and you will be looking for something permanent long-term, but if you want it, it’s yours. To be fair, with the short notice, you would be doing me and my team a big favour.”
In the end, it isn’t the job or Richard’s argument or the thought she might be doing her host a favour that convinces her. It is simply she has nowhere else to go.
Part II: Present
Bad, Worse, Worst
Another day, another disaster, thinks Jasmine. No wait. Another day, another catastrophe. Or what is bigger than catastrophe – a cataclysm?
In the five years Jasmine has worked for Richard Exmore, she has dealt with hundreds of crises, from minor setbacks to major misfortunes. But this was so far beyond a spoiled shirt immediately before a television interview, or a spreadsheet error resulting in the wrong figures in a White Paper. A disaster may be your Member of Parliament dying of a massive heart attack and a catastrophe when your MP dies of a massive heart attack with his dick inside a woman other than his wife. But this, this is indeed a cataclysm. Every newspaper in Britain, tabloids and broadsheets alike, is revelling in the story. She considers the metaphor,pigs in shit, very apt.
By sheer coincidence, Jasmine is in Hayburn. Based in London, she operates independently of Richard’s constituency office, although she has always ensured she is on good terms with them all. Occasionally, though, her boss’s parliamentary work overlaps his community interests and necessitates a trip north. Over the years, Jasmine has built up a network of contacts. Since that first post as maternity cover, she has made herself indispensable. She is good at her job, both clever and efficient, and she trades this, helping others less so until she has favours owed by many an underling. Lacking good looks, charm, and humour, the transactional approach works well for her. Today, it has paid off. Jasmine receives a call in the early hours, telling her what is coming down the line.
The news of her employer’s death has shaken her, the manner of it more so, but she is a political animal. She understands the more important issue is the fallout. The news broke too late for the print editions but by morning it is on the news apps. It is still innocuous at this point, nothing more than the fact of his passing. When she arrives at the local office, she finds the caseworkers sitting disconsolately at their desks. No one is working. Their grief for their employer is intensified by the understanding that they are all now unemployed.
Jasmine finds she is less affected by grief than the others. She can close off her mind and focus on work. Perhaps she is just more practiced at loss. She’d known Richard for as long as she had known Petey, but Richard’s passing is distressing to her only as a reminder of the transience of life and of her previous, more significant loss. She looks around at her colleagues, two of them weeping delicately into hankies. Although it is not her place to do so, she sends them all home; it is not a constituency surgery day. She pins a notice to the door –Closed Due To Bereavement– then sits at a desk and continues to work.
Her report is for a Select Committee, so she feels obliged to continue with her research and the information-gathering meetings which are scheduled for the afternoon. So it is that Jasmine is alone in the Hayburn office when a car draws up outside, the passenger gets out, and Emily Exmore slams into the campaign office.
Richard’s wife, normally so pristine and put-together, full slap and lipstick, looks deranged with her hair awry and traces of mascara on her jawbone. Luckily, the staff have all gone, as Emily has no concern for discretion when she screeches her challenge at Jasmine: “Did you know?”
Looking directly at her, Jasmine answers as calmly and confidently as she can: “No, I had no idea. I never once saw him be inappropriate in his behaviour to anyone. And he certainly never tried anything with me.”
“Of course he didn’t,” his wife snarls. “An ugly cow like you? That was why I suggested you. Who would ever be attracted to you? With your frizzy hair and your sensible shoes!”
Jasmine blanches, shocked into silence. When sense returns, she realises if her plainness had ever been a factor in her appointment, it did not say much about the state of the Exmores’ marriage and explains much of the current situation. If any of it is true. She has known Emily long enough to realise she is a fantasist at times, especially where her son and husband are concerned.
“Did you ever meet her?” Emily’s words cut through the introspection.
Jasmine is tired and it makes her uncharacteristically slow. “Irene?” she queries.
“Who the fuck else would I mean?” Emily spits, all her censorious epithets on swearing forgotten, all her carefully assumed, middle-class manners evaporating. Jasmine had witnessed her rebuke Sean, a grown man, any time he transgressed beyond what his mother deemed acceptable language. “Now you know your father is a politician,” his mother would say. “It might not be fair, but what you wear and say and do reflects on him.” Maybe now Sean’s father was dead, the strictures no longer applied.
“No. I didn’t even know she existed.” Jasmine is almost sure this is true. Some small doubt remains that she might have been introduced to Irene at a dinner or drinks or some other random event. She meets so many people, she only keeps track of the useful ones. There is no room in her brain for the others.
