“Look, I don’t have long.” Sean glances at his phone. “I’ve got to get off to work in a minute.”
“You’re going into work?” she interrupts.
“It’s the only thing keeping me sane. I’ve told Mum it’s important and she accepts me sacrificing myself for my career, but the truth is they won’t let me near anything difficult at the moment. I’m the most highly paid filing clerk in the building.”
“I’m sure you’re doing more than that!”
“Not really. But I didn’t come all the way here to talk about myself. Mum was notified yesterday. I assume you’ve heard?”
“About the new candidate?” Jasmine can’t believe she has managed to put it out of her mind but seeing Sean again after his absence has stopped her fretting about it.
Sean nods, his eyes fixed on her face. “Jasmine, are you going to be all right?”
She purses her lips together. “Yes,” she says firmly. “I’ll have to be. I have no choice.”
Sean leans closer. His voice is low and urgent. “Have you thought about what you are going to do when Ben Kahn walks through the door?”
In the years since they parted, Jasmine has done her best to ruthlessly suppress any thoughts of him. From the moment she had arrived in Petey’s home, she had made a conscious choice not to hanker after Ben, not to follow him on social media, not to search for him on the internet. She had never anticipated that on an island with roughly seventy million people, she would ever stumble across him again. But she had failed to appreciate statistics and the relatively small political world.
She had tried to forget about Ben and it had been relatively easy. She had been living life at full throttle for so long, most nights she fell into bed exhausted. Her days had been crammed, first with caring for Petey at the same time as studying, and later with learning a new job in a new place. She had very much been thrown in at the deep end and as soon as she had begun to adjust, Richard had had to defend his seat in what would become the great Red Wall defection. As Jasmine demonstrated her competence, Richard would off-load more onto her schedule. And in the political world, crisis followed crisis. Brexit, Covid, war.
There had been the occasional lonely evening when her mind drifted towards thoughts of Ben but she had always been careful to find something else to do before he could become entrenched. And then there were times when she met men and saw a spark of interest in their eyes. But they were invariably too short, or too pale or too skinny. Besides, she really didn’t have time for a relationship.
Unfortunately, Jasmine has confused not thinking about Ben with being over him. But now he has been chosen as the new candidate for Hayburn, she cannotnotthink about him. And that is a problem.
Arrival
The night before Ben Khan is due to arrive in Hayburn, Jasmine struggles to sleep. In her head, she is adamant she will not dwell on their past but thoughts keep slipping in. Questions. Has he missed her at over the years? Has he changed? Is he single?
Telling herself it is necessary to know your candidate, she gets up and searches the web for traces of him. As she once knew him intimately, she has a better starting point than most. As well as his carefully managed social media, she targets his parents’, aunts’ and uncles’ pages. She checks out his university friends and looks for connections. As far as she can see, he isn’t in a relationship, although one girl features in photos with him too often for comfort. But when Jasmine tracks her current whereabouts down to Australia, she relaxes. It doesn’t occur to Jasmine to wonder why she calms when she finds the girl safely across the other side of the world, but then again, it is very late. Hours past midnight, she closes her laptop and slides back into bed, but it is still long minutes until her brain agrees to let go of Ben Khan and she sleeps.
The following morning, Jasmine waits along with a horde of others in the Campaign Office. She can sense the excitement. Roger, a retired social worker and the Labour Party Chair, stands near the door with Lindsey, a part-time public accountant who acts as the nominal Secretary. They are chatting with two young student activists. Jasmine keeps her head down at a desk in the corner, her back to the door. She knows more than one of her colleagues is combing the internet for anything they can glean on Ben Kahn, looking for a clue as to his character much as she had last night. But she doesn’t yet feel the need to reveal her connection to him, nor what she knows of his character.
Even if her fellow volunteers are all agog, Jasmine is determined to be composed. The urgent need to put Richard Exmore in the past before the expected General Election later in the year means the Labour Party has suspended the normal selection procedure and the new candidate is an unknown entity. He is unvetted by any locals and they are understandably curious. It is sheer nosiness which accounts for the number of people in the office today.
Jasmine concentrates on her emails, rephrasing her rather direct request for a meeting with the one of the local faith group leaders, adding the surrounding pointless fluff that seems so essential to smooth communications. Over the years of working for Richard, she has become a dab hand at asking after people’s families, holidays, health concerns, with an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of backstories. It had enabled her to bail her boss out of tight corners several times.
Focussed on the minutiae of email etiquette, she misses Ben’s grand entrance, only looking up when he is already surrounded by admirers. She thinks how it was always so. Ben has that elusive attribute, charisma. It is not just good looks. In Westminster, she has come across many handsome men, but most of them hadTosserstamped across their foreheads. Nor is it self-belief. Westminster is chock-full of the egotistical from all parts of the political spectrum. She has met a handful of people she would regard as charismatic but most of them lack talent. Ben, she well knows, has both. He is young for this step, becoming an MP, but she cannot think of anyone better to save Hayburn after the ignominy of Richard’s manner of passing. Obviously, the upper echelons of the Labour Party agree.
The crowd surrounding him thins. A figure moves aside and there he is. He has his back to her, but she can see his broad shoulders sheathed in a white dress shirt. His dark hair tickles the collar and she makes a mental note to book him an appointment with a barber. His youthfulness can count for him as long as he doesn’t look like a teenage rebel. She watches him work. A shake of a hand, a comment, a laugh, and thinks how easy her job would have been if they didn’t have Richard’s legacy to overcome. She knows the Conservatives will play dirty and run a negative campaign. It has already begun, albeit surreptitiously. Their candidate, Rosalyn Carter, is a solicitor, a church-goer, the very antithesis to Richard.
Jasmine’s greatest hope is they are fighting the last candidate, not the new one. The Tory candidate’s fuddy-duddiness will contrast with Ben’s quickness and energy. Grandmothers will want to introduce Ben to their granddaughters. Fathers will want to be his mate and youngsters will see someone they can relate to.
Roger has taken note of those still at their desks, the team who will work hardest to get this candidate elected. He looks around until he locates Jasmine and she knows it is only a matter of time before he shepherds Ben away from his acolytes to introduce him to his core team. She drops her eyes to her screen and steels herself. It’s a moment, she tells herself. Just a moment. Then they will find a new level, not lovers, not exes, just co-workers.
“Jasmine,” Roger’s deep, age-roughened voice intrudes. “Let me introduce our new candidate, Ben Kahn. Ben, this is your campaign manager, Jasmine Mortimer.”
And there he is, just as handsome, just as wonderful as he was the first time. She stands quickly, brushing her palm against her skirt to eliminate the sweat. He is in front of her, every part of his face so familiar. The scar on the edge of his eyebrow from falling out of a tree as a child. The long, dark lashes any woman would envy. The full, wide lips currently not smiling at her. A tsunami of memories pushes at her mind. They seem to obliterate her ability to speak.
“Jasmine,” Ben says flatly as a greeting and holds out his hand for the briefest of shakes. Then he turns to Roger to forestall his introductory speech. “We’ve met before.”
No warmth, no explanations, nothing.
“Ah! Good. Good.” Roger bounces on his toes. “Well, Jasmine used to work for Richard Exmore, so there aren’t many of the local VIPs she doesn’t know. She’s been doing a sterling job over the last weeks to keep everything going. Don’t know what we’d have done without her.”
“Okay.” Ben’s lips pinch momentarily. “We’ll need to book in a time to get together.”
“Already done,” Jasmine gathers what remains of her reason and replies as calmly as she can manage. “You’re set up on the system.” She taps a laptop on her desk. “This is for you. Login details on a note on the screen. Diary set up and meetings being booked in as we can get them. We’ve prepared a briefing document of some of the most pressing local issues and it’s waiting in your inbox. Most importantly, we’ve got you a sit down with the local paper tomorrow.”
