His hand releases her and he steps back. Georg adds, “And you are a very busy woman doing very important work.”
“But sometimes you need to care for yourself the way you care for others,” finishes Agnes. She produces a plastic cape from behind her back with a flourish.
“What?” A somewhat more alarmed Jasmine sits up in her chair.
“Sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose,” Sean misquotes. “You need a haircut.”
“Split ends,” explains Agnes, producing her scissors.
“If you hold still and let Agnes work, then we’ll feed you afterwards. I’ve made black bean burritos,” says Sean. Carrot and stick. Jasmine feels her stomach rumble.
“I shouldn’t have told you what he said,” she moans.
“He called her ‘frumpy’,” Sean explains to Georg.
“Bastard!” Georg expostulates.
“Frumpier,” Jasmine corrects.
“He won’t call you frumpy tomorrow,” Agnes forecasts. As Jasmine lifts up a hand to stop her, she reassures, “All vegan products.”
In the end, it takes three hours. At least they relent and let her eat while her hair stews in little bits of foil, but as soon as she is finished, Agnes returns. Her eyebrows are shaped and a face mask applied. When Agnes finally turns off the hairdryer and steps back, they utter a synchronised “Ah!” of approval. A mirror is produced and Jasmine stares. Her hair is still her hair, curly and untameable, but somehow it glows. It has a vibrancy she has never seen before.
She looks up at Agnes, her eyes a little more liquid than usual. This kindness at the end of a hard day from someone she hardly knows has cracked Jasmine’s shell. Sean has long since disappeared in response to a call from his mother, so Agnes and Georg see her out, handing her an umbrella to protect her newly coiffed hair from the pouring rain.
As Jasmine dashes to her car, she hears Agnes call out, “Can’t wait to hear what happens when he sees you tomorrow.”
A New Chapter
Determined to look like a kick-ass campaign manager, Jasmine surveys her options the next morning and sighs. With most of her clothes still in London, she has a limited choice. Eventually, she pulls out the suit she brought for Richard’s funeral and teams it with the most upbeat blouse in her possession, hoping the bright pattern offsets the sombreness of the suit.
Normally the first in the office, Jasmine is alarmed to find the door unlocked and is making a mental note to berate whoever was last out yesterday, when Ben appears.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
He jumps at the shock. His eyes flick to her, flick away, flick back.
It’s all the reaction she gets, but it is a reaction. She has little time to be gratified before reality intervenes as he says carelessly, “I didn’t finish the letters last night. I had somewhere else I had to be. I came in early this morning to sign the last of them.”
Of course, his date with Lou. How could she forget? She is irritated with herself for fretting about how it went and says, “I didn’t mean, why are you early? I meant, why aren’t you at the breakfast meeting?”
“I’m just leaving now. Pamela’s already there setting up.” He mentions Jasmine’s deputy, the scarily organised woman who for many years single-handedly raised three rumbustious boys, while also running Richard Exmore’s constituency office. “She said not to bother until everything is ready. Said I’d just get under her feet.”
He moves past her but turns back when he’s at the door. “By the way, I was thinking we should involve the interns at these events, let them shadow us, learn how we do things.”
Us?Jasmine doubts whether any interns want to shadowher, but she keeps her tone even as she replies, “As long as you treat them all equally,” she says. “If the press sees you with one of them more than the others, it will start tongues wagging. And gossip can be more harmful than fact.” She is certain she knows where this idea came from and she doubts it originated in Ben’s head. Still, if he wants to spend every other minute explaining his every move, Jasmine is happy to let him.
“Oh, yes,” he mutters as he suddenly realises he will have to spend hours with a team of earnest and nervous youngsters to score a few minutes with Lou. “I’ll think about it a bit more.”
She notes he doesn’t seem so keen on the idea now. She can’t resist tweaking the knife. “Obviously, it will be a massive time commitment, so it’s really good of you. We were all students once.” She throws in the slight reference to their shared past, almost too afraid in case it explodes like a grenade.
Ben flushes. She doesn’t wait for him to leave, heading off to the little kitchenette to make herself a strong cup of tea, maybe with a teaspoon of sugar, to stop her heart from quaking.
She doesn’t see Ben again until the late morning, by which time she has had plenty of compliments, even if few seem able to identify exactly what has changed about her appearance. Although vanity has never been one of Jasmine’s faults, she finds her spirits inexplicably lift with each positive remark. Which is just as well. Because she fully expects the forthcoming meeting to be very difficult, as they decide on strategy with the candidate for the first time.
When Ben enters the meeting room, Jasmine is still sticking magic whiteboard to the walls, knowing not everyone is comfortable with technology. He ignores her to focus on Roger instead. As the local Labour Party chair, Roger’s support will be crucial to this campaign and like any successful politician, Ben almost unconsciously gravitates to the key players in the room.
Jasmine has yet to start the meeting when Sean walks in the door.
