The plan is simple. They will wait until Pamela calls to say Natasha has a place in a refuge. Then Sean leaves by the back door out into the carpark. Jasmine watches him from the bedroom as he heads for her car and tosses the bin bag onto the back seat. His job is the most dangerous, luring away Natasha’s ex. He’s going to drive south. He will drop the bin bag of clothes in a dumpster outside a motel en-route. The little tracker he plans to plant on the first lorry with foreign plates, possibly heading towards a port, he comes across at a service station. Then he will drive Jasmine’s car on to her home in London and park it there. It leaves her without a car here, but it is safer for her than driving around in a car Natasha’s ex might recognise. They are hopeful that, without gaining access to the building, her husband will not know exactly which of the apartments was sheltering his family.
Pamela, meanwhile, will drive past the building, checking the watcher has gone. When she is sure all is clear, she will message and pull into the parking lot. Natasha and the children will get in and Pamela will take them to meet up with the refuge staff. Jasmine wonders how her life has taken such a peculiar turn. She feels like a bit player in a spy drama.
When Pamela’s message arrives, Jasmine hurries the little family down the stairs, carrying the toddler in her arms. She opens the rear door of Pamela’s car and her regard for her colleague increases exponentially. From somewhere, Pamela has sourced a baby carrier and a car seat, and strapped them safely into the rear. While Natasha sorts the baby, Jasmine secures the toddler. When he beams up at her, in a fit of unusual sentimentality, she leans in and gives him a kiss on his forehead. It has been so little time but already he has a place in her heart. It occurs to her that when Eleanor finally has a baby, she might become be a most excellent aunt.
The doors slam, Pamela waves, and the car full of domestic refugees heads off into the night. Jasmine climbs the steps to her rental, exhausted. She keeps the lights on and the curtains closed as she moves about the apartment waiting for a message from Pamela. Finally it comes –Delivered safe– and Jasmine collapses into bed.
When she gets to campaign headquarters the following morning, she is not pleased to find Ben there before her. She is even less happy to find Lou with him. She briefly wonders if they rode in together and the thought brings a shaft of pain. Then she shakes herself. Ben would not be so catastrophically stupid.
“What happened with your friends?” he asks.
“They’ve gone to a refuge.”
“That’s what should have happened from the start. She should have rung the National Domestic Abuse Helpline. If this guy is as dangerous as you think he is, what you did put you in danger.” Then he adds, as if he realises that consideration is unlikely to dissuade Jasmine, “It put her and her children in danger. It put everyone here in danger.” His hand stretches out to indicate Lou.
Jasmine would like to fight back, but on this he is probably correct – and his particular concern for Lou is affecting her. “Maybe,” she says with a shrug.
But Ben has not finished making his point. “You know, she’s as likely to go back to him as she is to leave him. It’s always been the same with you. You make your decisions and you don’t care who is hurt in the fallout.”
Jasmine catches sight of Lou, eyes wide, watching the drama playing out in front of her. “I need coffee if I’ve got to listen to this.” She storms into the little kitchen and shuts the door firmly behind her. She leans back against it, to draw a deep breath. But it is only two thin sheets of hardboard and it does little to muffle the sound of Lou’s voice from the other side.
“What was that about?” Lou’s says, curiosity in every syllable.
“Nothing.” Ben obviously regrets his remarks in front of her.
“Not nothing. ‘It’s always been the same with you.’ What exactly is that? What’s going on between you two?”
On the other side of the door, Jasmine prays Ben dissembles, even that he outright lies. That he tells her it’s nothing again. After all, there is no need for Ben to confide in Lou about their past together. Not unless her good opinion is everything to him.
When she hears Ben reply, the first tear falls. “We dated at university. I was in love with her.”
“And?”
“And she left me for her ex.”
Behind the kitchen door, Jasmine wants to scream her defence, but she cannot show her face, crying like a madwoman. She stays in the kitchen, taking silent gulps to calm herself, mopping her tears with the kitchen towel. She hears them move away and then the clunk of his office door shutting, but she doesn’t reappear until the sound of others arriving leaks through to her sanctuary.
The words Ben said stay with her. They are what he believes. And not one word is a lie, but it is also so far from the truth.
The Village Town Hall
After the success of the hustings at the sixth form college, Jasmine has tried to maximise Ben’s ability with larger crowds. His skill brings into play opportunities she had thought they would have to let slide – in particular, targeting the larger villages. She does not have the resources to send door-knockers to the half-dozen or so villages when she has three large towns to cover. But she can squeeze an evening in a village hall answering voter’s questions into Ben’s schedule.
She analyses the data they hold to determine which to target first and lines them up in order of importance. The next problem is to talk one of the users of the village hall into giving up their scheduled slot to allow Ben to stage a Town Hall. The indoor badminton club are not keen, and the musical theatre group are adamant they cannot yield their dress rehearsal so close to their performance, but she hits pay-dirt with the Scout troop. A very obliging Scoutmaster offers to take the groups off for a nature hike instead. Jasmine mentally notes the Scout troop. If Ben wins, he will attend their next Gang Show.
Lou and Dave, who are fast becoming her go-to guys for recruiting a crew, volunteer to set up chairs, give out leaflets, and generally mill around helping anyone with mobility issues. Pamela makes sure everything is in place and Jasmine walks Ben through yet another speech. This time her practice questions focus on public transport, bin collections, the cost of city centre car parking, and sewage spills into local rivers.
It turns out Ben’s magic works equally well on the middle-aged as youngsters. The grey hair brigade turns up in their masses, with a few younger residents, too. From her own experience of village life, Jasmine supposes this derives more from a lack of entertainment than from an enthusiasm for politics, but she doesn’t care. It is a chance for them to see Ben as a person, someone they can relate to, someone real, which is often sadly lacking in national politics.
Ben stands at the front of the seated audience – the stage is full of scenery for the amateur production ofShrek the Musicaland Jasmine rapidly decided she didn’t want her candidate forever associated in the villager’s minds with a couple of ogres and a donkey. She has curtained it off and positions him at the front of the chairs instead.
Ben gives a little speech, throwing in a few of the niche local issues they uncovered, and Jasmine watches, feeling proud. They have been working together so much, she is almost inured to the prickles of memory each time he makes a habitual gesture or uses a phrase familiar from the past. Like a nose, she thinks, over-exposed to a perfume and no longer able to smell it.
The first question comes from an old man, his hair long gone and the skin on his forehead flaking from his thin frame. His voice trembles as he speaks but he fixes a suspicious beady eye on Ben as he says, “My bin was missed this week. Will you make sure they collect it next week?”
Jasmine prays Ben does not laugh but she need not have worried. Ben’s reply is respectful. “That must have been very inconvenient. Was it a one-off or does it keep happening?”
A quick exchange suggests it was an unintended mistake and Ben moves on to thornier issues. Villagers tend to be naturally conservative and a little sanctimonious. He is asked about Richard Exmore’s indiscretions several times, phrased differently each time, but he skilfully by-passes each one. He will not be drawn on condemning Richard until the inquiry is over and Jasmine is grateful her new boss is not trying to make hay from the demise of the old one. The help Richard gave her when she was at the lowest point in her life, offering her employment, distraction and eventually a purpose, still trumps his romantic indiscretions until and unless he is proven traitor.
