“Deep breath, hun,” I told her. “I promise I’ll stay on the unit tonight, okay?”
She let out a relieved breath. “I’msoglad it’s you on-call tonight,” she said.
“I had better leave you to it,” Mr Lucas told me after watching that exchange. “Yes, I definitely misjudged you,” he added softly as he watched the SHO move away to talk to one of the nurses.
“Mr Lucas, I–”
“Watch out for that boss of yours. I was a criminal defence lawyer for ten years before I became a judge. I can spot a nasty piece of work when I see one. There’s something about him . . . just be careful.”
“Uh, okay?” I said.
“And call me Fergus.” He smiled at me before he spun on his heel and strode away down the corridor.
Chapter 30
Aren’t you happy, darling?
Barclay
It wasn’t my first appearance onQuestion Time,but I knew it would be the most significant. I tended to use words sparingly in these situations. Words were weapons: the right ones used in the right way could annihilate the competition; use too many and they lost meaning. And more than anything I needed my words to have meaning, for them to carry weight, for the country to be behind what I was proposing. I needed to unite the right, the left, and the centre ground on this. There was no other option.
For the last half hour, the panel had been pitted against each other, tussling over the usual political hot potatoes, and loving the sound of their own voices. Fiona Bruce was doing an admirable job of keeping them in check but, as always, the same old blowhards tried to take over the debate by filibustering and forgetting that the publichateblowhards andhatefilibustering. Now an (obviously ill-informed) columnist for one of the national newspapers was banging on about how fighting with the Labour party and even within my own party was the reason I wasn’t able to transform the energy production in this country.
“That is a fair point,” I said.
The columnist’s mouth fell open in shock.
“What do you mean?”
“You seethisissue, more than anything, should transcend politics completely,” I went on, and a rare silence descended over theQuestion Timestudio. “It needs to be takenoutof the political arena. The public don’t want to see a load of pompous stuffed shirts arguing just to score political points against each other and further their own careers. They want to see change –realchange that will improve the quality of their lives. That’s why I’m setting up a cross-party committee for this alongside the scientists, economists, business owners, civil servants and consultants that know how to make this happen. A committee that can makerealdecisions with the only objective of bringingactualbenefit to the country.”
“I doubt that you can–”
“With respect, John,” I cut off one of the most painful MPs I had ever come across (I tried not to cut people off, but this blowhard had been banging on for a good twenty minutes already), “I already have.”
“You’ve wh–?”
“I’ve already set up the committee. Your party members are on it. Your party leader had agreed to it. As has every other political party.”
“But there’ll have to be a vote to see whether–”
“Yes, there will, but I don’t need a vote to set up the committee and start making the hard decisions. By the time parliament agrees to give it the power to make change, we’ll have already formulated a solid plan. Our parliamentary democracy is important and I will abide by the decisions it makes, but the groundwork can be laid now. I’m not waiting for the cogs of Westminster to turn at a snail’s pace. The world is changingnow. This is happening now. If we don’t act, our great nation will be consigned to also-ran status, and our people will suffer the consequences.”
“Okay,” Fiona Bruce put in to the ensuing silence. “Anyone got anything to–”
She was cut off by the applause. One lady in the front started clapping and everyone in the studio joined her. After a minute, they were all up on their feet. I’d never heard of a standing ovation onQuestion Timebefore, especially not for aConservative.It took a full five minutes to calm everything down. All my hard work assembling the committee over the last few weeks was worth it. Everything I’d worked towards in my political career was coming together.
Why, then, did I still feel so empty?
*****
“Don’t you think so, darling?”
“I’m sorry?” I asked, pulling my gaze away from the trees outside the back window and over to Mum’s face. She was smiling, beaming really – happy to be with both her sons and ecstatic about my performance onQuestion Time. The kitchen was full of people: my family, including a now very much together Kim and Henry, my Under Secretary, my press agent, lots of the staff from the ministry, and everyone was smiling. Everyone but me.
Mum maintained her smile but a small crease of confusion formed between her brows. “I said, I didn’t think a Tory MP had performed that well under pressure since Winston Churchill.”
I snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mum.” Trust my mother to compare me to one of the great political leaders of history. As if putting on a good show for a TV audience could compare to Churchill’s achievements. “How many of those have you had?” I asked, nodding to the champagne glass in her hand. On further inspection, her smile was a little lopsided and she was a little too bright-eyed. She snorted – another out of character occurrence.
