Читать книгу Trust Me - Angela Clarke, Angela Clarke - Страница 21

Miranda had been very clear, there were to be no more indiscretions. In return, she’d promised she would try harder. But she’d been quick to forget that. It wasn’t on. There were two people in this marriage, and she wasn’t pulling her weight. She had use of the house in London, though she preferred the estate in Chipping Campden. Her attention was always with the harridans she called friends, attending endless expensive lunches where no one ate anything. All the women had the same stretched faces, stringy bodies and fingers sharp with rings from past and present husbands. It was bad enough having to touch their cold hands at work, pressing the flesh, their rings jabbing like sharp teeth. They made him work for every single penny. All the jovial smiles and hours spent listening to their inane charity chatter.

Once, he’d thought of Miranda as different. When they’d been at university she’d seemed fresh and fun, she’d worn her hair loose past her shoulders, and laughed at his jokes. Here was someone who was as passionate as he was about his purpose, his career. Now he felt cheated. As if she’d been a mirage to lure him in, a siren, her own desires the rocks on which he crashed. She’d driven him into this intolerable position.

Young party members always looked up to him; he was used to that. Occasionally an upstart would try to win his spurs by picking an argument, but there would be no using him as a stepping stone. As if the prime minister would be able to cope without him! That’s what people failed to appreciate. If they attacked him, they attacked the cabinet. They were primed to protect Nigel, not that he couldn’t dispense with the whippersnappers himself. They always had such flimsy arguments based on nonsensical anecdotes. Too used to letting their phones and their computers think for them. Jade had been different.

He loved how her fat breasts and bottom shook when he made her laugh. She’d taught him that LOL meant ‘laugh out loud’ and not ‘lots of love’. It had been natural to progress things. Tempting. She was there every day in the campaign office, touching his arm, fluttering her eyelashes at him. But he hadn’t succumbed. He’d done the decent thing. That’s what Miranda failed to grasp. He had never, in person, acted in an ungentlemanly manner. They had merely exchanged words. Some naughty little messages. It was all a bit of harmless fun. But Miranda would not be reasoned with. It was she who’d put him in this ludicrous situation. How was he supposed to do his job if he wasn’t allowed online? Not everyone sent handwritten note cards like her cronies. Many of his constituents reached him via Twitter. Support for policy announcements was more easily achieved with a click. Besides, it was damning to suddenly disappear. One couldn’t simply close one’s accounts unnoticed. People would assume, wrongly, that he had something to hide. The vultures would be on him within seconds. So he’d elected to do what was best for them as a couple. Miranda’s comprehension of these things was weak at best. He’d requested Quentin change all the passwords in front of her. Told Miranda it was a direct order from Number 10. She’d believed it was a security issue, and those accounts would only be used for work from now on.

Switching service providers was straightforward. The internet really did make everything much more readily available. He was shrewd, he stayed away from anything too obviously titled; he didn’t want any stray hacks getting hold of his cookies and whatnot. Besides, it was easy enough to find what he wanted on more mainstream applications. The promise had been there tonight, but it wasn’t at all what he’d hoped for. Utterly repulsive viewing. People actually enjoyed this filth? He had suggested to himself that he had imagined it; it had, in truth, been a long day. It was now the early hours of the morning, and he was onto his third scotch. But his mind couldn’t conjure something as repugnant as that. Boys at the club joked about a bit of slap and tickle, but this went far beyond a touch of the whip. He felt quite sickened that someone would even make a film like that. And it was certainly film. Wasn’t it? Staged. Special effects and all that. He’d stumbled into some nightmare vision of a sick man’s imagination. Because if you were going to attack someone, it made no sense to do it on camera. He took another sip of scotch, the ice dripping away slowly into nothing. It had been strikingly real. He poured himself another two fingers. Unnerving in its brutality. But it couldn’t actually be real. Because that would be unimaginable.