Read the book: «Children of the Master»

Prologue
Photographs

A good politician seizes the moment; and if the moment resists, she knocks the bugger against a hard surface until it gives up.

The Master

There are special days. Not so many. Far more often come the amiable days when we dress, shower, eat and work, when we laugh at one another and we pass on secrets, and we eat moist chicken and drink cold beer … and none of it really touches our inner selves. Most days we slip through, the snow creaking, barely touching the sides. As in a symphony, not every moment – not every day – can be intense. And there are also the days whose smells, music and colours burn themselves into us so that we are changed for good. On such days, speckles of dirt on a kettle lid can be beautiful, and a song whistled in the street can sit inside our skulls forevermore.

Caro Phillips, who was a good person, believed that today would be a special day. She pulled open the curtains and a cold, pre-dawn light filled her bedroom.

She had acted ruthlessly. Because she had acted, everything had changed. She saw the orange and green rug under her bare feet properly, for the first time. She’d bought it years before. Beautiful, just beautiful. She saw her dressing gown flopping from its hook on the door, a dollop of shadow beside it, and felt love for its soft familiarity. She saw her own shadow, quivering, and reached out to touch it. She didn’t glance in the direction of the bedroom mirror, saving that until she reached the bathroom.

The face, as she’d hoped, was both familiar and, this morning, strange. It was a good face. Laughter lines; there had been a lot of laughter. A slight caramel tan, the residue of life-changing days in Rome. She smiled at herself: teeth tamed in adolescence by train tracks, a slightly overlong top lip, summer-sky-blue eyes. Ever since she could remember, she’d been able to knock people backwards, almost literally, with her smile – men and, yes, absolutely, women too.

And because she was a good person, all her life strangers had brought her good things. She looked harder into the mirror. No, not a sign of dangerous redness or a broken vein. Self-control, an early renunciation of delicious tobacco, and caution with alcohol. And then she looked at herself properly: the eyes were looking at the eyes, complete self-consciousness. This was the face of the king’s first minister of the treasury, the most powerful face in the United Kingdom, the face of Nefertiti or Gloriana.

Now Caroline noticed its coldness. This was the face of a woman who had done something terrible – not murder, but something like murder. She felt she could smell her own electricity. She thought of poor Angela, poor sweet Angela, who smelled not of that, but of the coast, and of honeysuckle, and who was at this very moment in a cramped prison cell, perhaps bereft, feeling that her life was over. Caro washed, peed, showered, towelled and began to dress.

She could imagine the prison cell vividly. The walls would be painted to a height of about four feet in a medicinal green; and above that in white. They would be covered with little raised bumps, which would break and flake if you pressed them. There would be small messages, not many, scratched into the paint or written in pencil, not all misspelled.

Back in Caro’s bedroom there was a large black-and-white photograph of Angela in a silver frame, given to her on a previous anniversary. Under the Master’s direction, she had allowed a journalist from The Times to take that picture away with him after an interview; the paper had used it on the front page. It had done Caro a lot of good. Angela was staring with her dark, intense look, her wiry black hair blowing across her face like seaweed, her collar shining like a bone. The picture had been taken down at Pebbleton in Devon in the good days. Caro remembered taking it, and she noted that it was well composed: the stubby tower of the church, beside which they lived, was clearly visible over Angela’s black-shirted left shoulder.

Behind Angela’s picture, but larger than it, was a more recent photograph: the unmistakable, world-famous face of the Master. Caro had a lot to confess to him. He would talk as he always did about keeping it simple, about honesty and clarity and her brand. ‘One lover, heaven; two lovers, hell.’ That was one of his. But somehow, she felt, he probably already knew what had happened. He knew everything. Well, not everything; she would surprise him later.

Walking down the narrow stairs towards breakfast, Caro noted a great dark blaze of sunrise, a bruise-coloured mountain rolling fast across east London. Today was without doubt going to be special.

Then, on the bottom step, Caro saw the interloper. Wearing the familiar pink cheesecloth nightie, one bare foot tucked over the other to keep it warm, she was looking up at Caro with a solemn expression. It was the girl. Caro did not believe that her house was haunted, nor that, in any conventional sense, she had a guardian angel. But at important times, on days that mattered, she was accustomed to meeting herself, her earlier self, aged eight or nine; and talking. Caroline could see her ribs moving under the nightie, and her cold toes wriggling. She stopped. She could go no further, neither around nor through this … inconvenient moment, this folded, unavoidable interruption.

‘Why the long face? I would have thought that today, of all days, you might want to celebrate with me. It’s not as if I’ve killed anybody.’

The girl replied in a calm, clear voice. But I used to have a lisp, Caro thought. ‘Caroline, you are not stupid. You know perfectly well that you can end a person’s life without actually killing them. You can starve them of the future, and then they … waste away.

‘Why are you doing this? You didn’t used to be cruel. We were tough, you and me, but we were never cruel … I haven’t killed Angela, not in any way, you silly little thing. She’s destroyed herself. She was always weak, and you can’t just hold up the weak forever. We have always been a good person, and we still are. But now we have the courage to act, and make the world a better place.’ For 7.30 a.m., and before breakfast, it was a long speech.

Caro’s younger self seemed, if not satisfied, at least disinclined to continue the argument; so Caro walked through her, filled the kettle, popped on two pieces of toast and turned on Radio 4.

There was a lot to do today – media, the PLP, perhaps the Palace – and Caro couldn’t afford to daydream or dawdle. As she sipped and munched, however, she allowed herself some quiet reminiscing. The soft side of Angela’s breast; her tight tummy muscles; pushing her down onto a bed. Flushing slightly, Caro concentrated on John Humphrys, who was interrogating her Tory opposite number about the speech she’d given yesterday in the House of Commons. The poor chap couldn’t decide whether he was for it or against it; whether it was an outrageous betrayal or a moral stand. Humphrys was having gentle fun with him, batting him around like a cat whose claws were still sheathed.

‘Wa- wa- well, John,’ went the south London MP, ‘we’ve given Miss Caroline Phillips the benefit of the doubt, haven’t we … We have to ask what she’s wa- wa- wa- up to, don’t we?’

‘Yes, Mr Porter, we do, and that’s why we asked you to come on the programme this morning, and that’s why I have to press you for a clear answer.’

‘Wa- wa- wight. Absolutely wight, John …’

‘Have you any idea what you think, Mr Porter? Or perhaps, you haven’t been told what to think yet?’

This was all too easy: the old Welshman wasn’t even trying. Perhaps things were going to be all right after all.

Caro leafed through the Guardian. There was a poll showing the Labour lead down to five points. She scanned the news pages, but there was no mention of her. She knew she needed to get a move on, but still she lingered. She flicked over from Today to Radio 3, and struck lucky: a Mozart piano sonata, one of the B-flat majors; almost certainly Uchida. Yes, today would be a good day.

Before she left the kitchen table, Caro flicked her laptop open to check Twitter, her alerts, and Buzzfeed. Lots of below-the-line chatter from the usual racists, homophobes and sad-sacks; but from the party, nothing but bland approval.

The pre-agreed statement by the outgoing prime minister, Alwyn Grimaldi, was still running, unchanged.

The Rome conference, apparently, was still grinding on. The Mail Online had a picture of David there, looking lean and dashing in a white suit, with the vice president of the United States. They were speaking from behind lecterns set up in a conference room of the hotel, with their national flags behind them. The usual old bollocks, no doubt.

Rome had been … transformational. But that was not something Caro could allow herself to think about this morning. She put Rome into a small mother-of-pearl box to be opened later on, when there was quietness.

Caroline went downstairs, still listening to the radio: she’d had speakers positioned up and down the narrow townhouse so that she could follow a radio interview or, more often, music, from room to room. Then her train of thought was rudely derailed by the phone. That wasn’t unusual at 7.32, but it was the house phone, not either of her mobiles. Who had that number? She couldn’t bear to speak to her parents yet – the anxious bleating, tinged with disapproval. Still, curious, she picked up the receiver.

‘That was magnificent. Magnificent. I told the editor. He wasn’t sure. But I told him. Magnificent, I said. Absolutely magnificent. Speaking for the common people. Giving us all, in the Westminster bubble, a bit of a lesson, bit of a kicking. Magnificent. I’m saying so in my column today, and I’ve got them to put it on the front. They do what I say. I wanted you to hear it first.’ Caro automatically moved the receiver just a little further away from her ear.

It was Peter Quint. Whenever she spoke to Quint, she had the sensation of being just a little dirtied; already she felt that there was greasy plug of something in her ear.

‘Peter! How lovely to hear your voice. But I’m a little surprised, so early in the morning. We haven’t spoken for a while. I thought you were very much a David Petrie man. Didn’t you call him “the future of socialism” only last week?’

‘Yes, yes, mock away. Now I’m calling you “the future of Britain”, which I think trumps that, doesn’t it?’

There was definitely something in her ear. Itchy.

‘Peter, it’s early. I’m heading off for a busy day. How can I help you?’

‘Not just a busy day. This is a momentous day, Caroline – I can still call you Caroline, I hope – and I just wanted to know exactly how momentous. We’re bidding for the first proper interview after you’ve moved into Number 10. I’d talk to your press people, but I wanted to give you a heads-up myself.’

‘I’ll get somebody to call you later, Peter, I promise. I’m all at sea myself, as I’m sure you’ll understand.’

‘Have you spoken to Angela? In your position, with all the resources of the Home Office, you must …’

‘Goodbye, Peter.’

Loathsome man. But if Peter Quint was fawning on her to that extent, she must be home free.

The house phone began to warble again. Caro glanced at the number, and let it ring. She allowed herself to think properly about David Petrie, his Scottish joking and his dark, long-lashed, girlish eyes. Gay men, she knew, tended to like him. In all truth, before the past twenty-four hours he had hardly even looked at her, and had probably hated her on principle. But he’d made her heart race, long before they’d spoken properly, because of his naked, contemptuous and threatening ambition. Well, that was another unopenable door safely closed. And, after all, neither of them was free. He was married, and untainted by scandal. And she was famous for the other thing. No, it was completely impossible at every level. It couldn’t be happening.

As she opened the front door, Caro drained the last of her coffee, and smiled briefly to herself. She would need David Petrie in the months ahead. That last little undefined crack of possibility kept her cheerful. The car was waiting. The office had sent the Rover, she hoped with Paul inside.

There was just one photographer outside on the pavement. She couldn’t see any camera crews. Good. Fixing her face into a smile, she walked through the door and into the midst of half a dozen men who’d presumably been crouching behind the low brick front wall, and who now leapt into the air like a ragged rugby lineout. She reeled back slightly to avoid being hit in the face by a camera, and closed her ears to the sudden hubbub of questions, spittle-flecked lobs of sound – ‘Oi, wha’ say, Caroline?’ – ‘Arter a job?’ – ‘Oo’s ya boss?’ – ‘Yah-yah-yah?’

She remembered what the Master always advised: ‘Whatever they say, keep smiling. Wave at them. Smile, smile, smile. They’re looking for a guilty or an angry face – that’s what sells a photo to the picture desk. Smiles are small change.’

So that was what she did, not even flinching when one snapper, scurrying to get the best angle, banged against the wing mirror of the waiting car and knocked it off.

All the paps had their own personal tricks: one of them specialised in walking backwards in front of his target, and then appearing to trip and fall. The innocent victim would automatically reach forward, with a look of concern or shock, to catch him; and that was the picture the snapper had been waiting for – that grimace, that moment of shock. The snapper snapped fast, even as he was going down. More Westminster careers had started to slide downwards, the Master had told her, after a distorted face appeared in the papers, than had ever been destroyed by parliamentary inquiries.

Once she was inside the car, buckling up, Caro held her smile. Paul was driving. As the car pulled off, with hands banging on the roof, she closed her eyes and tried to remember her last peaceful moment that morning.

Leaving the house, she had passed a wall of pictures and photos. There were snaps of Devon, of Angela, the boys. A Peter Brookes cartoon from The Times that showed her in a pulpit. A pin board just inside the front door was covered with scraps torn from newspapers, and other mementoes. Prominent among them was a stained, creased cardboard invitation, engraved with gold leaf and signed by the Master himself. He’d given it to her, and told her to keep it safe: ‘That’s where it all began.’