My Father, for once in his life, does not read the papers

So devastating is My Father’s headache when he wakes that it takes him several seconds to become aware the Woman He Loves is in bed beside him, and then at least another minute to register that this is inexplicable. Yet there she is; sleeping, on her back with her arms thrown upward in apparent surrender, and the sheets pushed aside to reveal a T-shirt promoting something called Gentle Giant. (Possibly a brand of sweetcorn, My Father’s mighty brain suggests, through the fog of incomprehension and pain that envelops it.)

My Father knows a lot about hangovers. And this one he has already identified as belonging to the merciful kind that insulates the sufferer from the reality of his situation – not, sadly, blotting it out entirely, but making it seem distant, soft-focus, of second order importance. So now My Father knows that the Woman He Loves is in bed with him, and that the election – the one that Labour couldn’t possibly fail to win – is lost. And yet these two pieces of knowledge do not, for the time being, surprise or trouble him unduly. It is what it is, My Father might be telling himself, consolingly, if that gleaming nugget of popular philosophy were not still several decades from being unearthed.

Could he, though, be hallucinating? For the briefest of moments, it seems possible. If the Woman He Loves cannot, in objective reality, be here with him, could the unlosable election, in objective reality, still be hanging in the balance? Might there, after My Father retired for the night, have been an astonishing turnaround, with the evening’s strong swing to the Tories abruptly reversing itself in the small hours, unleashing a torrent of bizarrely unaccountable Labour wins across plush suburbs, geriatric seaside resorts, and feudalistic farming constituencies?

My Father groans, with pain both physical and existential. Loud enough to cause the Woman He Loves to stir, clear her throat phlegmily, and fart, quite loudly. She is not an hallucination. The election is, definitely, lost.

*

When the Woman He Loves wakes a little later, the first thing she says to My Father is, “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry” – as is if she is responsible for the late rightward swerve by the people of Britain that has resulted in the most astounding electoral upset of the 20th century. And then, as she did a few hours earlier in the corridor, she cradles his head in her surprisingly strong arms, while My Father weeps, and weeps, the luxurious tears of the beloved.

“Do you want the television on?” she asks, when his sobs eventually start to subside.

He holds out his hand – palm outward, fingers spread – in the rough direction of the TV set, like a vampire warding off a garlic-infused daybreak. And then, for the first time since he awoke to find himself in this sensory padded cell, he tries to speak, not very successfully:

“What…. why….?”

Perhaps surprisingly, the Woman He Loves is able to interpret this.

“I came, as soon as I knew. Because I didn’t want you to be alone.”

He is still gaping goldfish-style, occasionally shaking his head, as if to disperse the fog it contains. So she explains further: “After the first few results, I jumped in the Volvo, and drove. Like the wind – did it under four hours!”

“But…. how did you….?”

“It was easy. I told them I’m your wife – which is basically true – and they gave me a key. And then I came up to surprise you, and found you rampaging around the hotel, naked.”

Far away, in the land of pain and confusion where he is currently resident, My Father registers that, in the real world, he has drunkenly embarrassed himself. And that, by her extraordinary efforts on his behalf, the Woman He Loves appears to have saved him from much more extreme embarrassment.

“Was I really?” he asks, with his first semblance of coherence since waking.

“You were,” she smiles, stroking his forearm. Her hand is small, with ragged bitten nails, and encrusted with blobs of dried oil paint.

He inhales deeply, as if to steady himself, and looks her in the eye.

“How bad?” he asks.

Again, she knows exactly what he means.

“Very. Somewhere between 30 and 40.”

And with that concise summary of the result of the 1970 general election – in fact, the Tories end up with a majority of 31 – they enter into an unspoken pact that will prohibit them from making any mention of politics, for the rest of the day.

“Come on,” she says, coaxingly. “We’re not going to get a drinkable cup of coffee here. Let’s go home.”

A little later, as they leave My Father’s room – the Woman He Loves having packed his bag, and helped him dress – they stumble over the bundle of newspapers that awaits him on the mat.

The Woman He Loves makes as if to scoop them up.

“Leave them,” he murmurs, certain they contain nothing that will ease his pain.

*

Meanwhile, in Downing Street, packing is already well underway, the PM having arrived at No 10 at around 7am. In his political office, Marcia is imperiously directing operations. In the PM’s flat, he and Mary – assisted by both their sons – are bundling their personal possessions into packing cases. No one expected to be doing this today, and there is an air of dazed disbelief – exacerbated by lack of sleep – that permeates the building, as its elected occupant prepares to be ejected, and replaced within the next few hours.

Later in the day, a large crowd will assemble outside, eager to hector and jeer the departing PM, and anyone associated with his now despised government. But for the time being, Downing Street is deserted and eerily quiet. Through the open window of the PM’s flat, mournful music can faintly be heard. It’s The Carnival is Over by the Seekers, which his younger son Giles plays, over and over, on the Dansette that sits beneath a bare patch on the wall, where a treasured landscape of the Scilly Isles has hung these last six years.

***

08:45

My Father’s three children have mixed feelings about the greatest electoral upset of the century

“So, that went well,” says Kirkland.

“Brilliantly,” agrees Atkins.

“He must be over the moon!” says Webber.

My Father’s Younger Son is at a loss. He has just arrived at school, to find his three best friends sitting on the wall by the CCF hut, awaiting him. But what are they talking about?

“Your dad!” Kirkland clarifies. “He must have played a blinder.”

“Helping the PM lose like that,” says Webber.

“When everyone said he was definitely going to win!” says Atkins.

They watch My Father’s Younger Son, to see how he will react.

“But, you said…. but you didn’t….” My Father’s Younger Son is too upset to be capable of forming a sentence.

His friends laugh, good-naturedly. They are amused by his gasping outrage, but mostly by their own audacity in abruptly switching their line of attack. Until yesterday, disbelieving My Father’s Younger Son was a rich source of comedy. Today, believing him is more fun.

Or maybe they can have it both ways.

“So what next for your dad?” asks Kirkland. “Helping to make sure England get stuffed in the next World Cup, too?”

*

My Father’s Elder Son has double Private Study before break this morning, so he is still in bed, asleep – despite My Mother’s attempts to lure him downstairs with offers of breakfast. But how will he feel about the election, when he finally rouses himself? Conflicted, perhaps.

Of My Father’s children, he – at a precocious 16 – is the only one who has any idea at all of what My Father has been doing during his long absences over the last few months, and how much the outcome of the election matters to him. On the other hand, My Father’s Elder Son regularly buys, and occasionally reads, Socialist Worker, and considers himself a man of the authentic left. As such, he naturally takes the view that a victory for the PM’s compromised and capitalistic brand of So-Called Socialism would be no victory at all for the workers. And, conversely, that an unapologetically right wing, quasi-fascistic Tory government would be far more likely to hasten the revolution.

My Father’s Elder Son stirs briefly, but doesn’t wake yet. When he does, this clash between family loyalty and political allegiance is unlikely to trouble him for long, on this sunny Friday morning. His band have a gig tomorrow night at Shere Village Hall, and Duster Bennett is playing the Gin Mill on Sunday.

*

My Father’s Daughter is back at school today, and for her, the only really significant result of yesterday is that she feels she has gained a decisive advantage over Sasha and Paul, and their Auton masters. They remain firmly locked in the toy box, from which there has emerged not a peep. She is a kind girl, and she is slightly concerned about whether they can breathe in there. She feels she had no choice but to lock them up, but she doesn’t want them to die. In any case, the threat they (probably) pose has been nullified, at least for the time being.

She is still feeling sad, though. On the way to school in the car just now, she asked My Mother when My Father will be home. And My Mother’s only reply was to laugh, in a way that sounded sort of cross and miserable, and then start talking about something else.

My Father’s Daughter wonders if, after assembly, she might have to go and sit with Mrs Birchall.

***

10:30

My Father sleeps the sleep of the dead on the way back to London

My Father is asleep in the passenger seat of the battered Volvo belonging to the Woman He Loves, as it closes on London at impressive speed, for a car so venerable. (One of the things he loves about her is how fast – recklessly, even – she drives; so different from the way My Mother cautiously pilots the Rover through the winding Surrey lanes, peering anxiously over the steering wheel, her right foot permanently hovering over the brake pedal.) His head is thrown back, and to the side, in a way that looks deeply uncomfortable. But although the Woman He Loves pokes him a few times with her elbow, in the hope of shifting him to a more practical sleeping posture, he doesn’t budge. And soon, she judges he must be soundly enough asleep for her to risk switching on the radio.

She is just in time to catch all but the very opening of the PM’s interview with David Dimbleby, from No 10. Even through the tinny car speakers, he sounds ratty and exhausted; about as cheerful and receptive to probing questions about the reasons for his defeat as might be expected from a man in late middle age who has just lost his job, and only managed a couple of hours’ sleep.

“Is there – I must ask you this, PM – “ enquires Dimbleby, nervously, “anything about the campaign that you would have done differently?”

The Woman My Father Loves holds her breath. How will the PM answer this? It’s a question that is going to be asked relentlessly over the coming days and weeks – how to explain this inexplicable defeat? – and what the PM chooses to say now will play a crucial part in shaping how this discussion unfolds. Will he throw My Father to the wolves? Will he blame the much commented upon style of his campaign for his shocking electoral failure?

“No, I don’t think so,” replies the PM, ineffably weary. “It’s too early to say, of course, but all the indications are that the issue was people not voting.”

She lets her breath go. Thank god, low turnout seems to be the scapegoat!

*

In the sitting room of her spacious high-ceilinged family home in Worplesdon, My Mother is watching the interview on TV, feeling a bit like a boy who has killed a dove with his catapult. She knows there is no factual basis for believing that her two vengefully-wielded votes have been directly responsible for Labour’s defeat. And towards the haggard snappily defensive figure on her screen she has no warm feelings, holding him largely to blame for rekindling My Father’s ridiculous political ambitions – and completely to blame for his prolonged absence, since the start of the campaign. Yet she is unable to rid herself of a sense that the moment she – Socialist in every corpuscle – voted Tory (twice!), the profound elemental wrongness of the act must have jolted the earth from its axis, and set off some kind of chain reaction, encompassing every imaginable evil consequence. Including, she suddenly feels certain, the imminent final disintegration of her marriage.

With her eyes still fixed on the screen – where the PM is berating the nation’s housewives for allowing themselves to be taken in by Tory promises of lower prices – she registers nothing that is happening there. Her thoughts are entirely pre-occupied with what will transpire when My Father finally returns to the family home, which she assumes will be later today, or, at the very latest, tomorrow. (She has a vague mental picture of him having to pack up his office, and take leave of his team, before departing from No 10 – whereas, in fact, My Father has been a solitary stranger in the PM’s residence, camping out in any unoccupied corner, unsupported and unresourced.)

She is aware that, whenever it is, she must – must, imperatively, without delay – confront him. Now that she knows what that horrible dull dowdy woman told her, it would be impossible to postpone it any longer…. unless, of course, the woman was lying. Which she perfectly well could have been. It’s true that, at the time, when she suddenly appeared on the doorstep in that extraordinary way, the story she told about her supposed relationship with My Father – full of elaborate circumstantial detail – seemed plausible. And when she wept, and clenched her fists, and closed her eyes like that, My Mother did not doubt for a moment that she was telling the truth. But, looking back on it now…. well, My Mother suddenly finds herself a lot less convinced.

Could My Father really have been entangled, for years, with that pathetic creature? Isn’t it just as likely – more likely, in fact – that she was playing some kind of cruel hoax upon My Mother? Or, more likely still, that the poor woman was simply deranged? A former junior employee of My Father’s, who, perhaps, had fantasised about some kind of illicit liaison with him, before, inevitably, being rebuffed – and now intent on avenging her wounded pride, by doing him and his family harm? This seems so likely to My Mother as to be almost certainly a complete and entirely satisfying explanation for that bizarre and upsetting episode on Wednesday afternoon.

She will, of course, still tell My Father about it. It has, after all, been a significant event in her life, of the kind that spouses routinely share with each other. And if her surmise about the wretched woman is correct, My Father may wish to take appropriate action against her; a restraining order, perhaps. But, in any case, it no longer feels like a ticking bomb about to explode under her life, with terrifying destructive force. Perhaps it’s something they may even, one day, be able to laugh about together.

On the screen, the PM is in denial, too. Pressed by Dimbleby to concede defeat, he refuses. He will not officially acknowledge that the election is lost until the tally of seats – quite a few of which are still being counted – confirms a clear overall Conservative majority. For another hour or two at least, he will remain PM.

***

14:00

My Father understands, in his heart, that the Woman He Loves will not be denied

My Father is still asleep, but now in the bed of the Woman He Loves. Punctilious housekeeping is not among the attributes that make her so perfect in his eyes, and the bedding is frowstily redolent of her. If My Father were less deeply unconscious, he would be hungrily breathing in great lungfuls of her lightly fermented essence. But My Father sleeps on; partly because these last three weeks of the campaign have been incomparably the most exhausting experience of his life, and partly for reasons of escapism. Friday the 19th of June 1970 is a day he has no desire at all to face.

While he has been asleep, a tidal wave of evil has swept the length and breadth of the land. The Tories have won every seat they expected, many they optimistically targeted, and a few in which they knew they had no chance and fielded joke candidates. Socialism does not stage a late fightback. The polls have, simply, been wrong, from start to finish. (All except the BBC’s new-fangled exit poll, which seems at this point to have predicted the eventual result with astonishing accuracy.)

From the moment it opens, the stock market soars. At around 11.15, the FT index is reported to be up by 27 points, the biggest single movement ever recorded. On the currency markets, sterling throws its weight around, like a playground bully. In the single smoke-filled room in Bermondsey that accommodates the Socialist Worker editorial committee, a collective decision is reached on the new issue’s front page banner headline, REVOLUTION: IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

At 2pm exactly, with a comfortable victory in Aberdeenshire West, the Tory seat total reaches 316, confirming their absolute majority. The PM, true to his word, promptly acknowledges defeat, and asks permission to visit the Queen, to tender his resignation. A smooth and efficient hand-over of power will be somewhat delayed by the fact that she is, at this moment, taking part in a carriage procession down the home straight at Ascot. But her Private Secretary lets No 10 know she will return to Buckingham Palace in time for tea, for which the PM is invited to join her.

*

Around 5pm – coincidentally, almost exactly the time the PM receives the call summoning him to the Palace – My Father finally wakes. Cautiously, experimentally, he levers himself up, to sit on the edge of the bed. How does he feel? Less bad than you might think. He is, we should remember, an accomplished drinker. Since his early teens, he has probably been drunk on more days than he has remained sober, so his body has become accustomed, if not immune, to the effects of excessive alcohol. And this hangover is more than 12 hours old, so rapidly losing its disruptive power, like a hurricane now downgraded to a tropical storm.

He stands, and takes a few deep breaths, looking at himself in the vast full length mirror opposite the bed of the Woman He Loves. He is naked (since their first night together here, he has never worn anything in her bed), and not a particularly prepossessing sight; his hair, comically dishevelled, stands up in wispy tufts; his belly, matted with black hair, is large and starting to be a little pendulous; his legs, noticeably paler than the rest of his body, are scrawny. But what causes him to screw his eyes tightly shut, as if in pain, and turn his head away, is not his physical appearance (My Father is notably lacking in vanity). What My Father has just glimpsed in the mirror is the thing he dreads beyond all else. Failure. A man of outstanding promise, no longer young, who has just missed his best and almost certainly last chance of achieving anything worthwhile in life.

Blinking viciously, as if to banish that vision, he snatches up a silk kimono belonging to the Woman He Loves, and drapes it round his shoulders, then shuffles off in search of her, and the comfort he has never found in anybody else. Her boys have been picked up from school by their unsatisfactory father, who has them for the weekend, so the tall narrow house is empty, and he can hear music – clangourous, discordant, hideous – drifting upstairs from the basement kitchen.

He finds her sitting at the table, a vast expanse of scrubbed pine, drawing on a pad open before her, and drinking coffee. Seeing him, she reaches behind her to turn the music down, to near inaudibility.

She stands, and opens her arms. They embrace. And for a long moment, neither of them speaks.

“So,” he says, eventually.

“So,” she replies.

“So,” he says again. This is a kind of joke between them, obscure in origin, but possibly a satire on the limitations of language, in the face of heightened emotion.

“Coffee,” she says, and breaks off to pour him a small but extravagantly potent cup.

He sips it, sitting beside her. Its concentrated bitterness shrivels the inside of his mouth and throat, but it tastes of love to him. She picks up her pencil, and continues to draw, her left hand still resting on his knee. Today’s papers are on the table, at the far end, where she has unthinkingly put them. But he doesn’t even glance in their direction. Instead, he watches her draw, trying to guess, like a child, what the blizzard of intersecting lines and smudges will resolve itself into. She glances at him from time to time, as if gauging what he needs from her, and whether there is anything she can say that will be of comfort to him.

Then, after a few minutes, she says, decisively, laying down her pencil, “So. Come on. You look gorgeous in that, but we need to get you dressed.”

She stands, and holds out her paint-encrusted hand for him. He takes it obediently, and she leads him upstairs

*

About 20 minutes later, My Father – washed, dressed, but (very unusually) not shaven – is leaving the house with the Woman He Loves. They turn left out of the front door, hurrying past the house of the Celebrated Polymath, before crossing the road, heading towards the tube station. The Award-Winning Foreign Correspondent, who lives opposite, is approaching on his bike, but My Father and the Woman He Loves only wave, and continue on their way. (Normally, they would be eager to engage with their distinguished neighbours, but today My Father can’t face the inevitable commiserations and rueful where-did-it-all-go-wrongs.)

They walk northward up Camden Road. She clings, with both hands, to his arm, in a way he likes. (So different from My Mother’s schoolteacherly hand-holding.) It is hot, and overpoweringly humid. A busy North London Friday evening thrums and thunders around them. And yet, for both of them, there is a sense of being alone, together, in a state of isolation; a place where the sights and sounds surrounding them can be seen and heard, but have no real substance or significance.

“Where are you taking me?” he asks.

“Can’t you guess?”

“Tell me.”

“Come on!” She tugs on his arm, as if to hurry him towards their unknown destination. But although My Father loves the Woman He Loves, he is not in the mood for games.

“Tell me,” he says again.

“I’m taking you to my studio,” she says. “Everything’s ready now. Well, very nearly. I want you to see it.”

Of course, My Father has seen her work before. The walls of her house are covered with her paintings and drawings. But until now, her studio – where she has been creating and curating her first proper exhibition – has been a sanctum, its location secret. This feels momentous, and for a moment, My Father is unsure how to respond.

“Come on,” she says, tugging on his arm again. “It isn’t far from here.”

*

“So, a bit of a cock-up, Prime Minister?”

“I’m afraid it was, Your Majesty.”

“What went wrong? You seemed so confident beforehand.”

“Well, it’s rather soon to say, Ma’am. But I think I was badly advised. Or, at least, chose to take bad advice.”

“On the style of your campaign? I heard Mr Dimbleby asking you about that earlier.”

“I meant on the timing of the election, Ma’am. I think the result might have been different if we had left it until the autumn, when the strength of the economy would have been more evident.”

“But some commentators thought you were a little…. presidential, PM?”

“Perhaps. I hope you didn’t feel I was treading on your toes?”

“Not at all, Prime Minister. Well, only a little!”

“In any case, Ma’am, I am here to tender my resignation to Your Majesty, which I do with my deepest respect and gratitude….“

*

My Father and the Woman He Loves walk on, through Kentish Town, and as she turns right into a tree-lined residential street, the first ponderous drops of rain fall, detonating on the pavement, causing it, almost immediately, to release its heady sun-baked fume-infused fragrance. Neither of them is wearing a coat, but the rain is warm and feels benedictory. They laugh, and only slightly quicken their pace.

“We’re here,” she says, peering into her shoulder bag, for her keys. They are standing outside a tall narrow North London house, not notably different from her own.

Inside, the hallway is dark and cool, and hung with tapestries of Indian aspect. She makes to lead him upstairs, but before they can begin their ascent, a figure appears from one of the ground floor rooms, presumably the house’s owner; a tiny woman, with the prematurely wizened features of an heroic lifelong smoker, and a cloud of fairly-obviously-dyed black hair.

“Hello, you,” she says, with evident warmth, to the Woman My Father Loves, before transferring her attention to him. “And hello, My Father – for I assume it is none other?”

Normally, at this moment in his life, My Father would not wish to be introduced to anyone. But, in this instance, he faces a dilemma. Because his lack of inclination to make polite conversation is counter-balanced by the fact that the tiny woman is an extremely famous best-selling novelist, and My Father’s lust for distinction and celebrity knows no bounds.

Luckily, the Woman He Loves takes charge, barely allowing him to shake hands before ushering him upstairs, explaining to her friend (which is what the Famous Novelist clearly is, though My Father cannot conceive of keeping such an illustrious friendship secret) that they are on important business, and pressed for time.

“Don’t mind me, you young lovers,” rasps the Famous Novelist. “I only live here.”

At the top of the house, up three flights of stairs, My Father and the Woman He Loves come to a door, which she pushes open, standing aside to let him enter the room first. He is in her studio. It’s a large converted attic, running the entire length of the house, which would be flooded with northern light, if not for the fact that the rain is now beating down on the skylight windows, from a louring dark violet sky.

He looks at her, unsure what she wants from him, but she only holds out her hand, in a help-yourself gesture. And so he looks at her paintings, which fill the room – some wall-mounted in sequences, as they will be hung in the gallery; other canvases, not yet framed, piled up against each other; one unfinished, still on her easel. They are landscapes, of varying sizes, and falling into two distinct groups. Most are of Wiltshire, where the Woman My Father Loves has, for years, spent her weekends, in a cottage in the grounds of the vast house belonging to her friend the Distinguished Theatre Director. A smaller but still substantial group depict the Tuscan campana, where she passes her summers. To My Father’s non-expert eye, there are some that seem familiar, but many more that he assumes are new, which seem to have an even bolder, more urgently kinetic quality. My Father loves her art; is unable to imagine anything more beautiful to the eye, or stirring to the soul.

She comes and stands beside him, then takes his hand and leads him to the far end of the room, where there is a small concealed alcove. In it, hang four portraits – of the Famous Novelist, the Celebrated Polymath, the Distinguished Theatre Director, and My Father.

She looks up at him, to see how we will respond. Satisfyingly, for her, he is dumb-struck. For the first and probably only time in his life, he is rendered speechless and breathless by the power of visual art. He feels as if he has been punched in the stomach by God.

First, of course, there are the pictures themselves. She has never painted portraits before (or, if she has, he has never seen them), and these are extraordinary. Small in scale, they seem to pulse with their subjects’ creative energy. My Father, the wordsmith, lacks the vocabulary to describe them. But, if pressed, he would say it looks as if she has painted multiple portraits of each sitter before somehow overlaying them upon each other. Instantly recognisable as likenesses, the three well known faces seem to swim in and out of focus, oscillating between extreme familiarity and disconcerting strangeness.

And then there is the fact of her having chosen to include My Father in this company. He is enough of a realist to recognise that, in the eyes of the world, his achievements do not qualify him to occupy the same wallspace as the Famous Novelist, the Celebrated Polymath, and the Distinguished Theatre Director. Today of all days, he – the Publicity Adviser Who Lost the Election – is aware that his unlimited potential remains unfulfilled. But she believes in him. The Woman He Loves (who must know that these portraits will be the main talking-point among visitors to the fashionable Cork Street gallery where her exhibition will be held) has not hesitated to make a public declaration of her complete and unwavering faith in his exceptional capacities.

Lastly, there is the way she has shown him. No, the way she has seen him. Although My Father is quite tightly framed, he is recognisably sitting in her subterranean kitchen. He is glancing up from a newspaper, looking out from under his increasingly luxuriant eyebrows, directly into the lens (he remembers her taking the photos now), and his gaze is suffused with need, and longing, and love. Somehow, she has seen in him everything he ever has been, emotionally; the permanently hungry boy, thousands of miles from a home he will never return to; the young man, avid to believe ambition and achievement can satisfy the endless yearning within him; the man he was when he met her, drunk, desperate and frighteningly close to admitting defeat; and the current work-in-progress version of himself, the man he is now becoming, if he can only resolve the conflict between love and duty still tearing him apart.

As he gazes at himself, she puts her arms around him, and presses her body into him, hard.

“So,” she says, again. And this time it’s somewhere between an interrogative and an imperative.

What she doesn’t say is, and now, my love, you cannot doubt I see you, and know you, as no one else ever can, and you have found your home, and we must cease this trifling and become real, so that the life we are going to make for ourselves together can begin. But My Father understands, in his heart as well as in his mighty brain, that the Woman He Loves will be denied no longer.

*

Later, My Father and the Woman He Loves sit at her kitchen table, sharing a herb omelette that she has thrown together in seconds. There is no bread, or accompanying salad, because she has been far too busy with her exhibition to shop. But it’s the first food to pass My Father’s lips in what seems like weeks, and like everything she has ever cooked for him, it tastes not just better than anything similar he has eaten before, but delicious to a previously unimaginable degree.

*

The now Ex-PM and his wife are also having eggs for supper – though, in their case, soft-boiled with soldiers. They are in the butler’s sitting room at Chequers, which the new PM has generously loaned them for a few days, because they have nowhere else to go.

Their sons have returned to their families now, and the staff have been given the weekend off, in honour of the election. So they must fend for themselves. They could, if they chose, be eating in the ceremonial dining room, which is roughly the size of Wimbledon’s Centre Court. But on this day of defeat, the most brilliant politician of his era and the woman he loves feel more comfortable here, below stairs.

*

Later still, in the master bedroom of her high-ceilinged detached home in Worplesdon, My Mother gulps down a handful of Seconal. In the now unlikely event of My Father returning home tonight, she is determined that he will find her sleeping peacefully.

*****

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