Page 65 of Darling
“Can youquit?” he asks earnestly. “Find something you love? Go back to being a lawyer? Or did you hate that? Did you quit that?”
I chuckle. “I didn’t hate the law, but it wasn’t making me happy, either. I fell into politics quite by accident.”
“So fall out of it on purpose. If it doesn’t make you happy, why keep doing it?”
I think about this. I haven’t been happy since Stella died, not really. I’ve captured some fragments of happiness here and there, moments. With Leo, with Felix, and now, with Asher. Butthose moments felt… transient. Superficial. The foundations of a happy, stable life were gone, and I had no clue how to rebuild them or what they should even look like.
“It did make me happy once. I suppose I keep hoping it will again,” I tell him at last. “They wanted me to be Prime Minister not too long ago.”
“What? Seriously? That’s… holy shit.”
“Mmm. A fortnight later, they told me to clear out my office and take a job several levels below Prime Minister.”
“Why?”
It had been a hard one to explain to most people. Rumours had swirled in Whitehall at my sudden and complete exit from frontline politics, some more ridiculous even than the truth. At the time, I was just relieved that the truth had been buried and that my affair with Felix had never gotten out—the thought of Leo finding out, reading about it in some tabloid rag, was inconceivable. Most people knew Adrian Brooke had been the one to cut the rope on the attempt to manoeuvre me into No. 10 after Nish Patel’s vote of no confidence. Most people also knew that when Adrian Brooke had a grudge against someone, that someone had a target on their back, and it was merely a matter of time before they were gone.
“Because a very powerful man wanted me gone.” No one but Felix knew the real reason for my resignation from the foreign office. I trust Asher more than I trust almost anyone else in my life, which is incredible, really, considering I’ve known him a matter of months.
“Why did he want you gone?” His voice is taut.
“Because I was sleeping with his son.”
??
I arrive at the FCDO just after 8am the following morning. It’salready bustling. Grey-suited bodies swarming between desks and titanium clocks showing the time of every commonwealth country to the exact second. It feels good to be back here, in a place where the doorman knows my name, where my picture hangs on the wall downstairs, where the meeting rooms stock my favourite tea and biscuits.
To my right, a door opens, and Bridget Morris’s assistant, a sharply dressed man about Leo’s age but who is already thinning a little on top, pops out into the empty hallway.
“Sir Darling,” he says politely. “Ms Morris is wondering if you have some time right now.” It’s a question, but it isn’t exactly posed as one. The blinds are closed inside the meeting room, so I’ve no idea who else might be in there. I’ve also no idea how he’s managed to time my route past the room so accurately.
“Sure.”
He smiles, relieved, and beckons me into the room by coming fully out into the corridor and gesturing toward the open door. When I step through, he closes it behind me, remaining outside of it. Bridget is alone, eating some kind of flaky breakfast pastry with no hands while she types furiously on her laptop.
She removes the pastry and says, “Have a seat, Chris,” without looking up from her screen. I do as I’m bid, pulling out the chair adjacent to her and planting myself in it. She continues to type something, finishes her pastry in four efficient bites while she does, and then closes her laptop and looks at me.
“How are you doing?” She lifts a large thermos cup and takes a drink from it. “We never got a moment to talk last night.”
“I’m fine, Bridget.”
She looks disgusted by this answer. “You were banished to fucking Siberia and then had a heart attack. Are you… fine?”
I huff a laugh. “Washington DC is the centre of the universe, actually. Weren’t you aware?”
“Hmmh.”
She’s giving me that look she’s known for, as though she’s plotting my death and how best to dispose of the evidence. It’s quite terrifying. We’d gone on a date once, whilst I was still seeing Felix—he’d been incensed—and I’d been terrified for the entire dinner. She’s a scary woman. Brilliant, Machiavellian, but terrifying.
“How areyou?” I ask.
“Surrounded by a miasma of incompetent fucking men, as is my lot in life.”
“Well, you’ve had one less to worry about, I suppose.”
“Adrian had no fucking right to do what he did,” she says with a tone so cold I feel a distinct chill from it. “Who the fuck does that man think he is?”
I shift in my chair. I know she likely knows everything. Aside from Adrian, there is no one else in Westminster who knows more than Bridget Morris does. I’m certain she knows what colour underwear I’m wearing right this moment. “He did what he felt was right,” I say diplomatically.