HINDSIGHT

———————————————

A SECOND CHANCE ROMANCE

Hazel Hatman
Copyright © 2023 by Hazel Hatman

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or

mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief
quotations in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, or incidents are

products of the author’s imagination and used in a fictitious manner. Any
resemblance to actual events, places, or people, living or dead, is purely
coincidental or fictionalised.

Copyeditor: Claire Strombeck

Cover design: Mari Thomas Cover Design

First edition
Contents
Part I: Past
The Start of it All
Another Country
A Love So Bold
The Khan Clan
An Unexpected Request
Jasmine’s Choice
A Serious Matter
A New Normal
A Slow Dance with Death
Making Memories
All Change
The End of the Affair
What Jasmine Did Next
Part II: Present
Bad, Worse, Worst
Once More unto the Breach
The New Candidate
Arrival
Business As Usual
A New Chapter
Mr and Mrs Smith
An Unexpected Interlude
Mrs Smith Again
The Village Town Hall
How to Win
Mr Smith
A Realisation
The Last Slog
Surprise, Surprise
Election Day
And the Winner Is
All’s Well that Ends Well
Dear Reader
Acknowledgements
 To my little sister
Who never got to read any of my stories
Part I: Past
 The Start of it All

It is an ideal day to break someone’s heart. Heavy rain has faded overnight
to an overcast sky and a fine drizzle, leaving pressure and spirits low.
Unfortunately, it is also weather to confine the less intrepid indoors and for
them to relieve an expected day of boredom with the amusement of baiting
an unwary sister. Sitting at the breakfast table, Jasmine isn’t thinking about
heartbreak. She is furious. If she had known she would be eating with her
fractious twin sisters, she would have risen an hour earlier. But the sound of
the rain rattling against the windows lured her to snuggle further into her
warm duvet for just a few more minutes. Now, she is paying for that
moment of indulgence.
One of Jasmine’s abiding beliefs is that humans should move
through this planet doing as little harm as possible and she is often
disappointed. Through sheer persistence, she has had bacon removed from
the breakfast buffet while she is in residence, but this particularly rankles
her youngest sister, Phoebe. This morning, while Jasmine is sitting with her
oat milk, fair-trade Mayan Gold coffee and her palm oil-free peanut butter
on spelt-bread toast, Phoebe retaliates by spraying her sister’s food with
scrambled egg. The teenager would not have dared had their father had
been at the table or even one of her oldest two sisters, but only their mother
was present and she had never been willing nor able to control her youngest
daughter.
Jasmine, fearing her principles of non-violence may crumble under
her seething need for justice, leaves the table with Phoebe’s delighted
laughter ringing in her ears. Breakfast becomes a single granola bar and a
cup of bitter reminiscences. After a shower in cold water – for the ancient
hot water system struggles to cope with a horde of girls – she pulls on a
shirt and jeans and tops it off with her waterproofs. As she carefully tucks a
few errant strands of hair into her anorak hood, Jasmine is still fuming,
although as a woman of many strong convictions, outrage is not a new
emotion. With one last check in the mirror, she finds a speck of egg clinging
to a recalcitrant curl. Her curls, she feels, are a metaphor for her place in her
family; no one else has them and no one else wants them.
She has never been more grateful to have an escape, a place to go to
when life with her own family becomes too much. When she steps out onto
the path, she still isn’t thinking about heartbreak. Concentrating on avoiding
puddles, for her country boots are well worn and no longer waterproof, she
is not thinking of endings but beginnings. The familiar path to her
boyfriend’s house reminds her of the first time she trod this route and the
excitement that had tingled along every synapse.
Jasmine’s two older sisters had attended the small local primary
before transferring to a hothouse boarding school. Jasmine had always
assumed she would follow them, but midway through her schooling, the
primary closed. With no one consulting her wishes, Jasmine found herself
starting at a private day school in Bridgetown. She confidently expected she
would eventually follow her sisters, but eleven came and went, followed by
twelve and finally thirteen, and she continued at the same day school.
Finally, she understood. There would be no prestigious boarding school for
her. She was not worth it.
By sixteen, she’d had enough. The private school was a dumping
ground for girls of little ambition or curiosity but whose parents wanted to
insulate them from the imagined roughness of state education. Jasmine
struggled to find common ground with her fellow students. She had no
interest in the latest fashions. What was the point when you wore a uniform
all day? Nor was she interested in the newest boy crooner. Why moon over
someone you would never meet? Conversely, the ideas that ignited
Jasmine’s mind – the impending climate crisis, the plunging rates of social
mobility, the iniquitous distribution of wealth – were met with nothing more
than a shrug from her classmates.
The thought of two years of further misery was unbearable. Jasmine
had prepared her case, approached her father, argued her cause, and won.
When she started sixth form, it was at the state-run college in Bridgetown.
On the first day, Jasmine had joined the queue of youngsters at the village
bus stop somewhat nervously, but she need not have worried. The half-a-
dozen teenagers had ignored her, although she had found them fascinating.
When the bus arrived, she mimicked their actions, flashing her bus pass and
trailing after them, up the stairs, down the rows as if she had done this
before. She wasn’t confident enough to sit beside one of them, so she
continued her surveillance surreptitiously using the curved mirror which
allowed the bus driver to watch for any shenanigans on the top deck. There
were four girls, who sat together, two rows, one in front of the other and
two boys, who sat apart, each sprawling over an entire row.
A playful shout was an excuse to look over her shoulder. And that
was the first time she saw Petey, the first time she fell in love. Courtesy of
her single-sex education, Jasmine had little experience of interactions with a
different sex. Boys were a mystery to her and their rumbustiousness was
both mesmerising and intimidating. Tall and good-looking, with mind-
blowing grey eyes and a grin that could make the sun shine, Petey was
oblivious of Jasmine’s fast-forming infatuation. He was busy, good-
naturedly teasing one of the girls about whom she had been kissing, all
while playing catch with his mate using a pair of balled-up sport socks.
Every Monday morning, he was there but she never saw him at any
other time until one night, having stayed late for a debate club meeting, she
saw him waiting at the college bus bay. Her heart gave a little leap when his
head dipped in a slight nod, a gesture of recognition and acknowledgement.
When the bus arrived, Jasmine followed him upstairs and bravely sat down
in the row in front of him. Although there were a couple of pensioners
downstairs, the top deck was empty.
Petey looked down at his phone in disgust and put it away. Then he
said his first ever words to her. “I’ve seen you at the bus stop in the
mornings. D’you live in Larkford?”
Jasmine did not trust herself to speak. Her voice might quaver. So
she nodded.
“What’s your name?”
There was no choice but to answer. She put all her effort into
keeping her tone level. As a result, the word came out flat, almost bored-
sounding: “Jasmine.” She wisely left off her surname.
“Hey, Jasmine. I’m Petey.” His fingers tapped on the back of her
seat.
“Hello.”
Jasmine wished she could think of something witty and profound to
say. Something that would make his eyes light up in delight – something,
anything that would prolong this conversation. But she was not like her
sisters and quick repartee did not fall from her lips. Nor could she snare a
boy with one lingering look as she had seen her elder sister, Anna, do. Of
course, Anna was beautiful and slender and graceful, and Jasmine wasn’t
any of those.
“What you studying?”
“Maths, Politics, Economics, and Law.”
“Wow!”
Finally, Jasmine thought of something she could say. “And you?”
she asked.
“I’m not a brainbox like you,” he said, pleasantly. “I’m on day
release. Apprentice electrician.”
And so it began. The next Monday morning, she almost missed the
bus, but when she clattered up the stairs and swung down the aisle as the
bus driver pulled out onto the road, Petey looked up and said, “Hey,
Jasmine.”
And Jasmine gave a shy smile and said, “Hey, Petey.” And it didn’t
matter that he said nothing more to her the entire journey; her heart was
singing. Debate club was cancelled the following Monday, but Jasmine
stayed in the library until the late bus. Like the previous week, she and
Petey had the top floor to themselves.
“So, how was your weekend?” Petey asked, turning his stunning
grey eyes on her.
Jasmine made a face. She was getting better at talking to boys. “Two
essays,” she said. “How was yours?”
“Two parties,” he replied, adding his jaw-dropping grin. “You
should’ve come. All work and no play makes Jasmine a very dull girl.”
A few weeks ago and Jasmine would have died at this comment, but
she had watched Petey closely and realised he only ribbed the girls he liked.
“Maybe next time,” she said, smiling at the thought of a next time.
Three days later, Jasmine was queuing for lunch in the canteen when
the girl behind her nudged her arm.
“Jasmine, isn’t it? Petey’s friend?”
Jasmine recognised the girl from the morning bus, a pretty blonde
who always wore multi-coloured leggings. Jasmine nodded, brimming over
with pride to be labelled Petey’s friend.
“I’m Flora.” The girl hesitated. “I think we were at Infants together.
In Larkford?”
Jasmine froze. Did this girl know who she was? Would she
remember from all those years ago? How many five-year-olds took any
notice of the adult world?
“I remember you, too,” she answered, hoping the time lag would be
put down to searching her memory banks.
“I’m doing Child Development. I want to be a nanny. I’m going to
fall in love with one of those single dads whose wife died tragically early of
cancer and who’s struggling to raise his lovable brood unaided.” Jasmine
thought it far more likely Flora would work for a single mother struggling
to manage three unruly children and a full-time job, but she held her tongue.
Flora shuffled along behind her, then reached in front to grab a ready-
wrapped sandwich. “The last egg salad. I hope you don’t mind. I’m
vegetarian. It drives me nuts when all the meat-eaters eat our sandwiches.
It’s always the ham or chicken salad left over.”
Jasmine shook her head. “I’m vegan,” she replied, and then put in
her order for a bowl of French fries.
“Vegan! You’re brave. I tried being vegan but Mum said it was too
difficult. She said she was happy to do me an egg or a quiche or stuff like
that instead of chops or steaks, but she wasn’t making an entirely different
meal for me every night. Your mum must be a star! Doesn’t she mind?”
“She doesn’t do much cooking,” Jasmine said evasively, startled
Flora had just sat down at a table with her.
“Ready meals, huh?” Flora was sympathetic, and Jasmine did not
bother to correct her.
It was that simple. Jasmine had made another friend because Petey
had acknowledged her.
The next Monday evening, when they were alone on the top deck of
the bus – time Jasmine had begun to think of as her dates with Petey –
things took a step beyond her wildest dreams.
“You do maths, right?” he asked. “Could you help me? Only I’m not
very good. Shite teachers. I didn’t really make the grades to do the
apprenticeship, but my uncle works for the company and put in a good
word for me. But if I can’t pass the coursework, I’ll get kicked out.”
“No problem.” Jasmine managed to sound sensible but inside she
was exulting. Petey had asked her for help. “When do you want to do it?”
“Maybe come over one night after college?” He added hastily, “Not
Fridays, obviously. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of you going out.”
Jasmine would have let him have Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays if
he’d asked, but eventually, they resolved on Wednesdays. And that was the
first time she found herself walking the paths from her home to his.
Opening the little gate marking the edge of her family’s land on this
rainy day, she can still recall the hope mingled with nervousness. She had
not dared to believe he might reciprocate her feelings in the slightest, but it
sufficed to be included in the magical circle that surrounded him.
Thereafter, every Wednesday evening, Jasmine walked over to
Petey’s house, and the two of them sat together up in his room as Jasmine
ran through his assignments with him. Petey’s teachers must have been
shite indeed, because the maths wasn’t hard. Sometimes they talked about
other things: his dad, who no longer even sent a card for a birthday or
Christmas; his sister, Kate, who had joined the army; his uncle in
Bridgetown, who looked out for him despite having hordes of kids of his
own. He seemed to accept without question Jasmine’s vague, evasive
replies when it was her turn to reciprocate.
Every tutoring session, Petey’s mum, Gillian, would have baked
cake for them to share, usually vegan brownies after the first embarrassing
evening. As the nights drew in, it became increasingly difficult to evade
Petey’s offer to walk her home or his mother’s offer to drop her. And then
one of those evenings, Petey had kissed her, his mouth tasting of chocolate,
and she had kissed him back and that was the first time a boy had ever
kissed her and it was just as magical as all the books suggested. The next
Monday morning, when she turned up at the bus stop, Petey draped his arm
around her, claiming her for all to see, and her world was complete.
It was at the start of the Christmas holiday that Petey finally
mentioned going around to hers. Jasmine had realised she could not avoid it
any longer, but she managed to put him off for a few days. After all, she
still hadn’t told her family she had a boyfriend.
In the end, she bottled out of using the word boyfriend and merely
asked her parents if she could bring a friend along to lunch. Her mother,
who had never received such a request from Jasmine before, had barely
stuttered out her shocked agreement before Jasmine had disappeared. She
had arranged to meet Petey at the grand entrance to the drive, and when
they turned in together, his hand in hers, he remarked, “I never knew you
lived in the Park.”
 Jasmine didn’t have the courage to take Petey in through the great
porticoed front door of Larkford Hall, so they slipped in one of the side
entrances, Petey appearing increasingly agitated they would be caught. She
led him along stone-paved corridors, past heavy oak doors. When she
opened the door to the dining room, she saw her entire family gathered.
Even Anna, who just that term had started medical school in London,
seemed to have made it back in time.
Petey’s eyes were wide in alarm. Jasmine made sure to tighten her
grip on his hand as she made the introductions. “My mother, Lady
Larkford. My father, Lord Larkford. My sisters, Eleanor, Anna, Lily, and
Phoebe.” Then, with a streak of cruelty she hadn’t known she possessed,
she pulled Petey forward into the spotlight of their intense curiosity. “This
is my friend, Petey.”
It was a dreadful lunch. Her father had politely asked Petey what he
did.
“I’m an apprentice electrician with Baker and Soames,” he had
replied, and Jasmine heard the sniggers from her twin sisters, Lily and
Phoebe.
“They’re a good company,” Lord Larkford commented. “With a
solid reputation. You’re very lucky to have a place with them.”
“My uncle works for them,” said Petey modestly. “He put in a good
word for me.”
“Don’t let Jasmine hear that,” exclaimed Anna. “She hates
nepotism.”
Jasmine squirmed because she did hate it. Nepotism blocked social
mobility, and because it tended to be a patriarchal issue, it hindered the
advancement of women, a cause dear to her heart. From then on, her family
took turns in inspecting Petey, prying into his life, his aspirations, even his
politics. It was awful. She feared she had lost her boyfriend, but she
underestimated Petey. But he was, quite justifiably, angry with her.
“You could have warned me!” he accused. “Why wouldn’t you tell
me?”
“I didn’t know how you would react.”
“Well, you do now!” His words were grim. “You sent me in there
blind. Not funny, Jasmine!”
Jasmine, who had never made a joke in her life, wondered why he
might think it one. Desperate to explain, she said, “You don’t understand.
All this means nothing.” She waved her arms around the trappings of the
Grand Hall of the stately home.
“You live in a frigging mansion. Your father’s a Lord, for God’s
sake. And you didn’t think to mention it? That’s not nothing!”
“But none of it is mine or ever will be mine. I’m just a lodger. I’m
nothing.”
Petey had stopped, noticing her distress. He folded his arms around
her. “You’re not nothing, Jasmine. You are the best in the world. Don’t let
anybody ever tell you that you aren’t.”
Though Petey was sufficiently traumatised to want to avoid
socialising with her kin again, he did not shy away from her. From that
point on, with quiet unspoken agreement, they always met at his house,
usually together in his room. It was in his room, in his double bed, lying on
his towel, that Jasmine gave him her virginity, although his had gone
missing a couple of years before.
Through all their years together, Petey was the perfect boyfriend. At
the end of sixth form, they had made the transition, him to full-time work
and her to university. She had watched as others ditched their homegrown
boyfriends in the frenzy of making new lifelong acquaintances, but she was
never tempted. Petey made the trips to see her uncomplaining. He
understood if she had to work and abandoned him. He made friends easily
and was seldom alone. Kind and thoughtful, generous with his cash, he was
never too demanding or controlling.
Unlike others, she did not have a myriad of slights accumulated over
the years she could lay at his door. She did not lust after another. She loved
Petey.
Now, as she stands on the doorstep to his home and raises her hand
to the doorbell, she is convinced he will make a brilliant father someday,
despite never having had such an example himself. And he will be a
marvellous husband. Just not hers.
 Another Country

A couple of days after her breakup with Petey, Jasmine regrets being so
hasty, for there are yet two weeks of the summer holidays to survive. Had
she been more mercenary in nature, she might have postponed their split
because she no longer had a sanctuary at his house and no way of avoiding
her own family. But the long, idle days had allowed her to consider her
future, particularly as she was about to enter her final year at university.
She’d realised that when she graduated she would not be coming back to
live at Larkford but Petey had never considered leaving. Once she had
recognised she and Petey were on two irreconcilable trajectories, she felt
she had to act.
Unfortunately, since the success of the scrambled egg incident, a
bored Phoebe aided by her sidekick twin, Lily, has launched an all-out
guerrilla war on Jasmine. Eleanor, the eldest sister, who has always acted to
restrain the twins, has graduated from Oxford and dutifully joined the
management team for the Larkford Estate. She’s gone for the working day.
Anna, whose cutting remarks have always been equally distributed between
her younger sisters, now seldom leaves the hospital in London where she is
training. Her mother, to whom Jasmine reports each prank, merely tells her
not to be so sensitive.
 The two-hundred-year-old door to Jasmine’s room has a lock, but
the key has long gone missing. It leaves her easy prey. Jasmine wishes to
move through her life doing no harm and, indeed, intends to do good, but
Phoebe can provoke a fury which leaves Jasmine trembling with the need to
throttle her youngest sister. She has been vegan for years without it
attracting any attention from her family beyond mild bemusement. Now she
finds it weaponised against her. She would return to her room to find her
glasses coated in a substance smelling suspiciously like goose grease, her
cruelty-free, vegetable-oil soap swapped for a brand made with sheep-fat
and tested on animals, and the most subtle attack of all, a host of beeswax
candles burning, filling the air with a hint of honey.
It isn’t the vindictiveness of the pranks that breaks her; it is having
no safe space. She cannot get out of the shower without checking the label
on her towel in case it has been swapped for one with silk. While she sniffs
her oat milk every morning, she has no way to check whether her fair-trade
coffee has been replaced by one of the more rapacious coffee-growers. The
uncertainty is more than she can bear. She knows Flora would offer her
sanctuary, but Flora’s mum works for the Estate and Jasmine’s presence
always makes her nervous. With one week to go, she decides on a tactical
retreat and rings Sean.
From the first lecture of the first term in the first year of university,
Sean had been her friend. Jasmine had arrived early and taken a seat in the
middle row of the lecture theatre, carefully placed. Away from the
disruptive slackers at the back, less under the lecturer’s eye than the front.
She had watched in dismay as others arrived and sat either one seat
removed, or one row removed, from her. A group of four girls entered, but
they sat together and it was clear that their newly formed clique would be
unbreachable. Still occupied in watching them, Jasmine had been startled
by the heat of a male body dropping beside her.
“You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?” the lad said, pulling his
backpack off his shoulder.
She turned, a little amazed someone had chosen to sit right beside
her, but two years of watching Petey had given her some social skills.
A nonchalant shake of her head.
“I’m Sean,” he said as he pushed his glasses up his nose.
“Jasmine.” And then because she was not good at regional accents
and truly was curious, she asked, “Where are you from?”
He smiled. “Hayburn.”
“Where’s that?”
He thickened his accent. “Up north.”
“That explains it. I’m not familiar with anything past Birmingham.
Except the Lake District. I went there once with the school.”
Sean had laughed. “Oh, Hayburn’s nothing like the Lake District,
believe me!”
“How come?”
“I don’t think anyone has ever booked a holiday in Hayburn. It used
to be a mining heartland, but mining came and went. Now over a third of
the kids in my home town live below the poverty line, unemployment is
twice the national average and life expectancy is years less than for
Londoners.”
“But that’s appalling! Why isn’t anyone doing anything about it?”
“No money.” Sean shrugged. “We’re trying, but the council can’t
raise money from the locals because they’ve got none themselves. It has to
come from central government and they’re a bunch of self-serving Tory
wankers who don’t care about places like Hayburn.”
 In that moment, Jasmine had pledged in her heart, if ever she had
the power, that she would change things for places like Hayburn, but the
arrival of the lecturer had ended the conversation. Still, it had been enough
to start an enduring friendship.
Two years later, and Jasmine is about to take a step which is to
change her life forever. As soon as Sean answers her call, she says, “I need
help.” And her friend, the epitome of kindness, helps. She asks for a place
to stay until term starts, and he offers her refuge.
That day, Jasmine packs two enormous canvas suitcases and leaves
Larkford Hall, her home since birth, for good. As they stand in the late
summer sunshine, neither she nor her parents understand the finality of the
moment. Jasmine thinks only of escape, and they, confident of her return at
Christmas, are impatient to get back to the business of the day. A quick
peck on each cheek and Jasmine climbs into an ancient Land Rover driven
by an Estate worker tasked with dropping her at the train station.
The journey to Hayburn is uneventful, but as the train approaches
the outskirts of the town, the reality of Sean’s introductory words is laid out
before her. Houses are cramped and poorly maintained. Empty shops are
boarded up and occupied ones have grilles in the windows. As the train
trundles over a bridge, slowing on the approach to the station, she sees an
overturned shopping trolley marooned in the waters below. Here, the
weather is harsh and it lends an added grimness to the surroundings.
Few stations are in a salubrious part of town, and Hayburn is no
different. Jasmine, used to either the rural languor of her hometown, or the
bustle of her university town, is shocked as she gathers up her laptop and
slides it into its bag. She pulls her two suitcases from overhead storage,
nearly decapitating a little old woman with the last, heaviest one, and
worries whether she has made a mistake coming here. It is one thing to
know about poverty, another entirely to be confronted with the reality of life
in a town which ranks in the lowest quartile for deprivation.
Weeds grow through roads and pavements, graffiti remains to
weather on walls, and litter lies unheeded. She is wary about being a lone
woman traveller in surroundings such as these and she searches the car park
for Sean’s familiar frame. Though it is the tail end of summer, light is
beginning to fade. There is a pub on the corner of the car park,
uninspiringly labelled the Railway Arms. But she discounts any thought of
waiting there when she sees the ragbag of smokers gathered outside – all
men, loud and menacing. Not normally one to be intimidated, today her
spirit fails. She is immensely relieved to spot Sean striding towards her. He
stoops and takes the handle of one of her cases, leaving her with the other.
Enough to help, not enough to patronise.
They cross the car park to the car, a sedate, family-sized Ford.
Sean’s father is the local Member of Parliament and probably earns a decent
wage, but a man who represents a constituency as poor as Hayburn does
well not to flaunt his own affluence. Jasmine appreciates the man’s tact
before she has even met him, although she feels guilty at the thought; she
knows her friend’s relationship with his father is prickly.
Quiet and shy, the bravest thing Sean has ever done was ask to sit
beside Jasmine and even that had been finely calculated. Experience had
taught him to be wary of other boys, and girls in packs were yet more
dangerous. A girl sitting alone in a middle row was perfect, especially one
who wasn’t dressed top to toe in designer wear, who appeared to be
ordinary in all aspects. If he had heard her plummy accent before he had
dropped into the seat, he would have looked elsewhere, but it had been too
late. The amount of rudeness required to stand up again, muttering “My
bad” was beyond him.
 They had gone for coffee after the lecture and Jasmine’s early
insertion of Petey’s name had put to rest any anxiety she might be flirting
with him. Truthfully, he had never flirted nor been flirted with, so had no
standard to judge a friendly invitation for a hot beverage. Sean had spent
most of his sixth form hiding from the boys who had made his time at
secondary school a misery. As an awkward thirteen-year-old, he had made
one mistake: he had blushed when one of the rowdier delinquents, who
roamed his school with seeming impunity, had offhandedly insulted him,
calling him gay. It was enough.
From then on, the days Sean made it home intact were a rarity. His
harassers had trodden a fine line – it was never enough to warrant
intervention from anyone in authority, but every night he came home with
an item of clothing missing (which would later turn up in Lost Property) or
his glasses bent or his books defaced. He had asked once if he might move
to the small private school on the outskirts of town. His mother had been
supportive, but his father had exploded. He would not be one of those
hypocritical MPs who told their constituents state education was good
enough for their children while sending his children to a private institution.
So Sean stayed at the local school and his suffering continued, but now he
had to hide it all. His father never asked about his school again. His mother
asked every day, but she was only interested in gossip about the girls in his
class.
From the moment Sean met Jasmine at university, he had benefitted
greatly from her friendship. She seemed to be one of those women who was
not afraid of anything. Sean had pondered it. He concluded she was
unafraid because no one had ever harmed her. Jasmine was protected – by
money, by position. And because she could not imagine harm, she was
confident. In a spiral of self-reinforcing positivity, because she was
confident, no one did harm her. Bit by bit, her robustness had rubbed off on
him. She held his hand as he took his first tentative steps into the gay scene;
she vetted his early boyfriends, weeding out those she viewed as abusive.
She helped him find a skin in which he was comfortable. And she gave him
the strength to finally tell his parents about his homosexuality. Two years
after befriending Jasmine, Sean is still quiet, but his shyness has
diminished, replaced with an inner confidence which comes from
overcoming challenges, mostly the conviction of his own inadequacy.

***

Every poor town has a few streets of prosperity, even as every

affluent town has its bad areas. Hayburn is no different. The endless streets
of back-to-back Victorian terraces fronting directly onto the pavements, red
bricks tarred to a brindle by years of soot and grime from a decades-dead
mining industry, give way to broad, tree-lined avenues. Sean turns off one
of these into an estate built this century, uninspired houses of buff stone. As
he pulls the car to a stop on a weed-free, paved drive, Jasmine has a chance
to look around. The house is detached, carbon copies lining a cul-de-sac,
homes to mid-level executives everywhere. The front garden is laid to lawn,
no straggly shrubs or showy annuals allowed to blight its sharp-edged,
pristine neatness. A single ornamental tree grows in a circle of pebbles and
two box plants, contorted into spirals, stand guard on either side of the
white front door.
While Sean unloads her cases, his mother already waiting on the
doorstep, Jasmine fusses about collecting her belongings from the car. She
feels awkward, aware she has imposed her company on these strangers. She
should just have gone back to their rented student flat and waited for term
to start. But Sean was here, and she very much does not want to be on her
own. Breaking up with Petey might have been necessary, but she is not
unaffected by the end of their relationship. Being with Petey had been like
nestling into a warm, comfy coat in midwinter. He was a constant
reassurance someone, somewhere, wanted her. But when she had thought
about her own future, hopefully striding down the corridors of power in
Westminster, she’d realised her happiness could only come at the cost of
his. Petey is a homeboy – lacking a father seems to have strengthened his
ties to the family he does have. Jasmine, who has an abundance of relatives,
most of whom she tries to avoid, understands how home and family define
him, even if she feels otherwise.
If she were to ask him, Petey would describe his dream as a good
job (great mates, decent wage, established company), nice home (three-
bedroomed semi-detached in the village he knows and loves), and his own
family (picture of Jasmine, with a baby in her arms and a toddler at her
feet). And there is nothing wrong with Petey’s dream – plenty of people
would agree with it. The problem is, she doesn’t. She could ask him to
follow her to London and she has no doubt he would come, but she knows
he would never be truly happy in the noisy, traffic-clogged streets of the
city, far from his family and friends.
Moreover, Jasmine has no idea if she wants children. She cannot
conceive of them at the moment. That might change one day, but if it ever
does, it is so far in her future there is not even one tiny trace of baby
broodiness in her psyche. What if loving her ends up costing him his chance
of being a father?
Is she so unfeeling she would build her own happiness on the
bonfire of his? But the thought of staying in Larkford, maybe working for
the Estate like her sister Eleanor, reading about the changes being wrought
in the world in a newspaper every morning like her father and not being out
there making them happen, feels like suffocation. A future in grey.
For each of them to be happy, they have to part. And if that is true,
is it fair on Petey to keep him around just because he holds the loneliness of
the world at bay? Using him as a comfort blanket is the ultimate in
selfishness. He may miss out on meeting his perfect woman because she
wants to keep him dangling at her tail. Much as the thought hurt, the right
thing was to end their relationship. To let him move on with his life. She
knew she would break both their hearts – and she did – but she also knew it
would be temporary. They will both recover, find new people to love, build
new lives.
Still, she misses his easy company. She misses him. There is an ache
in her heart whenever she thinks of him. But, she is in Hayburn now. With
one last, deep breath, she ruthlessly suppresses all thoughts of Petey and
opens the car door.
Sean’s mother is practically bouncing on her toes. “You must be
Jasmine!” she exclaims, a wealth of warmth in her words.
“Thank you so much for having me to stay, Mrs Exmore.” Jasmine
holds out her hand, uncertain what the correct etiquette may be but falling
back on tradition. She had certainly never required any formality with
Petey’s mum or even Flora’s.
“Emily, please!” Ignoring Jasmine’s outstretched hand, Sean’s
mother pulls the younger woman in for a hug. “Sean talks about you all the
time. I feel like I already know you. Come through. I’ve got sandwiches
and cake. Richard, my husband, is always hungry when he gets off the train.
I thought you would be too.”
Jasmine finds herself towed into a gleaming kitchen. Every surface
shines or sparkles. The white gloss surface of the table holds a crystal vase
bulging with cream-coloured dahlias, a china plate of sandwiches cut into
fingers and a raised cake platter with a Victoria sponge oozing buttercream
under a glass dome. Her heart sinks.
“Tea?” Emily says, already spooning leaves into a teapot. “I’ve got
this lovely Ceylon Orange Pekoe.”
Closing her eyes, Jasmine fortifies herself. She absolutely has to
stop this on-rushing train now. “I’m sorry, Mrs Exmore—”
“Emily!” Sean’s mother interrupts.
“Emily. I’m sorry, Emily. But I’m vegan.”
“Oh, I know. Sean told me. He made me buy this dreadful stuff,
margarine, I tell you. I haven’t eaten margarine since my school days. The
sandwiches are cucumber. And we’ve got oat milk. I never knew there was
such a thing. Tea?” Emily indicates her beautiful Royal Albert fine bone
china teapot and Jasmine blanches.
“Just a glass of water, please.” She has fled from her sisters’
deliberate attempts to sabotage her vegan principles to someone who
inadvertently does exactly the same. At least, she notes with some relief, the
food has been placed on paper doilies. She sits at the table, spreading a
napkin to catch crumbs, and waits for Sean to arrive and dig her out of
trouble. Emily is still at the island unit, laying a tray with milk and sugar
and cups with saucers.
“Sean’s never brought a friend home before.” Emily brings the tray
to the table, pulls out a chair to sit beside her, and smiles. “I think you are
very special to him.”
Subtlety is not Jasmine’s strong suit but this is a hope she has to end
without giving offence. She chooses her words carefully. “He’s a lovely guy
and a good friend.” She carefully stresses the word. Sean’s parents know he
is gay, but his mother at least seems to be hoping it may be an aberration.
Sean obviously does not share details of his love life, something that has
Jasmine’s full sympathy, otherwise his mother would be in no doubt. “It
was hard being at home after my boyfriend and I split,” Jasmine continues.
“We had been together for years. It was kind of Sean to invite me.”
Far from ending his mother’s misconceptions, her words only seem
to fuel them. Emily looks even more delighted as she pats Jasmine’s hand.
“We’re very happy to have you. What it is to be young, free, and single.”
The alarm her words spark is broken by the arrival of her son. Sean
takes in the scene and swings open one of the cupboards. “Jasmine’s happy
with our normal stoneware, Mum. She doesn’t need your fine bone china.”
He plonks a plate in front of her, mercifully thick, white and solid.
“Nonsense!” declares Emily. “She’s the daughter of a Baron.”
Jasmine could have done without Sean sharing that little snippet.
She clings to the plate Sean has given her. “Oh, we use this at the Hall all
the time,” she says, neglecting to add only when she is at home.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely!” She makes her response as emphatic as she can. She
does not fancy starving for a week, unwilling to eat anything served on
plates made from the burned remains of dead animals. Sean takes a plate for
himself, cuts an enormous slice of cake, and artfully changes the subject.
For the next week until they depart for university, he runs interference with
his well-meaning mother, substituting stoneware for china, placing
margarine on the table beside the butter, forestalling milk being added to
tea. Jasmine, for her part, finds Sean’s mother a grown woman unable to see
much beyond her own preconceptions.
Sean’s father, on the other hand, is a surprise. It is not until a couple
of days after her arrival she meets the man himself, Parliament having
restarted after the summer recess and his presence being required in
London. From Sean’s depiction of his father during their early years at
university, she expected him to be somewhat overbearing, probably tall and
stern of countenance. Certainly, she had formed the general impression of
an unsympathetic character and although Emily had spent a fair amount of
time singing her husband’s praises, Jasmine was not inclined to trust the
older woman’s judgement. She could have looked the man up if her interest
had been sufficient, but alas, the parents of friends rarely excite that kind of
attention unless there is prurient scandal attached.
When Mr Exmore walks into the kitchen on the third day of
Jasmine’s stay, she is mostly impressed by his great ordinariness. He is
distinctly average in all ways: middle-aged, middlebrow, and distinctly
middle-class. The most remarkable thing about him is that he is a Labour
MP, not a Tory. He greets her sensibly, with none of his wife’s fluttering at
hosting the daughter of a Lord, and chats quite amiably about his journey,
his work, and their plans for the weekend. Weirdly, although Sean would
shrivel in disgust if she said it, Jasmine finds much of what she enjoys of
Sean’s company is a reflection of his father.
At the end of a pleasant week, Sean’s father loads both Sean and
Jasmine into his mid-range, mid-priced car to drive them to university, and
Jasmine concludes her introduction to the dingy town of Hayburn, little
guessing how much the place is to feature in her future.
 A Love So Bold

Despite having very different political interests, both Sean and Jasmine,
along with most of their fellow final-year students, filter into the largest
lecture theatre in the department for one of the most popular third-year
options, Globalisation vs Democracy. Globalisation is the latest episode in
the unending battle between money and people. Whilst extremely
rewarding for businesses and economies, it can also damage local job
markets and the environment. Democratic government is caught in a
conundrum: it exists to serve the people locally but can do little without
money.
Jasmine and Sean sit in their usual seats, halfway down, halfway
across, and watch the hall fill up, back to front. Jasmine always finds this
counter-intuitive, as surely the keenest arrive early and sit at the front?
“Term has only just started and already I’m tired,” she groans and
puts her head down on the fold-out desk.
Sean nudges her. “Do I need to remind you how much you are
paying for this?” he says. “If you aren’t going to pay attention, you might as
well take a fistful of tenners and rip them into tiny, little pieces.”
“Okay, okay.” She raises her head and nods to the lad just about to
sit in the row in front. Now in her final year, she is familiar with most of her
course mates. With few choices in the first year, they have all sat through
hours of lectures together but there are only a handful whose names and
natures she has garnered from smaller seminars, tutorial groups, and Labour
Party meetings. The four pretty girls who had ignored her at the start still do
so, and the group of jokey blokes who seem obsessed with sport continue to
be an amorphous mass in which no single character emerges as notable.
While Jasmine dated Petey, she never really looked at other boys,
never actually considered them with a predatory eye. So it comes as a
surprise to her when her eyes snag on a tall figure moving slowly down the
steps, looking, it seems, for a particular seat. He is unfamiliar, not known
despite her hours spent surveying her compatriots during the most tedious
lectures. He halts by a lad whose hair is tightly braided in cornrows, and
they exchange a greeting, one of those hand-slaps, fingertips to fingertips,
knuckles to knuckles, fist to fist – far cooler than usually seen in her politics
classroom. A group of students stand like a chorus line, shuffle down one
seat, and drop. The tall man sits.
She nudges Sean.
“Who’s that?” she asks. Sean seems to have a phenomenal ability to
garner gossip and could probably put a name to everyone in the large
lecture hall.
“Who?”
“Five rows from the front, at the end, next to the cornrows.”
Sean lifts out of his seat to see better. “They’re all the year above,
back from studying abroad. Huh! Guess it must be hard starting again. Most
of their cohort have graduated and gone.”
“Do you know the guy at the end?”
“Don’t you?”
Jasmine shrugs.
 “Ben Khan!” Sean mocks her with his shocked-look face. “He’s
Labour royalty. His mother is a frontbencher and his grandfather stood on
the pickets with the striking miners in the ’80s. Round our way, his gramps
is a saint. The grapevine says he spent last year in Washington and worked
for the Democrats over the summer.” Sean heaves out a dramatic sigh.
“He’s just my type, but alas, he’s straight.”
She looks again. He is tall, lean, dark. Like Sean said, just his type.
She has never considered it before, but maybe it is her type, too. She had
never been one to admire men built like bodybuilders, muscular but stiff as
a board, usually in both mind and body. She studies him. His thick, black
hair flops forward. Although she gets the impression he is good-looking
with his bronzed skin and aquiline nose, she can only see his face in profile.
Then a strident voice from the front interrupts her perusal. “Good
morning and welcome to Globalisation vs Democracy.”
She pulls her attention from the handsome stranger and focuses on
the middle-aged academic at the front. If she is paying a substantial sum to
hear what this guy says, then she had best listen, even if by the end she
profoundly disagrees with some of his conclusions. She concentrates on
taking notes when the lecturer veers off-script with his explanations, and
tries to follow his occasionally convoluted arguments. Every once in a
while, though, the monotony of the delivery finds her eyes sliding to Ben.
She doesn’t want to be the girl making calf-eyes at the unattainable boy, but
she cannot seem to stop herself. Jasmine is unaware, but it is similar to the
way she first watched Petey all those years ago, picking up his habits and
mannerisms, formulating his character from what she observes.
As they are all filing out, while she and Sean wait patiently to slip
out of their row, she hears him speak. Ben has reversed his position and is
sitting on the back of the chair in front, facing his friend with the cornrows,
when one of the pretty quartet catches him with the corner of her bag.
“Oh! So sorry,” she purrs.
He barely glances her way. “No worries.”
She puts out her hand and rubs his upper arm. “No, I mean it. Let
me get you a coffee to make it up to you?”
Jasmine watches as Ben’s eyes flick from his arm, to her face, to her
designer clothes and back to his arm. “I’m not hurt,” he says with the
lightest tinge of a northern accent, his voice deep and inviting even as his
words are not, “and I’ve got things to do after this.” He shows not the
slightest hint of urgency as he turns back to talk to his friends.
“Rain check?” the girl suggests, as if trying to salvage some
credibility.
“Okay.”
Jasmine slides into the flow of students, trying to subdue the bubble
of schadenfreude brightening her morning. “Did you hear that?” she
whispers in Sean’s ear.
“He blew her off. Bet little blondie’s not used to being turned down.
Might be hope for me yet.”
“Forget it. Didn’t you see the way his eyes flicked over her? If he
were gay, he would have stopped at her face.”
“Whatever. He wasn’t taking what she was giving. Who knows,
maybe he has someone.”
“Maybe.” But Jasmine has her own opinion. He had looked – not
the act of a man faithful to another; he’d looked and not liked what he had
seen. Yet the girl conforms to the contemporary ideals of pretty: blonde,
blue-eyed, symmetrical face, slender but with enough up top to satisfy the
current obsession with boobs. He wasn’t put off by her voice either, posh
but slightly high-pitched and nasal. It must have been what she was
wearing, but what is off-putting about designer jeans and a tight black top?
Jasmine gives herself a mental shake. She is spending too much time
thinking about this, giving Ben Khan too much head space. She needs to get
a move on if she is going to grab some lunch before her tutorial.
Ben Khan doesn’t appear in her other lectures, but Wednesday
evening is the first Labour Society meeting of the new academic year. In
sixth form, Jasmine would have described herself as a Green Party
supporter, but the more she studies, the more she realises the whole system
is interlinked and that you need policies which address the breadth of
society. You cannot remove sewage from rivers and beaches unless you
tackle companies being incentivised to give bonuses and dividends instead
of re-investing profits in improving the infrastructure. Jasmine has
countless other examples of where her concern for the environment
intersects with her increasing sense of social responsibility. Growing up,
many of her acquaintances would have regarded the word “socialist” as an
insult, but, Jasmine now wonders, is it wrong to want the social, political,
and economic systems everyone lives under to benefit the majority of the
community? She finds it dovetails neatly with her vegan convictions. In her
second year, she joined the Labour Party and started to attend student
activist meetings regularly. The meetings invariably take place in a pub,
which is happy to lend them a side room in return for steady takings at the
bar on an otherwise slow Wednesday night. And her fellow party members
often seem more interested in getting pissed than solving the world’s ills.
As usual, Jasmine tries to persuade Sean to go with her, but her
attempt meets stiff resistance.
“Why on earth would I want to spend an entire evening with people
who are just going to argue all night?” Sean says with his head in their
empty fridge.
“What’s wrong with a bit of political debate?”
“What’s great about it?”
“Sean, I can’t believe you sometimes. Your father’s an MP!” she
protests, watching her friend as he turns his attention to their equally empty
cupboards.
“And yours is a Lord! Do you like sitting around discussing the
shenanigans of aristocrats?”
“That’s different. You chose to study politics.”
“Only because I’m good at essays and didn’t know what else to do. I
thought it would be easy.” Sean closes the cupboard door and faces
Jasmine. “But like all sane humans, give me a choice between streaming the
latest boxset and listening to a load of whingers getting slowly pissed for
three hours, then the TV has it. And before you say it, there isn’t enough
alcohol in the Dog and Duck to make it even moderately bearable.”
“I’ll cook dinner for you before we go,” she offers.
“You mean you’ll microwave a ready meal? No thanks. I can do that
myself.” Sean is well-aware of Jasmine’s inability to cook. Having grown
up with home-made shepherd’s pies topped with melted grated cheese,
mouth-watering lamb hotpot with crispy slivers of potato, and golden toad-
in-the-holes swimming in luscious gravy, he was shocked to realise few
others had his good fortune. So Sean learnt to cook. He tried to instil this
passion in Jasmine, but she’s always made excuses – too busy or too tired.
But the reality is, she just isn’t interested, even when he has adapted his
beloved recipes to veganism.
“Now you see,” he continues, “if you’d actually make me a proper
meal, then I might come with you.”
 “Yeah, yeah,” replies Jasmine, not convinced in the least by this
blatant but insincere attempt at manipulation.
“Of course, then you would come across the little problem that there
is no food in the house,” Sean sighs. “How can you be so organised in
everything but housework? Seeing as our cupboards are bare, I’ll make you
a new deal. You go to your Labour Society meeting without me and I’ll go
to the supermarket.”
When Jasmine walks into the pub for the student Labour Society
meeting, she is alone and the first person she sees is Ben Khan, long legs
crossed, leaning back in his chair, seeming to dominate the others in the
room.
Jasmine is ambivalent about her fellow activists. For the most part,
they are a drab contingent, and she prefers to spend her time with Sean and
his LGBTQ+ friends. But Ben seems to bring an energy with him that
transfers to those around him and animates them. It is amazing to watch.
She sets her ginger ale on the table at the far end and pulls out a chair. Ben
looks up and nods a greeting, as if he is personally welcoming her, although
there is no sign of recognition in his eyes.
She pulls out her phone and takes a picture of the group, making
sure Ben is at the centre. If people are shallow enough to join them because
of one handsome man, she is happy to exploit it. Jonah, the current chair,
leans over to Ben. “Jasmine does our social media,” he explains.
“It’s good,” Ben says. “I liked your recent posts, The Ills of our
Days.” His eyes find her again, this time considering.
“Thank you,” she replies, trying hard not to blush. Strong,
independent women do not require praise from handsome men to
understand their worth. And she only interleaved pictures from her recent
stay in Hayburn with those from her past life. It was hardly cutting-edge.
 Jonah raises his voice to address the group. “Ben here is going to
talk about his recent experiences in America and the pros and cons of the
American political system.” Jonah places a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “He is
happy to take questions at the end.”
Jasmine sits back to listen. Ben speaks well, his mellow voice
lending gravitas, his observations perceptive and pertinent. At the end of his
talk, he handles the questions well, making eye contact with each
questioner, using names where he knows them. He connects with each
person, although admittedly none of those present are hostile. When it is
obvious interest is tailing off, Jasmine raises her hand. She picks something
more challenging. “Do you think the rise in populism spells the end of
democracy?”
His reply takes in social psychology, history, and hope. For
millennia, humans were governed by kings and emperors. Democracy is
relatively young and susceptible to the chimp-brain liking for strong leaders
and simple messages, such as blaming all the ills in a country on someone
else. Another country, a different race, the rich. Anyone other than the
majority. But the key to preventing chimp-brain rule is education. All in all,
Jasmine finds his performance impressive.
Jasmine rarely stays til the end of these meetings, but Ben’s talk has
delayed their normal business and with only a half hour to go, it seems rude
to leave before the landlord closes the bar. As the group files out of the pub
at the end of the night, Jasmine hears a soft voice in her ear. “Did I pass?”
As goosebumps pebble her skin, she looks up to find a smiling Ben
by her side. She tamps down the flutter in her stomach and ruthlessly
suppresses her elation at the thought he is smiling at her. She searches her
mind for some witty response, but as usual, she draws a blank. Fortunately,
it is not required.
 A throat clears and a dark-haired beauty touches Ben’s shoulder.
“Would you walk me home, please, Ben?”
He turns. “Actually, I think Jonah is going your way.” He calls to his
friend, “Jonah! Wait up for Lizzie.” He waves his hand vaguely at Jasmine.
“I’m walking Jasmine.”
Lizzie’s face falls, but she sets off with Jonah and Ben indicates the
street ahead. “Shall we?”
“Actually, I’m that way too.” Jasmine points at the fading
silhouettes of Lizzie and Jonah.
“Maybe we should give them a bit of a head start. Jonah’s been keen
on her for a while now. I keep telling him to ask her out. This may be the
opening he needs.”
Jasmine sincerely doubts it will work, judging by the reluctance on
Lizzie’s face. She guesses Lizzie is aware of Jonah’s interest and does not
return it. In Lizzie’s head, Ben Khan is more on her level and Jasmine is off
the map.
“Why do men do that?” she asks Ben, irritable at the thought she
may be regarded as lesser person just because she is a few pounds heavier
than average. “Think women can be traded between them? Like we don’t
have a say? Just because you’re not interested doesn’t mean she is going to
suddenly like Jonah.”
“Wow! Don’t pull any punches, there. Tell me outright I’m a
patronising, sexist pig.”
“Given who your mother is, I doubt you are either of those. But your
behaviour may occasionally fall short.”
“You’ve looked me up.” Ben’s voice is wry. Not an accusation, but
not a question either.
 “Hmph.” Jasmine gives a non-committal noise. She had looked him
up. After the lecture, she might have spent the tiniest amount of time
checking out his social media, although most of it was set to private. The
identity of his mother surprised her. Hannah Green is a vocal advocate for
women’s rights and tireless champion of the abused and has long been one
of Jasmine’s icons. “You don’t have to do this,” she says, changing the
subject. “I’ve been safely getting myself home from these meetings for a
year already.” She does not admit she would normally have left far earlier.
“Perhaps,” he shrugs. “But seeing as you know who I am, I would
like to find out more about you. And we may as well talk and walk at the
same time. Shall we?”
He walks beside her, matching his pace to her shorter steps, his
hands in the pockets of his waterproof jacket.
“So, you know all about my mother. What does yours do?”
“She’s a housewife.” Jasmine is not prepared to admit the whole
“Lady Larkford” thing, especially not to such a superficial acquaintance.
“My parents are quite traditional.”
“And are you traditional?”
“No!” Jasmine spits out the word, a little insulted he even asked.
“Okay. Not traditional. So, what three words describe you?”
“Strident, socialist, vegan,” she replies. She does not even have to
think about it.
“Are you a strident vegan or a strident socialist?”
“Both.” She turns her head to look at him. “Your turn.”
“Future Prime Minister.” He laughs, but Jasmine doesn’t think it
really is a joke. On the contrary, she thinks he may well succeed. It is
obviously an ambition, or he would not have mentioned it, and using
humour to lessen the impact of the naked truth demonstrates his people
skills. His attractiveness would help – the general public seeming to
conflate handsomeness with trustworthiness. It makes Jasmine want to
scream sometimes. In her experience, beautiful people are often less
competent because they’ve never had to work hard to get hired, get
promoted. She clicks her tongue. No wonder the world is a mess.
“You don’t approve?” Ben asks, turning to face her at the noise.
“I think you are the best candidate I’ve met yet.”
“I’m flattered.”
“No, you’re not. You’re thinking ‘Tick’, another person conquered
by my charm, another ally. But I will always judge you by your actions, not
just your words, and never by your pretty face.” Jasmine stops. Pretty face
just slipped out, even though she has no wish to be counted as one of his
simpering fan club. She looks down at the road, puddles of rain glinting in
the streetlights, and shrugs. It is too late, and she is merely telling it as it is.
It is unlikely to be news to him.
Ben is wise enough to let the words pass but Jasmine has no doubt
he logged them. He changes tack. “So, have you thought about jobs yet?”
“I’d love to be a SpAd but Labour would have to win the next
General Election.”
“A Special Advisor? Not tempted to stand as a Member of
Parliament?”
“I have the charisma of a jacket potato,” she says with a rueful
smile, “and I really don’t like people enough to press all the flesh required.
No, formulating policy and strategy is much more my thing.”
Ben laughs. “I’ve met a few MPs with less charisma than a jacket
potato but I take your point about people. My mum is always out talking to
constituents and local business owners. Some of them are downright
obnoxious, but she still has to listen and represent their concerns.”
 “That perceived duplicity is part of the reason people don’t trust
politicians, though, isn’t it? They have to get along with everyone, even
with people with radically opposing views to theirs, otherwise they can’t get
the day-to-day business of government done. But the reward is they seem
insincere at best, and self-serving or corrupt at worst.”
“It’s a problem. Trust in politicians is at its lowest level since the
war.”
“Precisely. Who would want to do that job? Vilified by everyone,
long hours, living away from family, and the risk of losing your job at each
election!”
“Me?” Ben grins at Jasmine and her core tightens in response. She
quickens her pace slightly. Until she learns to regulate her reaction to him,
the less time she spends in his company, the better. She is relieved when
they turn into her street and she stops outside a Victorian semi-detached
house, long since divided into flats. She and Sean share a two-bed
apartment which has been carved out of the second floor.
Although she is dying to get inside and put on her flannel pyjamas,
she makes the offer of coffee out of courtesy – Ben has just walked her
home after all – but is glad when he declines. She is tired and trying to be
the best version of herself around Ben tires her further. She dare not analyse
why she wishes to impress him, why she wants him to think her clever and
insightful. She thanks him for accompanying her – some part of her
mother’s insistence on manners sank in – and then the two of them part with
the briefest of nods. As she climbs the steps to her home, Jasmine can’t help
but feel a little flat, as if Ben took all the warmth with him when he left.
The next Monday, when she and Sean take their usual seats in
Globalisation vs Democracy, she happens to glance down to where Ben and
his friends are gathered, and Ben looks up and nods. Just a nod, but Jasmine
feels that glow in her belly and, with a smile threatening to break out over
her face, she quickly looks away. Then she thinks how it may be
interpreted, places her bag on the floor, and lifts her eyes to stare brazenly
at him, daring him to think her affected. But Ben is no longer watching her,
his attention now on the antics of one of his group.
Jasmine is conflicted. There is no doubting her attraction to him –
her body’s reaction each time she sees him proves that – but she had never
thought of herself as one of those who values looks over substance and she
knows very little of Ben beyond his ambition. Yet the response one glance
from him provokes is disturbing. There is obviously some part of her
psyche unaltered since the Ice Age that unfortunately has the upper hand
where Ben is concerned and all her attempts at reasoning fail. She needs to
ignore him, to stay as far away from him as possible before she becomes
some horny halfwit panting after an alpha male. Yet halfway through the
lecture, when her phone buzzes with an invitation to connect with Ben
Khan, she hastily accepts before he realises his error. When she looks
across at him, he appears to be concentrating on the lecture, oblivious of
her.
At Wednesday’s Labour Society meeting, she is careful to sit at the
end of the table, the furthest away from him and say very little throughout –
a novelty for her. Still, somehow, he ends up walking her home, and this
time they talk about political leaders and whether any of them can effect
real change. The following week it is Brexit and the divisions in the country
following the referendum. The week after it is the rise of populism and the
dangers to democracy. Bit by bit, they feel out each other’s characters and
values. Jasmine is surprised by how strongly they align. Until the week they
talk about Universal Basic Income.
 She has almost come to expect his agreement, to have him
contribute additional insights to her considered position. She is not
expecting or prepared for dissent. She is not afraid of argument and has
stood on many a doorstep trying to persuade a reluctant resident to her
cause. To her it is simple – everyone should support a measure which
reduces poverty and improves mental health, and to find Ben thinks it
expensive and therefore unpopular and, moreover, unimportant, takes her
breath away. It is as if he is disagreeing with her character, not just the
policy. She is trembling. If it weren’t for the torrential rain and the fact it is
Ben’s umbrella they are sharing, Jasmine would stride out into the night and
leave him in the lurch.
“Jasmine,” Ben begins, and Jasmine thinks if his next words are
clam down, she will dump the water from the umbrella down his neck. “I
get it,” he says, “but it is wet and cold and you look like you could do with
a hug. So may I hug you?”
She stops, floored by his request. She nods and Ben circles his arms
around her. She fits perfectly against him. All those feelings she has been
vainly trying to suppress flare to life at the contact. Overwhelmed by the
onslaught, she lies her head against his shoulder. Frustration of one type is
rapidly replaced by frustration of another. She can hear the strong, steady
beat of his heart but hopes he is deaf to hers, thudding wildly. She feels the
firmness in his body, his broad hands stroking over her back, and in that
moment, she knows she has fallen. She has not only joined the Ben Khan
Fan Club, she has become its chairperson and glorious leader.
When they resume walking, Ben keeps one arm around her. The
weight of his hand pressing on her shoulder is almost all she can think
about. When they stop in front of her entrance door and she proffers the
traditional invitation to coffee, she is desperately hopeful he will accept.
But he doesn’t. He shakes his head. He steps in front of her and for one tiny
moment, Jasmine thinks he may kiss her, but his arm drops. He steps back
and the cold world re-appears.
“May I call you?” he asks.
Please, she wants to plead but she doesn’t trust her voice, so once
again she nods.
He turns and walks away. She waits until he is lost in the rain and
darkness before she opens the door, marvelling at the turn her life has just
taken. The lack of a kiss is balanced by the implied promise to contact her
outside of their normal routine. The arm draped over her shoulder, an
unmistakable expression of affection.
An hour later, she gets the first message. Warmed up yet?
The exchange goes on half the night. Jasmine finds she can be
markedly wittier when she can take her time to craft a response. The
messaging would have gone on longer if Jasmine’s flesh had not been so
weak as to fall asleep while waiting for a long reply. It is on her phone in
the morning, proving the night before was real and not some lovelorn
dream. As she eats her toast and marmalade, she formulates her answer and
is gratified to get an instant response.
Morning, sleepyhead. Are you free tonight?
She almost chokes on her mouthful. A date. He must be asking her
for a date. And then reason returns. There could be a host of reasons – help
with an essay, delivering leaflets, an idea for a social media campaign. Even
so, as Jasmine gets ready for her non-date, she dresses in her newest jeans,
undoes an extra button on her shirt, and ties her unruly hair back with her
prettiest clip.
Two short buzzes from her phone herald the message: Downstairs.
She thunders down two flights with Sean’s hysterical laughter in her ears.
He has been no help whatsoever. Another bloke should know if Are you free
tonight? is an invitation to a date, surely. But Sean had merely taken the
opportunity to tease her as she got ready for her non-date (just in case it
isn’t). She opens the door, slightly overheating from the speed of her
descent while encased in a puffer jacket in anticipation of the cold. At least
that was Jasmine’s explanation for the warmth suffusing her face and her
elevated heart rate. She has hopes for a hug on greeting – Petey had been a
great hugger on dates – so is disappointed to receive nothing more than a
half-cocked grin and her name. They seem to have regressed from walking
with his arm around her, too. For all that Jasmine has guided Sean into the
world of dating, she is now reminded she really is no expert. One boyfriend
might trump none, but it doesn’t make her an expert on romance. She feels
awkward. For all her mother’s etiquette training, she does not know how to
behave in this situation. If there was a session on distinguishing a date from
a non-date, she missed it.
So Jasmine sticks her hands in her pockets and swings alongside
Ben. “Where are we going?” she asks, hoping for some hint that would
clarify the date status.
“Not far,” Ben says, then changes the subject to the essay they both
have to write.
A mile later, they turn into a building with all the aesthetics of a
church hall built for maximum space and minimum cost. Bright lights and
warm smiles greet them as they enter, and a couple of people welcome Ben
by name. There are crates and boxes and plastic bags everywhere, and
plastic trestle tables placed in some unknown pattern.
“Welcome to the Food Bank.” The words are about all Ben gets to
say before he is whisked away and Jasmine herself is allocated a table, a
list, and a set of bags to fill. Time slides by, and then Ben materialises at her
elbow.
“We’re done. Are you good to go?”
Jasmine places her bag in the crate labelled “CHILD” and follows
Ben as they leave the building, accompanied by as many smiles and nods as
when they entered. She moves to walk beside him as they make their way
towards the brighter, nosier streets of the city centre.
“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asks.
“Actually, I did.” Jasmine zips up her jacket against the cold.
“My mother says it’s always good for the soul to do something. She
says when you spend years fighting to make things better and there is still
so far to go, it is disheartening. Then you spend two hours doing something
that makes a small amount of difference and suddenly it feels like it is all
worthwhile.”
“Your mother is a very wise woman.”
“Yes. I won’t pretend it’s easy being her son, but she has her
moments.”
“Is she difficult, then?” Jasmine is genuinely curious. Ben’s mother
is a crusader. It does not take a genius to see it might cause issues for her
family, especially if the cause comes first.
“She’s got a quick tongue and she likes to have the last word.” Ben
pushes open the door to an Italian chain restaurant and they take their seats
at a table for two. “But she’s more pragmatic than people think. Labour
isn’t in power, so if she wants to get anything done, she has to work with
the other side.”
“The Dark Lords?”
“Exactly. What’s your mum like?” he asks.
 “A bit of a pushover for anyone in the family except me. She can’t
say no to any of my sisters, but she says it to me all the time.”
“How many sisters do you have?”
“Four.”
“Four? Are you Catholic?”
“Really?” she challenges the stereotyping, but Ben just shrugs.
“No,” she answers his question. “They just kept trying for a boy and kept
getting girls. Although, to give them their due, my younger sisters are
twins.”
“There is so much to unpack in that statement.” Ben leans back in
his chair. “First, why was it so important to have a boy? Second, does that
make you the difficult middle child?”
“I told you before, my parents are traditional. If they’d had a boy,
the focus would have been on him. He would have been sent to Eton.”
Jasmine bites her tongue. She is too relaxed with Ben. She needs to be more
guarded to stop words slipping out.
Ben laughs. “You needn’t look so worried. The moment you opened
your mouth, I knew you were posh.” Jasmine is silent, wondering if now is
the time to tell him quite how posh she is. Then he says, “So are you?”
“Am I what?”
“The difficult middle child?”
“I don’t think I am.” She looks down at her hands. “But I would
guess my parents would say I am.”
“Ouch. So, what does that make your home life?”
“Non-existent.” She shakes her head. “I’m not going home when I
finish.”
“Oh? Where will you go?”
“London, probably. Once I get a job, I’ll never go back.”
 “Wow! Are they really that bad?”
“They aren’t bad, precisely. It’s just, I feel like a changeling – like I
don’t belong in the family. Take hair, for example. They’ve all got silky,
straight hair and I’ve got these horrible wiry things.” Jasmine pulls at a
curly strand that has come loose and is bouncing around her chin.
“I like your curls,” Ben says. “I think they are cute.”
“Cute?” Jasmine frowns. “There you go with the patronising sexism
again.”
“I said your curls were cute. I didn’t say you were.” He laughs.
“You are formidable.” He gives the last word a French twist, sounding out
all four syllables distinctly.
Jasmine stills. She thinks it is the nicest compliment anyone has
ever given her. And suddenly, it is important to her to know. She lays her
hands on the table. “What are we doing here?” she asks.
Ben looks around the restaurant and raises an eyebrow. “Eating?” he
ventures.
“Cute.” She looks him directly in the eye. “No, I mean, what is this?
Us? Are we just friends, or is this a date?”
“We’re friends,” he replies, and Jasmine gulps. “But if you let me
kiss you at the end of the night, it might become a date.”
Jasmine smiles. For the first time, she feels in control. “Wait and
see.”
But when they are standing together at her door, Jasmine no longer
feels like playing games. She slides her arms around his neck and lifts her
face to meet his. He lowers his head so slowly, his breath whispering along
her lips, raising goosebumps over her body. When they touch, there is an
explosion inside, heat searing through every artery and vein, spreading
arousal in its wake. Jasmine lets out her breath. She has never had a kiss
like this before. Her hands move over shoulders wider than she is used to,
her fingers feeling muscles more powerful, and in that instant, she realises
Ben Khan is no boy to be dallied with, taken out when she has need of
amusement and put away when she is occupied with other matters. No, Ben
Khan is a full-grown man who could hi-jack her life.
When they pull apart, both of them appear a little stunned. This
time, when Jasmine stammers out an invitation to coffee, Ben accepts and
both of them realise no hot drinks will be involved.
 The Khan Clan

From that first time, the relationship develops. At the next lecture for
Globalisation vs Democracy, Jasmine takes her usual seat and is surprised
to find Ben comes to sit beside her. His mate with the cornrows settles on
the other side of him and his group of friends arrange themselves along the
row. So easily is Jasmine assimilated into their group, she scarcely notices it
has happened.
Sean, though, is less accepting. The first time he sees Ben in their
flat, in nothing but his underpants, is a shock for Jasmine, who has not
admitted the extent of her infatuation, which is moving at lightning speed.
Sean waits until Ben has departed to pull Jasmine into a chair and warn her
about fuckboys like Ben, repeating a lot of her own advice to him in the
process. But she has never been so sure of anything in her life as she is
about her love for Ben. Sean – who had his heart broken in the first year,
who sobbed for days on Jasmine’s shoulder – has a different view. He sees
Jasmine loves wholeheartedly, as only those who have never known true
heartbreak can love. He knows wholehearted love is dangerous because it
can so easily break a person into little pieces when it goes wrong. But how
is Jasmine to understand?
Raised since birth with the experience of her parents’ happily-ever-
after, it never occurs to Jasmine that her story could be otherwise. Jasmine
loves Ben and Ben loves Jasmine. For her, it is simple. Sean’s words of
caution are ignored. His entreaties not to lose contact with her friends, her
people, are misconstrued. Instead of spending time away from her lover,
mixing with her own clan, Jasmine keeps trying to drag Sean into Ben's
coterie. Jasmine is certain she has found her life-partner. Proof comes as
they lie in bed one morning toward the end of the winter term.
“I wish we didn't have to be apart over this holiday,” she sighs as
she idly twists his chest hair around her fingers.
“Then let's not,” he says simply.
“What do you mean?”
He turns on his side to face her. “Come home with me for
Christmas. You could meet my mum and dad.”
To Jasmine, it sounds like a divine plan. She imagines dinner table
discussions on the important business of holding the government to account
for its iniquities, calls with some of the most powerful people in the land,
and constituents dropping in with urgent concerns. The chance to meet and
learn from one of her idols is enticing. She compares the ordinariness of her
own family’s Christmas with her aunt and her boring boy cousins and their
endless competition over inane imaginary wargames and her grandmother
espousing views a hair’s breadth short of fascism. Her younger sisters
would be vying in discontentedness over their unwrapped presents and her
elder sisters would be perfunctory in their thanks. Christmas with Ben and
real people, who work for a living, would be amazing.
Then Ben grunts. “I’m sorry. That’s selfish of me. You have a big
family. You’ll want to be with all of them.”
And Jasmine knows the time to come clean has arrived. “Not
really,” she mumbles into his armpit. “I don’t think my family is like yours.
I’d quite like a grown-up Christmas for once.”
 “Do you mean your little sisters?” He twists his neck and kisses the
top of her head. “I’d love to have siblings. Think of all those extra presents
under the tree.”
“All the crap under the tree, you mean? I can tell you now what each
present will be. Eleanor will get me a truly hideous jumper, knitted by some
women’s co-operative she thinks I’d support. Anna’s present will be edible
or drinkable, picked up on the way to the railway station. Lily will get me
some airy-fairy romance book she absolutely loved. Phoebe will get me a
gift she wants and I hate, and when I don’t use it, she’ll appropriate it so it
isn’t wasted. The whole thing will be totally fake and completely wasteful.
And don’t forget, I have to buy them equal amounts of crap, too. Last year I
gave them all charity subscriptions. You should have seen their faces,” she
giggles. “To be fair, Lily genuinely loved her Adopt-an-Orangutan.”
“What about your mum and dad?”
“They give a combined present because my dad is, of course, far too
busy for shopping. Which means my mother is in charge of all things
Christmas.” Jasmine moves her fingers to stroke down his side, trying to
tickle him, as if the lightness of her touch will balance the heaviness of her
words. “So my present will be skincare, haircare, or weight loss. Something
to improve me. I’m the ugliest of the family and my mother finds it difficult
to live with it.”
“Ugly? Don’t say things like that. You are perfect as you are, and
your mum can sod off.” His hand tips her chin up and his lips skim hers
before settling on kissing the corners of her mouth. She accepts his
reassurance, although she doesn’t need it. Jasmine is merely telling the
truth. Despite her mother’s conviction, Jasmine has never felt a lesser
human for being born plain. She is aware some of Ben’s friends think he is
out of her league, but as Ben himself does not think it, Jasmine is content.
She believes in his sincerity and is confident his love is the equal of hers.
Nevertheless, she is more comfortable moving the conversation away from
her level of beauty.
“At least she doesn’t make me go to church anymore. Not since I
sang off-key very loudly through all the hymns.”
“Are your folks super-religious, then?” Ben looks interested, as if
he’s found an oddity.
“Not at all. It’s just expected the family support the local church.”
Jasmine fortifies herself before continuing. “One of my ancestors built it
and it’s on my family’s land.”
“On your land? How much land do you have?” Ben sounds
suspicious.
“Not my land, my family’s,” Jasmine corrects. “I’m not sure – a few
thousand acres, maybe. The Park is five hundred itself and then there are a
few farms dotted about, some forests, some scrubland.”
“The Park? Jasmine, who exactly are your parents?” Ben asks. It is
the moment she has been dreading.
“Lord and Lady Larkford.”
“Lord? As in titled? Not as in his first name is Lord?” Ben leans
over her.
She nods, keeping her head down, not meeting his eyes.
He flops back on the bed. “Wow! So you would normally have
Christmas in a big old house, with chestnuts roasting by the fire, and a
massive Christmas tree, I’m guessing?” She nods again.
“And what about Christmas lunch?”
“A five-course meal. The housekeeping staff come in specially on
Christmas morning to prepare it. One of them stays to serve it; the rest
knock-off early to go back to their own families.”
 “You don’t even have to clear up after?”
Another nod.
“Sounds magic.” Ben’s hands tighten around her body and lift her
until she is lying on top of him. “And you would swap that for Christmas in
a piss-ordinary house with a fake tree, a bunch of atheists, and festive
karaoke?”
“Karaoke?”
“Oh, yes. The Khan Christmas is far from grown-up. There’s only
three of us, but I’ve never sat down to Christmas dinner with fewer than ten
at the table – my mother is prone to inviting waifs and strays.
Unfortunately, we all love the sound of our own voices too much, hence
karaoke. Every year there is a different theme. Last year it was animated
film tunes. Gotta say,” he drops his voice to low and sultry, “I’m an
awesome Woody.”
“Sounds magic,” Jasmine says, meaning every word spoken and
every innuendo implied.
A text to Ben’s parents and a call to hers, and everything is set.
When she says she is not coming home for Christmas, Jasmine can hear
disappointment in her mother’s voice but she must be mistaken for she
knows they will all enjoy their turkey and pigs in blankets far more without
her reminding them they were once living animals running around a field,
babies sacrificed so humans can gorge. She sends a text to Flora as well, for
they had plans to meet up and she is genuinely sorry to disappoint her
oldest friend. Flora’s reply is weirdly needy: Please come to Larkford soon.
Shit happening. And Jasmine thinks it might be an idea to call and chat, but
in the excitement of packing and present buying for a whole new set of
people and finishing her much-neglected essays before the end of term, the
need to talk to Flora gets side-lined.
 Having practised being a houseguest with Sean’s parents in the
summer, Jasmine is relaxed about the prospect of staying with Ben’s family.
They travel together, dragging their wheeled suitcases to the station. Ben’s
dad is waiting for them at the other end. It is immediately obvious where
Ben gets his looks, his height, and his charm. For a moment, Jasmine
considers how well Ben may age. Mr Khan has a full head of hair, greying
slightly at the temples and excellent teeth. She expects to be fat and frumpy
by fifty. She hopes Ben will still think her perfect then.
“Asim,” Ben’s dad says with a smile in response to Jasmine calling
him “Mr Khan”.
In contrast, when she addresses Ben’s mother as “Ms Green”, there
is no correction. Still, Jasmine finds Hannah Green as remarkable as
expected. Her hair is chopped short and dyed brown to remove any trace of
grey. Her make-up is on point and her high-street suit is flattering. Jasmine
knows how vicious the tabloids can be with any woman in power. Looking
old, unkempt, or unpolished is no longer a sign of character; it is a sign of
weakness. It is one of the many reasons she has no wish to ever be the face
of power. Jasmine’s own hair has to be long enough to tie back to achieve
anything near neat. She knows from experience short hair makes her look
like a lumpy scarecrow. She loathes the sensation of foundation on her skin,
and more often than not, pokes herself in the eye with the mascara wand.
While she strives to look neat, her lack of interest in anything to do with
fashion outside of its ethical and sustainable sourcing means her clothes are
boring and basic. She admires Ms G, but she is not envious. A trusted
adviser, she believes, can have as much power as an MP without the risk of
offensive or abusive press reports and social media posts. Or, at worst,
being shot and stabbed outside the local library.
 She is relieved to find Ben’s parents have put them both in the same
bedroom. Being immersed in someone else’s world is hard enough when
there is overlap with your own truth. To spend nights apart, staring into the
dark, reflecting on the mis-steps of the day would be utter misery. Despite
the double bed, she has no intention, out of some odd notion of modesty, of
having sex under his parents’ roof, but that lasts all of ten minutes after Ben
climbs in beside her. She does extract a promise from him to be very, very
quiet, gritting her own teeth and keeping her lips firmly closed as Ben
works his usual magic, turning her limbs liquid and her belly to fire.
There is little time to dwell on his mother’s reserve, to work out if it
is her usual character or the jealousy of a mother with an only son or an
objection to Jasmine herself, because Ben is a social being. Back on his
home turf, there is a pre-Christmas rush of coffee meets and parties and
nights in the pub and an extraordinary amount of relatives: uncles, aunts,
cousins, second cousins. Jasmine is familiar with the aristocracy’s ability to
keep track of family members, but they also go to some lengths to make
sure they avoid one another. The Khan family seems to have no such issue,
often cramming an uncomfortable amount of people into average-sized
rooms.
Jasmine, who has spent the last five years telling almost no one she
is the daughter of a Baron, finds Ben has far less reticence on the matter.
Caught on the sofa between two generous-sized aunties, she is subject to a
weird form of inquisition, in which her responses do not seem to be
required.
“Jasmine, isn’t it?” says Auntie One.
“Lovey name,” says Auntie Two.
“Ben tells me you are at university?” asks Auntie One.
“And your father’s a Lord?” asks Auntie Two.
 “Always good to have a Lord in the family,” affirms Auntie One.
“Better than a doctor,” confirms Auntie Two.
“And four sisters!” exclaims Auntie One.
“But no brother!” declaims Auntie Two.
“Your poor mother,” commiserates Auntie One.
“Although so much help in her old age. Such a comfort!”
sympathises Auntie Two.
A half hour later, when Ben rescues her, Jasmine still has not said a
word. By the end of the week, Jasmine has had her fill of vegetable samosas
and pakoras and intrusive questions. She is all peopled out. Ben seems to
sense this and schedules a Christmas Eve of long lie-in, leisurely lunch, and
an afternoon watching nature documentaries. His parents are out; his
mother at a party for constituency activists; and his father ostensibly
shopping for his wife’s present. By the time they re-appear, Jasmine is
feeling more sociable, which is just as well because the evening is dinner in
a fancy restaurant. Used to the more formal spirit of her own family’s
Christmas, she made sure to pack a couple of good dresses. She is glad she
took the precaution as she shakes one out and slides it over her head.
Hunting through her suitcase for the only pair of slingbacks she possesses,
she looks up when Ben returns from the bathroom and sees his face.
“Wow,” he says.
She runs her hands over her hips, ostensibly smoothing the fall of
the dress. “You like?”
“I like,” he growls. He moves towards her, his hands following the
path of hers. “Do you think anyone will notice if we’re late?”
“Yes. I’ve scarcely met your mother. I’m not going to leave her
twiddling her thumbs alone in a restaurant because her son was feeling
horny.” Jasmine slides out of his reach, but she is gratified by his reaction.
She does not want to be that woman – one who prizes appearance over
substance – but she cannot help feeling thrilled Ben finds her physically
attractive, that he likes the “pudginess” that seems so repugnant to her own
mother.
Jasmine need not have worried about being late, for when they enter
the restaurant, Ben’s mother is nowhere in sight. It is another ten minutes
before she arrives, swaying on her stilettos and obviously squiffy from
afternoon drinking. Jasmine is both fascinated and appalled as her idol
drops heavily into her seat.
“Is it just me or is it hot in here?” asks the Right Honourable
Hannah Green, shadow cabinet member, as she pulls forward her satin shirt
and blows on her breasts. Before she can undo the buttons on her front, her
husband leans over to trap her hands.
“I think we need to get some food in you,” Asim says fondly, then
signals to a waiter for bread and a coffee.
Asim, himself, sticks with water. Despite Asim being a lapsed
Muslim, Jasmine notes he avoids alcohol and she thinks he would probably
pass on a bacon sandwich if the family weren’t already vegetarian.
“Ms G?” Jasmine says, offering Ben’s mother the bread basket when
it comes.
“I like that,” she says. “Makes me sound like a female rap artist. Ms
G.” She launches into a classic Cardi B, expletive-laden, rap song. She is
loud enough to attract the attention of some of the other diners, and Jasmine
can see phones being lifted.

“Or maybe Missy G?” suggests Jasmine, heading off a social

,
media disaster of epic proportions. She starts the supafly chant and hopes
Hannah will take the hook and sing the overlay of the rain against the

window.
Hannah manages one verse and then erupts into giggles. Finally, she
notices the bread basket that Jasmine is still holding and grabs a piece.
“Oh good! I’m starving,” she says. “The gannets ate all the party
food before I even got there!” A statement that goes some way to
explaining her intoxication.
With the bread sopping up some of the alcohol and the coffee
providing a sobering counterpoint, Hannah manages to get through the meal
without further incident. She falls asleep in the taxi on the way home, and
Asim and Ben carry her into the house together.
Later that night, Ben holds Jasmine close and says, “Thank you.” He
plants a kiss on her forehead before continuing, “Jasmine Mortimer, I think
you are pretty much perfect.”
Her soul burns with pride at the praise, but she can’t help
deprecating the compliment. “I’m far from perfect. You’re the one who’s
perfect. Handsome, clever, passionate.”
He scoffs. “I’m not handsome. My nose is too big.”
“I think it is just right.” Jasmine kisses his chest and those are the
last words either of them speaks for quite some time.
The following morning, a delicate-looking Hannah gives Jasmine
her own quiet thanks. “No problem, Ms G,” she replies.
Hannah shudders at her words and says, “Please, call me Hannah.”
“Of course,” Jasmine says with a smile.
Jasmine has never spent Christmas anywhere other than with her
family so, naturally, she finds aspects of the Khans’ celebration alien. She is
surprised when all the gifts are opened before breakfast and not necessarily
communally. Ben bestows his gift, a beautiful pair of ethically sourced,
silver earrings, as soon as she wakes. And she is flummoxed when Asim
seats them all in front of the television mid-afternoon to watch the Queen’s
Speech, an experience she is not keen to repeat. But that night, lying beside
her comatose lover, Jasmine looks back on the day and realises it was
perhaps one of the happiest Christmases she can ever recall.
 An Unexpected Request

As soon as the Christmas and New Year festivities are finished, Jasmine
returns to the flat she shares with Sean. The time spent conducting her love
life has inversely impacted her studies and her goal of a first-class honours
degree is in jeopardy. She has done almost no work on her dissertation and
once term starts, she can expect the available time to shrink rapidly. She and
Ben agree to spend their days apart studying, even as they spend their
nights together.
By the time term begins, by dint of long hours and focused
application, she has made up lost ground. She has completed her literature
review and even has a rough plan. All in all, she is more confident she is
back on top of her workload and making progress. It helps that the
apartment is empty. A barrage of texts from Sean on Christmas Eve
proclaiming he had met his soulmate explains his absence. The lucky man
is apparently a mechanic called Georg who works for his dad’s business in
Hayburn.
It is not until Sunday that Sean arrives, bringing with him such an
overload of joy and an incessant chatter about his new man that Jasmine is
forced to consider, Is this what I was like last term?
Having spent an hour filling her in what Georg wears, what Georg
does and what Georg says, Sean finally remembers to ask Jasmine about her
Christmas holiday.
“It was lovely, thanks,” she says.
“And your man is still shitting sparkly poop?”
“Yes. Ben is perfect.”
“Bosh!” Sean says, opening the cupboard to look for cookies. “No
one is perfect, even Ben. For a start, his nose is too big.”
“It is not! Be serious. You have to admit, he is pretty great.”
“You do know, when people first get together, they are invariably
lying to each other? They only present the good bits, the bits they think
their partner will like. It takes some time to see the imperfections. The short
temper, the inability to commit or,” Sean says, holding up an empty
wrapper, a tantalising false hope left in the cupboard, “their selfish
consumption of all the chocolate chip cookies.”
“Sorry about that,” says Jasmine, knowing she sounds completely
insincere, “but my need was great. I’ll pick some up tomorrow on the way
back from lectures.”
True to her word, Jasmine stops at the supermarket to stock up on
cookies, oat milk, bread, instant noodles, and other essentials. With two full
shopping bags, she struggles home, but as she turns into the road, she can
see a figure sitting on the top step in front of the entrance door. She studies
the figure as she gets closer. It’s clearly male, huddled in a padded jacket,
sweatshirt hood pulled up. His head is down, facial features unclear, but he
looks familiar. He looks like Petey.
She quickens her walk, bags banging uncomfortably against her
legs, until she is close enough to speak.
“Petey?” she says, a little breathless as she turns off the pavement
into the tiny front yard.
 His head comes up. “Hi, Jasmine,” he says, like it is an everyday
occurrence for him to be waiting on her doorstep over a hundred miles from
his own home.
“What … How … Never mind. You’d better come in.” She looks at
her old lover. He is thinner than she remembers, and paler, if that is possible
given his usually milky complexion. Now that she is used to Ben’s height
and build, Petey seems somehow smaller than the last time she saw him.
She squeezes past him with her bags and puts them down, while she
locates her key. With the door open, she grabs her shopping and starts the
climb upstairs.
“Jasmine!” Petey calls and nods to the door, his face lit up with his
trademark grin. She looks, notices her keys still in the lock, and sighs.
Seeing Petey again has really thrown her. “Just bring them up,” she says.
Petey extracts the keys and follows behind her. Her sense something
is wrong is compounded by Petey’s silence and the fact he has not relieved
her of her shopping bags. Petey always did have the manners of a man three
or four times his age. She always put it down to his being the only man in a
house. He’s used to looking out for occasions when his strength can help
and has become good at anticipating them.
On the first landing she looks back and is surprised to see him
leaning against the banister, but he says, “A bit dizzy. Shouldn’t have
skipped breakfast,” and motions her onward. She starts up the next set of
steps, although she has to wait for him at the top, as he has the keys to her
apartment. She moves to the side so he can get past and watches his
progress. He is breathing deeply as he fits the key in the lock, and Jasmine’s
sense of oddness deepens.
While Jasmine sets her bags on the kitchen counter and fills the
kettle for the welcoming hot drink mandated by British social etiquette,
Petey collapses onto the sofa. Jasmine uses the opportunity of putting mugs,
teabags, and oat milk to order her thoughts.
“How did you know where to find me?” she asks. She’s still in the
flat she was in last year, but Petey was not to know that.
“Flora,” he says. “Don’t be mad at her.”
“I’m not.”
“We thought you would be home at Christmas. When you didn’t
come … Anyway, Flora wanted to come, too, but she has work.”
“What about you?” Jasmine frowns. “What about your work?”
“I’m not working anymore. Laid off.” He pauses. “I’m sick, Jas. It’s
bad.”
Jasmine looks at him, at the bony wrists protruding from his frayed
cuffs and the pallor of his skin. He does not look well. She recalls him
struggling as they climbed the stairs and she notices Petey won’t meet her
eyes. He is staring at the stained carpet, not a good sign.
“How bad?” she asks.
“It’s cancer, Jas.” His voice cracks and warbles as he speaks. “They
told me last week. I don’t just have a bad tumour; I have the worst. I’m not
just unlucky, I’m super-unlucky.”
Jasmine drops onto the sofa beside him. She reaches for his hands
but her mind automatically catalogues the feel of his thin, bony hand, and
compares it with Ben’s strong, long-fingered grip. She pushes the thoughts
aside to focus on the person beside her. His words are too important.
“Oh my God, Petey. Are you sure?” Jasmine feels the ridiculousness
of her question the moment it has left her mouth, but she is so thrown she
cannot think of anything else to say. She looks closely at Petey. He seems to
have crumpled inside, but externally, he is much as he ever was. There is
nothing a stranger would see and think, He’s marked for death.
 “No. I’m not. I’m not really sure of anything.” He rests his head
against her shoulder and they sit like that for some minutes while she tries
to work her way through the turmoil in her mind. A hundred thoughts, a
swirl of emotions. She tries to pick a way through. She cannot understand
how she didn’t know. Something this big and she didn’t have even the
slightest suspicion. Eventually, she ventures a question.
“How long have you known?”
“I saw a doctor before Christmas. She thought I needed checking
and sent me for a scan. That showed a tumour. Then they did a biopsy. Last
week they told me. They can’t operate because it’s enmeshed with my
spinal cord – that’s the word they used: ‘enmeshed’. I had to look it up. But
it means no matter what, they can’t get it all out without killing me, so it has
to stay there and kill me just the same.”
Jasmine’s soul floods with guilt. She remembers the text from Flora.
Shit happening. She had meant to call but she was so busy and having so
much fun, and she knew Flora was probably going to lean on her to come
home. So she had let the time go by and told herself Flora would be busy
with her own family. Now she understands why Flora hadn’t been more
precise – this wasn’t news that could be sent in a message – but Jasmine
wishes that she had been.
“But surely this can’t just happen, can it? It can’t come out of
nowhere? There must have been signs!”
“There were.” Petey grimaces and Jasmine frowns. “I was getting
headaches and some flashes, but I was drinking quite a bit after you left.”
Her conscience prickles. She had ripped his world apart – she knew that.
Maybe she should have checked in on him? But she hadn’t. She had
swanned off to university, and as soon as she could, she had embarked on
another love affair without a thought for the lover she had discarded. She
had behaved as badly as Phoebe would. Never thinking about someone
further than their usefulness.
“It was easier to cope if I was drunk,” he continues. “Every night I’d
just get blotto. So, when things started going wrong, I put it all down to that
and just drank more. Headaches, feeling sick and puking. There was this
weird tingling and sometimes I couldn’t get my words out.” Petey retrieves
his hands from hers and rubs them along his jeans. “Finally, I had a seizure
and Mum called an ambulance.” He looks at the carpet again.
Jasmine wants to wrap her arms around him and tell him it will be
okay. But it won’t. She closes her eyes. Is it possible this was her fault? If
she hadn’t left him, he wouldn’t have been drinking and he might have
noticed the symptoms sooner. Everyone knows that with cancer, the sooner
you catch it, the better your chances.
“I don’t get it, Jas. All my life I’ve been unremarkable. Now there’s
hundreds of thousands of people and then there’s me. I would have had
more chance of dating a supermodel than having a brain tumour. I just don’t
understand. Why me?”
She drops her arm around his shoulders and pulls him close.
Personally, Jasmine thinks any supermodel would be lucky to date Petey
and she has never considered him unremarkable, but she cannot conceive of
any way he deserves this. Like most people, she is vaguely aware smoking,
drinking, and overeating are all risk factors for cancer, but in all the years
she had dated him he’d never done anything more than having a few beers.
And a few weeks of getting drunk surely couldn’t have caused it. Cancer
takes years to develop.
She steels herself to ask the next question. “How long?” she asks
and they both know what she is referring to.
“They don’t know exactly. Maybe six months. A year at most.”
 “Oh, Petey!” Jasmine wraps her arms about her friend, because it is
what he still is. “Is there anything I can do?”
His reply is whispered and she has to lean closer to hear him. “I
really need a friend, Jasmine. Come back to me. Please? As a friend. It
won’t be for long.”
A year. Jasmine is floored. And if she is feeling devastated, she can
only imagine how Petey feels. All the images she had in her head when she
left him, ideas of the two of them moving into the future on different paths,
each of them finding their own eventual happiness. Those images are gone.
For Petey, there will be no home of his own with roses around the door, no
loving wife, no children. She cannot really imagine what will happen to him
because she knows very little about cancer. How many youngsters do? She
knows enough to understand it will probably be hard, sickness and chemo
and hair falling out, and, maybe, painful.
He draws a ragged breath, suppressing a sob, and Jasmine pulls her
attention back to him. She loosens her arms but doesn’t drop them.
“Kate’s home on compassionate leave but she has to go soon.” He
pauses. When he continues, his voice is thick. “Mum’s struggling. And it
won’t be for long. I just … I don’t want to die alone.”
 Jasmine’s Choice

When Sean comes home, he is surprised to find Jasmine sitting in the dark,
curled in a ball, head between her hands. The supermarket shopping is still
in two bags sitting on the worktop and he realises immediately something is
badly wrong.
“Has that bastard dumped you?” he asks in a borderline growl.
She uncurls enough to shake her head, momentarily mute with grief.
“It’s not him.” It is worse. She realises that, only hours ago, she would not
have been able to conceive of anything was worse than being left by her
lover.
Sean tries levity. “Don’t tell me you got a B on an essay?”
When she doesn’t even attempt a smile, Sean knows it is dreadful.
He kneels in front of her. “Your family?”
“No.” Jasmine rouses herself. “It’s Petey. He came to see me today.
Although God knows how he managed the trip.” She stops to take Sean’s
hand. She is aware Petey and Sean have always got along well, and her
news will upset him. Over the last couple of years, she and Petey and Sean
have often hung out together. It is harder to break the news than she
expects, like giving form to the words makes everything solid and
undeniable. She takes one deep breath and echoes Petey’s words earlier.
“He’s sick. He’s got some sort of tumour on his spinal cord.” She barely
manages the final words needed. “He’s dying.”
“Petey?” Sean’s voice is full of disbelief.
She nods.
“But can’t they, like, do something?”
“Apparently not a lot. They’ve done a biopsy and it’s bad. I’m sure
there will be some treatments but nothing can cure him.”
Sean extracts one hand to run it through his hair. “But what about
chemotherapy? Or that radiation thing they do?”
“I didn’t ask,” she confesses, “but I can only assume they will do
everything possible. Doctors generally try to keep their patients alive
wherever possible.” Jasmine has heard a couple of her sister Anna’s stories,
where medics want to keep trying long after the patient or their family have
accepted death.
“And he came all the way here to tell you?”
“Not exactly.” Jasmine drops his other hand and sits back. “He came
all the way here to ask me to come back to him.”
“It’s not really fair of him to ask,” says Sean, taking a seat on the
other chair in the room. They both know the truth of his statement but they
also know it is a measure of Petey’s desperation that he did.
“He’s dying.” Jasmine twists her head. “I think if what he asked is
unfair, this doesn’t even come close to that.”
“What about Ben?” asks Sean after a moment. “Did you tell him
about Ben?”
The unattended bags of shopping provide a distraction and Jasmine
stands. She starts unloading items, putting the oat milk in the fridge before
she turns to face him. “No. He doesn’t need to know about Ben.” She has
never been so grateful for her sanitised social media. From sixteen years
old, she had been determined to make a career in politics. Aware of the
amount of scrutiny she could expect if she was successful, she had been
careful to screen out all but the most innocuous details of her personal life
from her posts. Even though Ben had become the focus of her world,
anyone looking at her social media would hardly realise he existed, aside
from the sheer number of Labour Club photos in which he featured.
“Petey’s dying,” she reiterates. “He doesn’t need me to break his
heart any more than I already have.”
Sean sits back in his chair and puts his head on his hands. “So, what
are you going to do?”
“What can I do?” Jasmine has spent the last hour thinking about
precisely this. She halts the unpacking to look directly at Sean. “A
terminally ill friend has asked me for a favour. And not just any friend. One
I loved.” She corrects herself. “Still love.” Just because she now loves Ben
more doesn’t mean she loves Petey less. “I have to go.” At Sean’s look, she
continues. “There is no one else. His mother is struggling with her own
grief. His sister has to go back to the army. His father hasn’t been around
since he was a baby.” She holds back from saying that even if Petey had
been surrounded by loved ones, she would still want to be there. She still
cares for him deeply, just as she cares for Sean. And if this were Sean’s
diagnosis, she would do the same for him.
“Did you tell him that?”
She chews at her lips and then confesses, “I told him I needed to
think about it.”
“And have you thought about it? What happens to your degree?
What happens to Ben?”
“Of course I have. Either I can take some time off from my degree
or I can do it remotely. I’ve cracked the back of my dissertation and most of
the lectures are videoed, anyway. And Petey won’t always need me. I think
I can manage to fit it all in. The thought of coming back to finish my degree
after all of you have left is just too depressing to contemplate. I’ll make it
work.”
“And Ben?”
“I’ve already told Petey if I come back, it won’t be as his girlfriend
but as his friend. Ben will understand.” Jasmine holds out the new packet of
chocolate-chip cookies as a diversion.
“Will he? Are you sure about that?” Sean stares at her hard.
“Because I’m not sure he will.”
“Of course he will.” Jasmine brushes off his caution. She is fairly
certain her assertion is true. There is very little the two of them disagree on.
Mostly, they are of the same mind. She has a slight reprieve before she has
to tell him, as Ben is clubbing with his year-out friends tonight. He is
sleeping at his place because they will only get in late. It means she has an
entire day to work out how to present the whole thing in the best light, to
rehearse her arguments if he should need convincing. But really, she thinks
it is a matter of trust. Ben will trust her judgement that what she proposes is
necessary and trust her character that she will not do anything inappropriate
with her ex.
The following morning, after a fitful night’s sleep and before she
has even eaten breakfast, Jasmine emails her tutor, dissertation supervisor,
and course head to arrange meetings with each. By lunchtime, she already
has dispensation to pursue her studies remotely. Although she was
disingenuous enough to omit the break-up in the summer and to emphasise
the length of time she had been with Petey. Her tutor, whose wife had just
fought her own battle with breast cancer, is more than supportive and has
offered to help in any way he can.
 Lunch, Jasmine reasons, is also long enough to leave the hungover
to lie-in, but still, she is inexplicably nervous as she stands on Ben’s
doorstep. She tries to calm herself because she knows what she is doing is
right and for as long as Jasmine can remember, she has always done what is
right. Passing notes in class was wrong; eating the last of her mother’s
cherished chocolates was wrong; harming animals unnecessarily was
wrong. In all these cases she had never hesitated to act to make things right:
handing notes to the teacher; informing her mother of her sisters’
misdemeanours; excising everything within her limited reach produced by
the exploitation of animals. Unfortunately for Jasmine, the world tends to
be unforgiving of the righteous and each time her reward had been to her
detriment; the teacher had called her a telltale, her sisters had made her the
target of endless pranks, and she had been jeered at by total strangers in
cafés purely for the crime of being vegan.
Still, Jasmine persists in the path of righteousness.
But she is a little hesitant when she knocks on the front door to the
little terraced house Ben shares with two other mates. She straightens her
clothes while she waits for him to answer and tries to fix her features in a
suitably upbeat expression. When Ben, clad only in his jockey shorts, opens
the door it is to a maniacally grinning girlfriend.
“Couldn’t stay away, huh?” He smiles. “Or was your essay just too
boring?” Then he sees the expression on her face. “Are you alright?” he
asks, frown lines crinkling under his floppy black hair. Jasmine drops the
grimace and nods.
“Neither,” she says. “And sort of. Listen, I need to talk to you.”
“That sounds ominous,” Ben says, but he steps back and opens the
door wide. When she sees him head toward the communal kitchen area,
Jasmine adds, “In private.”
 She follows as he leads her up the stairs and for once, she is
oblivious to the pertness of his buttocks and the breadth of his bare
shoulders. When he enters the room, he reaches for the jeans hanging on the
back of the chair and pulls them on. On some level, he realises he needs to
be clothed for this conversation. He opens the wardrobe and grabs a T-shirt.
When dressed, he takes the chair by his desk and Jasmine perches on the
edge of his bed, facing him. “What’s going on?” he asks.
She studies her hands for a minute. Despite rehearsing this moment,
now it comes to it, she struggles. “I have to go away for a while.”
“Why?” His eyebrows quirk up. “Where’re you going?”
She chooses to answer the last question first. “Home.”
“Is there something up with your family?” Concern tints his words.
He tilts his head and tries to make eye contact, but Jasmine is looking down
at his bare feet as she says,
“No. They’re fine.”
“Okay. So, why? I mean, term’s only just started.”
Jasmine finally looks up. “Petey came to see me yesterday.”
“Your ex?” Ben’s voice shows his confusion.
“He needs my help.”
“So? What?” Ben’s whole body stiffens and his eyes flash. “He calls
and you come running?”
“No. It’s not like that,” she protests. In all the scenarios that ran
through her mind last night, Ben growing angry had not featured.
Ben rubs his forehead with his fingers, thumb spread wide, like he’s
trying to figure things out. “You said you two were over.”
“We were,” she says, then corrects herself: “We are.”
“Then why are you running off home to him?”
 Jasmine is about to protest she isn’t running off but stops herself.
She is, sort of. But not the way Ben is implying. Instead, she says, “He’s
still a friend and he needs help. He’s sick.”
“Huh!” Ben scoffs. “But well enough to come and see you. What is
that? Eight-, nine-hour round trip?”
“His sister drove him.” If Jasmine thinks this will help, she is sadly
mistaken.
“Oh? He’s got a sister?” And Jasmine can hear the implication in the
words. If he has a sister, why do you need to go?
“She’s a soldier. She has to go back to her unit. She helped him.”
“Really?” he says with scorn. “Each time Petey has a little sniffle,
you’re going to run off to what? Mop his fevered brow? Kiss it better?
Whatever you say it is, that’s not over, Jasmine.”
“It’s not a little sniffle, Ben. He’s dying!” When Jasmine visualised
this interaction, she’d imagined she would speak those words with a catch
in her voice and Ben, understanding her grief, would gather her into his
arms and hold her close. She never thought she would be spitting the words
in Ben’s face.
“Is that what he said?” Ben’s disbelief is laced through the words.
“And you believed him? God, Jasmine! I never thought you’d be so
gullible.”
Gullible? Jasmine cannot believe this is what he thinks of her. “Yes,
I believe him. I’ve known him for years.” The idea of her open-hearted
Petey as some kind of arch-manipulator is almost laughable. “Besides, he
didn’t look himself. Not surprising really, with a tumour on his brain.”
“Is that what he told you? I can tell you now, he’s probably faking.
Don’t be surprised if there’s a miracle cure in the not-too-distant future!”
 “He’s not faking!” Jasmine is really cross. “How did you get to be
so cynical?”
“Because I’ve heard all this before. My mum is involved with loads
of refuges for women. You should hear some of the tales their partners spin
to lure them back. A terminal illness is not the half of it.”
“This isn’t a tale, Ben. This is real.” Jasmine takes a deep breath and
says what she meant to say all along: “A friend has asked me for help and I
intend to go and help him.”
Ben stands. His fingers tap his chest forcefully. “And what about
me, Jasmine? What about us?”
She raises her chin and sits up straighter. She won’t be unnerved by
how badly the talk has gone. “You just have to trust me on this.”
“I trust you plenty, Jasmine. I don’t trust him. He’s just reeling you
back in and you’re letting him play you.” He looks her directly in the eyes,
and in the coldest, flattest voice she has ever heard him use, he says, “You
have to choose, Jasmine. You can’t have two boyfriends. It’s either him or
me.”
 A Serious Matter

By the time Sean returns from his tutorial, it is dark. He views it as a

particular form of cruelty for his tutor to schedule their meetings so late,
especially as he has been worried about Jasmine all day. There has been
radio-silence since her last message when she was on her way to talk to
Ben. He cannot help feeling uneasy. He believed Jasmine was naively
confident all would go well, confident Ben would understand. Sean, though,
imagines how he would feel if Georg’s ex suddenly showed up and Georg
went off to live with him, no matter the circumstances. People are
territorial, especially of their treasured possessions.
The kitchen is empty. Sean hesitates a moment before he puts down
his laptop bag and switches on the kettle. Only when he has a mug of tea in
each hand does he tap on Jasmine’s door.
“Tea?” he calls softly.
When she opens the door, he cannot get rid of the mugs fast enough.
In the years he has known her, he has never seen Jasmine cry, not even
when he made her watch The Notebook. But it is obvious she has been
crying – her eyes are swollen and her nose is red. Twice in two days now.
He shoves the mugs on the closest surface, slopping a bit of tea over the
edge in the process. Then he wraps his arms around his friend to give her a
hug.
 “It didn’t go well, huh?” he murmurs into Jasmine’s hair. He draws
back a little to see her face as she answers.
“He made it a choice: him or Petey!”
Sean winces. He is not surprised. He is only a little baffled Jasmine
had not anticipated the possibility.
“So what are you going to do?” he asks. When she doesn’t reply
immediately, he adds, “You know I’ll support you whatever happens, don’t
you?”
She nods and whispers, “Thank you.” She steps back and takes a
deep, steadying breath. “What can I do? I could never live with myself if I
let him down.”
For a moment, Sean is confused as to which him she might let down,
then, as she moves back to the bed, he sees one suitcase is already packed
and standing by the wardrobe and another is on the bed, spilling over with
underwear and socks.
“You’re going, then.”
She nods and swallows hard. “Ben and I are finished either way. If I
stay, I will hate myself. And when Petey dies and I’ve abandoned him, I
will hate Ben too, for what he made me do. If I go … Well, Ben has made
clear, it is over for him.”
Wordlessly, Sean hugs her again.
“I would do the same for you,” she mutters into his shoulder.
“I know you would.” They stand there together for some minutes
until, once more, Jasmine steps back.
“I’ll continue to pay my share of the rent, but if you could find
someone who wants to take over the lease, I would be grateful.”
“Don’t worry about stuff like that,” Sean says, but Jasmine knows
she is richer than he is. Despite her scorn for inherited wealth as the cause
of social inequality, she has access to a regular income from the Larkford
Estate trust. Her intention has always been to donate it to a charity as soon
as she starts earning a living, but its existence means she can act now
without regard to the harsh realities of financial restrictions.
“You can have anything I leave behind.” Jasmine throws her arm out
to include the bed. Although the flat came furnished, they had supplied their
own bedding and a few extra items in the kitchen and bathrooms. “I’m only
taking some clothes. If you don’t want my things, please take them to a
charity shop?”
“Of course,” Sean says with emphasis. “Don’t worry about that
stuff. I’ll sort it.”
They stand awkwardly for a minute. Finally, he asks, “When are you
leaving?”
“I’ve booked a seat on the train tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll come with you. Help you with your bags.” Sean feels like he
should be doing more.
“You don’t have to.”
“Don’t be daft,” he says. He picks up his tea and takes a sip. “You’re
never going to fit all of it in there.” He gestures with his mug at the pile of
clothes still on the bed and the overfull suitcase. “Hold on a minute.” He
spins around and exits the room before reappearing with a hold-all in his
hand. “Dad was given it as a freebie,” he says, to lessen the gesture in case
she refuses.
But Jasmine is touched. She recognises Sean is trying to help in
whatever way he can, planting his flag squarely on her side, and somehow it
does help. There is a chasm of grief inside her, caused by Ben’s words, but
this little act is the first step to building a bridgehead to cross it. And cross
it, she must. Because tomorrow, when she arrives in Larkford, there must be
no sign of the pain Petey’s request has cost her. The only gift she can give
Petey now is that he dies in peace, well-loved. And that alone is her goal. If
she were to understand how much it would eventually cost her, she might
well have blanched at the step she is taking. But it is the same with all great
journeys – an element of blindness at the start is the reason they are
undertaken.
The following morning brings evidence of how much of a friend
Sean is, for Jasmine wakes to the smell of vegan bacon frying, although
yesterday there was none in the fridge. Sean must have made an early trip to
the supermarket in order to cook her a goodbye breakfast. Despite the heavy
mood of the day, Jasmine smiles. It is so like her friend to express his caring
through food. Since she stayed with him in the summer, she has realised it
is a trait he gets from his mother, although mercifully, it seems to be the
only one.
She ambles into the kitchen in her cosy flannel pyjamas and waffle
dressing gown to find a feast on the counter. Coffee, made just the way she
likes it with a large slug of oat milk, sits waiting for her. Hash browns,
baked beans, fried mushrooms, sliced avocado, and toast are all spread out.
“Thought you might need something substantial today,” Sean says,
taking the pan off the heat and sliding the vegan bacon onto her plate.
Jasmine, never overly demonstrative, pulls him into a hug as he swings the
hot pan out of her reach. Then she releases him and grabs a plate. When she
has mopped up the last lovely drops of sauce with her crust, she turns to
him to say goodbye.
“Don’t!” he warns. “I’m coming with you to the station.”
True to his word, he helps load her bags into the taxi and even goes
so far as to flirt with the guard to let him onto the platform to help with her
suitcases. When there is no longer any postponing it, he wraps his arms
around her and, as the train screeches to a stop behind her, whispers his
parting words into her ear: “Stay strong.”
Strength is hard to find. It is a bedraggled Jasmine who finally steps
onto the platform at Bridgetown, the nearest station to the village of
Larkford, for she has forgotten to pack an umbrella. The rain is sheeting
down as she crosses the overhead walkway, jostling two suitcases, a holdall,
and her laptop rucksack. She is relieved to see Flora, nearly unrecognisable
with her anorak hood pulled tight around her head but still wearing her
trademark jaunty leggings.
Jasmine is nearly bowled over when Flora throws herself at her,
flinging her arms around her neck. “Thank God you’re here!”
Jasmine waits until her friend releases her and steps back. She has
always been surprised by Flora’s friendship – that they had become friends
in the beginning she had put down to Petey’s influence. She had expected
Flora to melt out of her life when she left Petey, but Flora had maintained
contact, visited in the aftermath of the break-up to check Jasmine was
alright, and has sent regular messages about her life since. Somewhere
along the way, Flora has become a friend in her own right, but Jasmine has
never understood why. Her friend lives in emotions and has probably never
had a serious political thought in her life. Jasmine has few enough friends
not to reject one on the basis of frivolity, but why Flora, who is well-liked
by everyone, bothers with the earnest, fun-less Jasmine is a mystery.
“You managed to get off early, then?” Jasmine notes the dark
shadows under Flora’s eyes even as she says the words. Nannies work
longer hours than their bosses, who often have high-powered jobs,
including overtime as routine in order to afford them. She had been hoping
Flora would meet her off the train but it had not been guaranteed. Although
she was prepared to take a taxi, this is so much better – Flora could give her
the background to everything, including anything Petey had not wanted to
admit.
“You’re soaked!” Flora has been carrying out her own assessment
while Jasmine has hers. “Get in the car. It’s got heated seats.” Since she left
sixth form, Flora has been working and has already begun to accumulate
grown-up accoutrements: a car, a fiancé, a mortgage.
By the time Jasmine and her luggage are installed in Flora’s little
car, there is no room for much else besides the driver. Flora takes her place
but doesn’t start the engine. She loosens her hood and pulls it off her head
before turning to face Jasmine. “I’m so glad you’ve come,” she says. “It’s
been awful.”
“You should’ve said,” Jasmine chastises gently, referring to Flora’s
messages last term. Apart from the Shit happening one, they had all
depicted a land of happy bunnies.
“What good would that have done?” Flora gives a rueful smile.
“Made you feel crap about how badly Petey was taking the break-up? How
would that have helped? You both needed to move on. Talking of which,
tell me about the new man!”
“Over,” Jasmine says shortly.
“But I thought you really liked him?”
It says a lot about her friend that she assumes it was Jasmine who
ended it.
“I did, but he didn’t see the point of a relationship if I was going to
be up here.” Jasmine fudges the truth of the break-up, mostly because she is
yet to process it all herself and has no wish to examine it here in a station
car park.
“I’m sorry.” Flora’s hand covers Jasmine’s.
 “So what’s been happening?” Jasmine asks. “And don’t try to
sanitise it. I want the full truth.”
Flora finally starts the engine and fills Jasmine in on life since the
summer as she steers her little car along the familiar streets of Jasmine’s
home town and out into the countryside. Open fields tinged green with short
fronds of winter wheat give way to bands of skeletal trees. Then the village
cricket pitch appears on the right and Flora slows as they pass the local pub.
The Blue Lion was once the centre of Jasmine’s social life. She would meet
up with Petey and Flora and the other sixth formers almost every weekend.
Like her, most of them have left for university. Petey and Flora were the
only two village kids who stayed. Finally, Flora indicates and pulls onto
Petey’s drive, parking neatly beside Gillian’s old runabout.
For all of Flora’s non-stop chatter, she hasn’t given Jasmine much
more information than Petey had. Jasmine has a better understanding of the
timeline – Petey had been given a terminal diagnosis after the scan had
shown a brain-stem tumour. But it wasn’t until the biopsy results the
previous Friday that the timescale had been shortened. Until that point,
everyone had believed he would have years. Not the decades he should
have had like any other youngster but at least five years, maybe longer. On
the weekend, he had announced he wanted to see Jasmine. He had
threatened to go to alone by train if no one would drive him and so Kate
had capitulated despite her mother’s resistance.
Given the speed of Petey’s illness and the holiday period, very few
of their friends were fully aware of it and Petey apparently wasn’t keen on
telling anyone. Jasmine doesn’t think it can be long though before news
leaks out – this is a small village, after all. Someone’s sister, aunt, or cousin
would spot him at the hospital or in the doctor’s surgery and intrusive
questions will be asked which Petey’s family would be unable to dodge.
Frankly, she thinks, when he starts treatment, one proper look at Petey
would probably be sufficient for someone to realise something is very
wrong.
Flora extracts the bags from the car as Jasmine rings the doorbell. It
opens almost immediately. Gillian has aged immeasurably in the last few
months. Her hair is now more grey than brown and her face is lined with
worry, but her eyes light up in hope when she sees Jasmine on the doorstep.
Jasmine is relieved. When Flora said Gillian hadn’t wanted Petey to come
to her, she feared Petey’s mother still hadn’t forgiven her for ending their
relationship.
“Dear girl!” Gillian says as her eyes tear up. Then her arms reach
out to pull Jasmine in for a massive hug. “Thank you for coming,” she
whispers. She pulls Jasmine along the hall into the kitchen, and Flora
follows with the suitcases.
“He’s upstairs sleeping,” Gillian explains as she fills the kettle.
“Took a lot out of him going to see you but he wouldn’t be stopped.” She
sniffs and breathes deeply. “But you’re here now, so I guess it was worth
it.” She reaches out a hand to clasp Jasmine’s briefly before she turns back
to the tea-making.
Flora takes the opportunity to make her excuses. “None for me,
Gillian. I’ve got to get back. My boiler’s on the blink and my brother said
he might stop by after work to check it out.” She gives Jasmine a hug with a
promise to message later.
“She’s a good lass, that one,” Gillian says as the front door closes.
“Here, love. I made your favourite brownies.” She proffers the cake tin.
“No one makes them like you.” The ghost of a smile crosses the
older woman’s face as Jasmine gives the compliment. Jasmine appreciates
what Gillian has done, making the time to bake between working and
looking after her son. It can’t have been easy.
“I’ve put you in Kate’s room.” Gillian sets the tea mugs down on the
table. “She’s got a couple of nights left before she has to return to her unit,
but she’ll stay at the Winters’, with Jacob.”
Jasmine might have felt guilty at taking Kate’s room, except she
doesn’t think it much of a hardship to share Jacob Winter’s bed. He is one
fine-looking man. Kind too, from what she has heard Kate say on previous
visits.
“How’ve you been?” she asks gently.
Gillian gulps. “It’s been tough, you know. It was so hard watching
him go to rack and ruin after you left.” She grabs Jasmine’s hand again,
almost spilling the scalding tea. “I don’t blame you, mind. You did what
you felt was right and I can’t say in my heart it was wrong. Kate’s happy
traipsing the world, but Petey’s like me. He’s a homebody. I always thought
he’d stay in the village, raise my grandchildren right here. And I knew you
wanted a different life.” She pats Jasmine’s hand. “Well, that dream is over
now.
“The day he collapsed. Well, I’ve never rung for an ambulance
before in my life, but I knew immediately he needed one. And I knew, I
knew it was bad.” Gillian takes a tattered tissue from her pocket and dabs at
her eyes. “I could feel it in my bones. When that doctor came and told us
what the scan showed, I just caved. But my brother said to me, ‘You can cry
all you like when your boy is gone, Gill. But don’t bury him before he is
dead. Until that day, you have to be strong.’ And that’s what I’m trying to
do now. Be strong.” She dabs at her eyes again. “But it’s hard. No mother
should have to bury her son.”
 A New Normal

Jasmine goes to wake Petey at dinner time that evening. She halts a moment
before her hand lands on his shoulder, and takes time to really look at him.
Skin the colour of a plastic orchid, shadows lurking under shuttered eyelids,
she looks for signs of his illness. He is curled on his side and for the first
time she can see the shaved back of his head where they did the biopsy. She
wants to run her fingers over it, feel the softness of the tiny hairs re-
growing, but she resists. She does not want to hurt him.
Petey stirs, as if he can sense her closeness. His eyes open, and if
Jasmine thought he looked tired before, it is nothing to how weary he seems
when she looks into his soul. But there is no mistaking the joy when he
realises who is standing beside him. “Jas!” he breathes and struggles to sit
up. “You’re here!”
If she had ever had any doubts as to the necessity of her decision,
they disappear immediately at his obvious joy in her presence. She smiles.
“Flora brought me. She sends her love but she had to get off home –
something about a dodgy boiler.”
“No worries,” he says. “You’re looking well.”
Unable to return the compliment, Jasmine says, “I’ve been sent to
get you for dinner.” She watches as he swings his legs out of the bed and
reaches for his jeans. There is no stirring of lust, no hint of arousal. She
finds it incredible how quickly her body has adapted to reacting to Ben’s
long, strong form and olive skin. In just a few short months, her feelings for
Petey have altered from desire to sexual indifference, while her fondness for
him is unchanged.
When they sit at the kitchen table, Gillian puts the pots of spaghetti
and lentil bolognese on two trivets and everyone helps themselves. Jasmine
doesn’t want to eat in silence, but she is unable to think of anything to say.
Petey saves her. “How was your trip?” he asks.
So, Jasmine fills the room with chatter – the little old woman who
tried to share her ham sandwiches with Jasmine on the train up to London,
the horrendous experience of riding the underground at the start of rush
hour with bodies packed so tightly she could scarcely breathe, the cocky
little schoolgirl who attempted to half-inch Jasmine’s phone.
She is amazed by how much Petey eats. She had some idea cancer
patients go off food, but Petey takes seconds, placing a dollop of spaghetti
on his plate, ending up with a massive ball, as the strands have congealed as
they cooled. Pulling them apart with his fingers, he tops it off with a slightly
smaller portion of bolognese and proceeds to eat it all.
Claiming tiredness, he excuses himself to go and lie on the sofa as
soon as dinner is finished. Jasmine waits as Gillian sits across from her.
“Does he usually sleep so much?” Jasmine asks, concerned it might
be a bad sign.
“Not usually,” Gillian sighs. “He’s still not been sleeping at nights,
you see. It’s been a lot for him to take in. Well, it’s been a lot for all of us to
take in. And then there was the biopsy and the trip to see you. It’s a long
way. Flora begged him to let her go in his place, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
Said if he was asking you to derail your life, he had to do it in person.”
 Jasmine considers if her response would have been different if it had
been Flora asking and accepts it might have been. Petey’s distress had been
obvious when he was right in front of her, but her imagination would have
struggled to overlay it on her memories of Petey, full of life and vitality.
“Well, it’s done now and you’re here.” Gillian reaches out to clasp
Jasmine’s hand briefly before retreating to pick up her fork. “I wanted to
check you’re okay with everything.” Gillian winds a stray bit of spaghetti
into a ball. “Being here won’t be easy. I would understand if you changed
your mind or if you found it too hard. Also, you don’t need to stay here. If
you want to live up at the Hall, it will give you a bit of a break from it all.”
Jasmine reaches across the table and takes the older woman’s hand.
“I would prefer to be here,” she says. “And I promise I will let you know if
I am struggling.” She has absolutely no intention of following through with
that promise, but Gillian doesn’t need to know it. She has enough to deal
with. Jasmine will find a way through without dumping her problems on the
older woman.
“Now, tell me what you want me to do?” she asks.
“I’ve spoken to work. They’re only a small company and they need
someone to do my job but they have let me go part-time. My boss is going
to pick up the extra bits I can’t do. I told Petey, I would stop work and go on
benefits to look after him but he is worried about me after he’s gone.
They’re a good company and, by and large, they treat us well. It would be
hard to find another job like them. And to be honest, we need the money.
It’s not cheap having an invalid in the house – the heating on all day, the
trips to the hospital. It all adds up.”
Jasmine understands Gillian is not griping, merely explaining the
hard facts of her situation. They’ve gone from having two wages coming in,
to less than one. She resolves to help out surreptitiously – paying for any
shopping she does, filling the car with fuel, getting the occasional takeaway.
She cannot think of a better use of the money she receives from the family
trust, money accumulated by Mortimers in generations gone by, than to
make things easier for her dying friend and his mother.
“So what I thought,” Gillian interrupts her dreams of benevolence,
“is, if you can look after Petey Monday to Wednesday, then I will do the
rest. It will be long days, mind. I’ll be doing condensed hours, working four
days’ worth in three. Kate will be here tomorrow too, but after that she’s
gone. If you want to watch me do his medications this weekend, then you’ll
know what to do next week. And all the appointments I write up on the
calendar.” She nods towards the planner hanging on a nail by the back door,
a month of squares topped by an image of a cute cat. Jasmine notes how
many squares have scribbles.
“No problem,” she says. And she means it. Four days free should
leave her enough time to work on her studies, watch her recorded lectures,
do her research and write the required essays.
Gillian takes a break to scrape the remnants of everyone’s meal onto
one plate and then she returns to her topic. “I’ll put you on the insurance for
the car. One of the other girls is going to give me a lift in the mornings and
I’ll catch the bus back. I’d rather the car stays here, just in case.” Neither of
them wants to dwell on the just in case.
Jasmine continues sipping her drink, mainly in silence, only giving
the odd mm hmm as Gillian interjects yet another instruction or item of
information. She understands the older woman’s preoccupation.
“He starts radiation next week. We don’t know how it’s going to be
yet but I’ve heard some horror stories at work. You know how people are.
But I daresay it won’t be that bad.”
“At least he’s eating well,” Jasmine remarks.
 “That’s the steroids they’ve got him on. He’s eating me out of house
and home.” Gillian stacks the plates and gets up. “If you don’t mind, I’ll be
doing the cooking every day.” Jasmine nods. Neither of them wants to eat
anything she might cook.
Gillian pushes the food waste in the bin and slips the plates into the
dishwasher. She puts the leftovers into a bowl, covers it with a plate, and
stores them in the fridge. In five minutes the dishwasher is off, the table
wiped, and the kitchen is looking pristine again.
“Why don’t you go up and unpack? Maybe have an early night?”
Gillian suggests. “Me and Petey won’t be far behind.”
Jasmine is about to demur when she realises Gillian may have things
she wants to say to her son. She thinks about this new arrangement of
theirs. None of them are strangers but sometimes that makes it all the more
difficult to ask for space. Jasmine nods and makes her way upstairs,
stopping in at the lounge to let Petey know she’s going to bed. Her words
are not necessary, for Petey is asleep in front of the television while some
drama is played out in a police station.
When Jasmine is alone in Kate’s old bedroom, all pastel shades of
lilac and grey and a plethora of fairy lights slowly accumulating dust, she
drops onto the bed, genuinely exhausted. She is startled by the ping of her
phone and the arrival of a message from Sean, giving an update on the
gossip of his day. While she smiles at the thoughtfulness, she struggles to
find any interest in the content and she realises her world has already
shrunk to this house and the people within it. Nothing else matters.
The next morning, Jasmine comes down to find Kate in the kitchen,
her mother already having left for work. Jasmine is glad she bothered to
wash and dress before emerging when Kate’s boyfriend, Jacob Winter,
greets her from a chair in the corner. As Jacob’s father is the Head Gardener
on the Larkford Estate and his family live in one of the tied cottages, she
has seen him around throughout her childhood. She cannot recall him ever
speaking to her before, though. With a seven-year age gap, even with the
advantage of rank, she would have been too terrified to have addressed him
– dumpy, frumpy girls know better than to approach older, cool, good-
looking lads, although the reverse is seldom true.
“Hi, Jas,” Kate greets her, while Jacob pushes a chair out from the
table with his foot.
Jasmine grabs oat milk from the fridge, checks the teapot to see if it
is still warm and pours herself a cup.
“Kate’s staying here today but I’m heading off in a bit. I’ll walk you
up to the Hall, if you want?” Jacob offers.
Jasmine stares at her tea. “That depends.”
“On whether Granny is about?” he asks.
“Don’t let her hear you call her ‘Granny’,” she warns.
“Your grandmother wouldn’t set foot in a house like this.” Jacob
sounds confident, but Jasmine notes he has dropped the informal term.
“She has spies everywhere.” Jasmine wishes she was joking.
Normally, Jasmine admires strong women even if she disagrees with their
political views, but her grandmother is reactionary in the extreme. The
woman still believes in the divine right of kings, abhors the idea of equality,
and blames women’s suffrage for the ills of the world. Left to herself, she
would reinstate the British Empire, capital punishment, and feudalism.
Every right-thinking person should detest her but there is a cohort of
villagers who give her their loyalty.
“Dad tells me she’s still in residence,” Jacob offers. Jasmine’s
grandmother doesn’t stay anywhere; she resides. “Apparently, she wants a
new kitchen.”
 “Whatever for? She doesn’t cook.” For the sake of his own family’s
happiness, Jasmine’s father has been trying to encourage his mother to
move into a house in town following the death of her husband. But progress
has been slowed by the Dowager Baroness’s arbitrary demands: a sauna,
his-and-hers sinks in the bathroom, a wine cellar – none of which is likely
to be used. Even the wine store has steep steps her aged grandmother would
find a challenge.
Jacob shrugs and Jasmine shakes her head. “I’ll pass, thanks. Give
your family my best.”
Jacob gets to his feet and wraps his arm around Kate. Jasmine hopes
she is not going to have to witness them kissing farewell but thankfully they
move into the hall, pulling the kitchen door closed behind them. Jasmine
leaves them to it. With both of them in the British Army, they probably
don’t get to see each other much and Kate’s return to her unit is imminent.
Jasmine opens a cupboard to find some cereal. She has been in this
house so many times, she is comfortable helping herself. She knows where
to find everything and she does not require she be waited on by her host.
She pours a helping of muesli and adds oat milk. Halfway through her
breakfast, Kate emerges, her lips looking plump and red. She takes a seat
opposite Jasmine and stares down at the table for a minute.
“I can’t thank you enough for this,” Kate says. “I know it's my role
you’re taking, that it’s me who should be here. I tried to buy myself out of
the army but it’s too much. I don’t have that sort of money.” Jasmine
wonders if Kate will ask her for the money. Kate must realise the one
benefit of being a Mortimer is the ability to raise cash if needed. But Kate
remains silent. Jasmine reflects money is a weird issue, especially for those
who don’t have it. Friends will ask you for your time before they ask you
for your money, even when both sides would prefer hard cash.
 “I could lend it to you,” Jasmine offers, unable to endure the
stupidity of it all.
“But I couldn’t take it,” Kate replies softly. “You know I couldn’t.”
Jasmine realises she has embarrassed them both, but she cannot understand
the kind of pride that would put Kate on the other side of the world, far
away from her dying brother, for the sake of a few pounds. Pounds Jasmine
doesn’t care about, anyway.
“I’m going to take Petey a cup of tea up. The lazy bones should be
awake already.” Kate stands and re-boils the kettle. She pours hot water into
a mug for tea. Then she elbows her way out of the kitchen. When she
returns, Jasmine has finished her muesli, rinsed her bowl, and loaded
everything into the dishwasher. She does not want to be one of those guests
who gives more trouble than help.
“He’s downstairs.” Kate nods towards the lounge wall. “Can you
keep him company for a bit, while I nip to the shops?”
Jasmine heads into the hall and opens the door to the lounge. On one
side is an unfamiliar reclining armchair, the kind used by the elderly. It is
positioned in the bay window, to catch the morning light. Petey is lying on
the chair. Jasmine sits in the normal armchair beside him.
“How are you today?” she asks.
“Better,” he says, ignoring the elephant. “What about you?”
“Slept like a log.” She cannot believe how stilted conversation
between them has become. She needs to do better. She casts around for
something to talk about but almost every area feels forbidden. The present
is dismal, the future even worse. So she takes recourse in the time that is
still safe, the past.
“I was thinking last night,” she lies, “about that time we all went
camping on the coast.” It was one of Jasmine’s happiest memories. A group
of them from sixth form in two cars. They hadn’t done anything particularly
exciting – some bodyboarding, sunbathing, barbies on the beach – but the
little adventures of each day would stay bright and clear forever.
When Kate returns an hour later, she finds the two of them still
giggling over some practical joke involving a dead crab. She smiles and
quietly closes the door, unnoticed by both. It is right for Jasmine to be here.
Kate hasn’t heard Petey laugh once in the almost fortnight she has been
home. But less than a day around Jasmine and he is as happy as could be
hoped. She is not one for praying, but if every day Petey has left could be as
good as this one, she would spend an hour on her knees every night.
 A Slow Dance with Death

After Kate returns to her unit, Jasmine finds her life coalescing around
Petey. The original plan for Gillian to take four days of caring for Petey,
doesn’t survive the first fortnight after his daily radiotherapy starts. As
Jasmine points out, Gillian is still working long hours on the days when she
is not at home with her son. The toll on her is visible. She carries an aura of
complete exhaustion. When Gillian’s weary brain makes a mistake with
Petey’s medication causing her to panic and call and ambulance, Jasmine
sits the older woman down for a heart-to-heart.
“I know you want to do everything for Petey,” she says, “but if you
carry on like this, it won’t be long before you can’t do anything. You will
end up sick yourself. You need a day to rest. Let me do Wednesdays.”
Fresh from the fear she had poisoned her own child, Gillian nods
mutely. And so Jasmine assumes the greater amount of Petey’s care. It cuts
the time for her to do her own studying to three days and she is no
exception to needing rest too. She tries to use the time when Petey is
sleeping during the day to read the required books and texts but the time is
fragmented and she often finds herself having to re-read a paper from the
start after being interrupted partway through. Once a week, she has a call
with her tutor to run through anything she is struggling to understand and he
always takes time at the close to see how Jasmine is coping. But Jasmine,
never one to admit weakness, is stubborn in her insistence she is managing
everything.
In truth, she has little time to dwell on her breakup with Ben or the
life she left behind at university. When he does slip into her thoughts, she is
quick to push him out of her mind. It is not hard as she is beyond busy.
Sometimes, though, he sneaks into her dreams, in X-rated scenes, leaving
her to wake in a sea of lust and loss. But mostly, she falls into bed each
night drained, sleeps without memorable dreams and rises in the morning,
to repeat the previous day. Flora comes around one night and forces her to
come out for a drink with their old crowd. But Jasmine spends the evening
feeling awkward, sitting with Petey’s friends without Petey himself. Flora
senses it, and from then on, the outings she arranges are just the two of
them: a trip to the cinema; an evening of facials and pedicures and the most
ludicrous of all; a light-hearted night at the bingo.
Jasmine endures all of these with a good nature that would have
surprised her own family. While each activity seems more irrelevant than
the last, she is touched by Flora’s motivation for doing them. And each
evening with Flora is a respite from the ever-present nightmare of living
with terminal cancer. The cheerful, uncomplaining optimism that
characterised Petey is gone. He seems stunned by his sheer bad luck and
struggles to come to terms with it. Jasmine has lost count of the number of
times he has expressed some version of Why me?. He turns the smallest
issues inside out, looking to see if it was something he did or something he
didn’t do. Jasmine is not a natural comforter; she has always been more
inclined to fix rather than console. But what do you do when there is
something you cannot fix?
Alone in Kate’s old bedroom, she searches the internet for the
faintest hope of a cure, for some miracle drug or clinical trial offering the
slightest chance of survival. But all she finds are the charlatans, proclaiming
that doctors don’t want you to know this or promising survival in return for
tens of thousands of dollars of dubious treatment. She calls her sister Anna,
a final-year medical student in London, but Anna’s bleak pragmatism
confirms the myth of sham procedures.
“Sometimes, people get sick for no rhyme or reason. Very, very
rarely, a few individuals get better for no rhyme or reason. Parents raise
their children from the earliest days with the expectation actions have
consequences: “don’t brush your teeth, you’ll need fillings” or “don’t do
your homework, no television”. Mostly, it’s true. But a side-effect is, we
aren’t good at coping with random and unexpected events. Petey has a
tumour on his brain stem. He hasn’t done anything to put it there. He is not
at fault. But cause and effect are so strongly wired in our brains, he can’t
stop looking for a reason.”
“But what if there is a chance out there? What if I can find
something weird and wonderful?”
“The world spends billions of dollars a year looking for cancer
treatments. Thousands of doctors and medical researchers have spent their
entire lives studying cancers. The moment someone finds even a slightly
viable treatment that might only give a couple of extra months of survival,
they trumpet it to the skies. You aren’t going to find something hiding in an
obscure part of the internet. Put your time and energy into making his life
better or your own life better.”
But making Petey's life better is difficult. Jasmine takes him to his
radiation therapy and she watches him get sicker and weaker with each trip.
Never beefy, Petey’s already slender frame shrinks further until Jasmine
wonders how he can still exist. Despite the steroids, his energy levels drop.
Jasmine is grateful for the disabled parking badge Gillian had the
forethought to apply for, a tip she was given by a colleague.
She is sitting with Petey, waiting for his final radiation treatment
when he looks directly at her.
“I don’t think I can do this again,” he says. And Jasmine nods. She
doesn’t think he could do it again either. But it is the first time Petey has
ever retreated from his insistence he will do everything possible to fight the
tumour.
The news from the follow-up scan is not good. While the tumour
has not progressed, it has not shrunk. Jasmine can tell Petey is shocked by
the news. He had believed with an unwavering intensity the physical toll of
the radiation therapy would be matched by its devastating blow to the
tumour. He is stunned. She watches as the hope disappears from Petey's
grey eyes. Her hand covers his. She moves her head towards him and kisses
his cheek. In that moment, she is glad she and Ben are finished. She would
not feel free to give Petey the love and support he needs, if every touch,
every kiss was stained with guilt and betrayal.
“There is still chemo,” she whispers, but Petey is silent. His hand
tightens under hers.
The decision is taken to start chemotherapy. Jasmine texts Gillian
the news, so she has time to process her emotions before getting home from
work. Both of them need to stay upbeat so Petey doesn’t collapse.
That evening, with Petey in bed, Jasmine sits with Gillian as she
weeps. Both of them know now they are fighting for every day of Petey’s
life. Everything is invested in the chemotherapy. But, fresh from talking to
her sister, Jasmine makes it clear to Gillian, just how sick it might make her
son.
 “It’s a delicate balance,” she says, repeating Anna’s words. “To
poison him to within an inch of his life, to try and kill the cancer faster than
it kills the patient.”
The day Petey is due to start the chemotherapy, Jasmine is again on
duty. As she looks after Petey during most of the working week, the
majority of his appointments have fallen to her. Petey has recovered from
the depressing news of the radiotherapy and is joking gently as they drive
into town with the morning commuter traffic. Jasmine is astounded by his
courage. She knows how badly he suffered with the radiation and he is
aware the chemotherapy regime may be hard. She hugs him when they exit
the car and holds his hand as they make their way to the clinic.
But it is all in vain. When Petey’s blood tests come back, the doctors
refuse to start chemotherapy. In layman’s terms, he is too poorly; his blood
cell count is too low. Frustrated, Petey drops his head to his hands. When
they walk out of the hospital, he explodes with an uncharacteristic torrent of
swear words. Jasmine aches for him. If it would help, she would join him.
The awful irony is not lost on her – the one thing he needs to keep him alive
is the one thing he cannot have because it would kill him.
When Petey’s fit of temper subsides, Jasmine moves in to hold him.
For the first time since he started treatment, she sees tears leaking from his
closed eyelids and she tightens her embrace. They stand locked together in
the carpark until Petey lets his breath out in one enormous sigh.
“Let’s go home,” he says. He stays slumped in the front seat and
silent all the way back and goes to lie upstairs in his room. When Gillian
gets home, Jasmine has to deal with her concern as well.
“They said not to worry. It’s not uncommon and it doesn’t matter
too much,” Jasmine relays the doctor’s words. But despite this, all of them
do worry. At night, when Jasmine closes her eyes, all she can imagine is the
cancer, growing and spreading with nothing to hold it in check.
They are all relieved when at the next appointment, the all-clear is
given for treatment to start. The chemotherapy will be given over the next
few days and then there will be at least three weeks of rest before the cycle
begins again. Petey leaves the hospital upbeat, and his mood continues
positive over the next few weeks. He tolerates the chemo better than he
feared and even makes some plans. Jasmine is more cautious. She
remembers the radiation wasn’t so bad in the beginning either. But still, it is
a joy to see Petey having fun. They take a trip to the local pub, the first time
Petey has been out in public since his diagnosis. He sits in the corner, the
weak spring sunshine filtering through the lead-paned window. There is a
flood of offers of drinks from the regulars, showing their support for the
young lad. Most of them, Petey turns down as he has to avoid alcohol. The
barmaid flirts with him outrageously. It lifts his spirits and Jasmine resolves
to try one or two other pub-related activities. Quiz night, maybe, or a pub
lunch, perhaps with one or two of his friends.
One day, Flora and Jasmine take him to the coast. They sit on the
seafront, wrapped in coats against the bracing wind, and eat ice cream and
sorbet. They go to the arcade on the pier and try their luck on the one-armed
bandits and shove-a-two-penny machines. Petey wins at air hockey and is
triumphant. He sleeps in the car all the way back, but everyone has such a
good time they are emboldened to try again. The next week, they head off
to a theme park. Petey does not seem to mind being restricted to the more
sedate rides, the carousel, and the toy train, along with the littlest kids. He
has as much fun as the toddlers.
He is doing so well, Gillian begins to think a holiday might be
possible. When Jasmine retires to her little room to talk to Sean or Anna or
Flora, she leaves Gillian paging through holiday cottage listings and cross-
checking Petey’s chemo schedule. One day, Gillian slides an image of a
quaint little slate roofed cottage across to Jasmine, with the question, “What
do you think?”
The oak door to the white-painted cottage is framed by a rambling
rose, dripping with masses of deep pink flowers. The sea is visible in the
background, a perfect blue on a sunny day. Jasmine doubts it will look the
same in spring but she says, “Cute”, and that is all the encouragement
Gillian needs.
“It’s a bargain, out of season. Three proper bedrooms, too,” Gillian
says happily as she clicks Book, and Jasmine realises she will be going with
them. She is not sure how she feels. She could do with a break from the
emotional rollercoaster of caring for Petey but tendrils of guilt wrap around
her each time such a thought creeps in. After all, Petey doesn’t get a break
from being sick and Gillian doesn’t get a break from watching her son die.
Oblivious to Jasmine’s silence, Gillian reminisces about holidays
long gone. “When Kate and Petey were little,” she says, “we used to go
every year. Of course, we’d be camping, but I don’t think he’d manage
staying in a tent now. He was always in charge of putting the tent up. He
loved it! It was one of the few times he got to boss his sister around.”
Jasmine also has to factor in the looming deadline of her dissertation
submission. She still has so much left to do. And if the three of them will be
away on holiday, she will need to submit early. Her timetable of work will
need to be ramped up with some additional late-night sessions. Her gut
twists with stress. She closes her eyes. This is a good thing Gillian is trying
to do for Petey, to bring a little fun and light into his life. She will just have
to cope. It will be tight, but she will just have to do it.
 While Gillian briefly debates keeping the holiday a surprise for
Petey versus enjoying the anticipation, Jasmine re-plans her study schedule.
Over the next few days, Gillian and Petey talk of nothing but the holiday
until the spectre of the next round of chemo returns. Meanwhile, Jasmine
spends every available spare hour in her room, checking data or drafting
and re-drafting her essay.
One morning, feeling groggy after working on her dissertation until
the early hours, she takes Petey his morning tea, Gillian having already left
for work. She finds Petey still asleep, but he doesn’t look right. His
forehead is damp with sweat and his breathing is not the deep, even breath
of easy sleep. Worried, she drops her hand to his shoulder and shakes him.
His lids flutter but drop closed again.
She chews her lip. This is new. Her senses scream something is
wrong, but what if he’s just tired from a bad night? She feels stupid – her
normally acute brain sluggish and hesitant. If she calls an ambulance and it
turns out Petey’s just sleepy, she’ll never live it down. Indecisiveness has
never been one of her traits, but in this moment, she doesn’t know what to
do. She could call Gillian, but pulling Gillian out of work, scaring her
unnecessarily, would be cruel.
Finally, she calls the surgery. Petey is due a visit from the
community nurse later, and Jasmine asks if they can stop by sooner. She has
only just finished navigating the robotic options and explaining the issue to
the intractable receptionist when the doorbell rings. Jasmine hurries
downstairs and drowns in relief to see a nurse on the doorstep.
“I hope you don’t mind I’m early today,” the nurse chirps, “but I’ve
got another patient nearby and I thought I’d squeeze you in first?”
Jasmine can’t get the nurse up the stairs quickly enough. She
forgoes the mandatory offer and declination of tea and instead ushers the
nurse into Petey’s room. The nurse’s breezy chatter is replaced with silence
as she slips into her ultra-professional persona, checking on her patient.
Then she hauls out her phone.
“I need an ambulance,” she calmly says to the dispatcher and
Jasmine goes cold. The nurse gives the address and then instructs Jasmine
to go back downstairs, to open the front door and leave it ajar. Jasmine
waits in the front garden to flag down the ambulance if necessary. After all,
the nurse is with Petey and she can do nothing there. She uses the time to
call Gillian, who picks up immediately. She is far calmer than Jasmine
expects and clearer thinking. She will wait to hear what the paramedics
decide. If he is to go to hospital, she will meet them there. It will be much
quicker for her leaving from work.
The flashing blue lights alert Jasmine even before she can make out
the shape of the ambulance. The vehicle pulls to a stop outside the house.
The paramedics unhurriedly unload their kit and head upstairs. Petey’s
room is not large and with a nurse and the two paramedics, there is no room
for Jasmine. She waits on the landing outside, hovering in case she is
needed, although she knows there is nothing she can offer. She has never
felt so useless. It is a humbling feeling. Underneath it all is a desperate
prayer for Petey not to die. She is not ready to lose him yet.
When the paramedics are ready to move Petey, she stands back. The
feeling of her own inadequacy threatens to overwhelm her but she tries to
hold steady. She texts Gillian the one word, Hospital. Then everyone is
gone and Jasmine is alone in the house with nothing but a trail of detritus to
mark the drama of the last few minutes.
 Making Memories

Jasmine takes a moment just to breathe. She is shocked at how quickly life
can transform from humdrum to crisis, even when you know crisis may not
be far away.
Although the urge to throw clothes in a bag and rally-drive to the
hospital is immense, sense prevails. She makes herself tea, unusually
putting a spoonful of sugar in the cup and forces herself to sit and drink the
sweetened concoction. She uses the time to make a list of what Petey might
need. Pyjamas, slippers, dressing gown, phone, charger, and, of course,
medications. Then she carefully packs everything in a bag before she locks
up the house and climbs into the car. She drives slowly, aware an accident
would help nobody at this point. She is exhausted and it is not yet noon.
Gillian meets her at the hospital and Jasmine is reassured by the
older woman’s composure. For the past couple of hours, Jasmine has felt
like a child playing at being a grown-up and is reassured there is another
adult to take over.
“They think he has an infection,” Gillian explains. “They’ve started
him on fluids and antibiotics and he'll be fine. You did well.”
But Jasmine can no more accept unearned praise than she can give
it. “It was nothing to do with me,” she mumbles. “I didn’t know what to do.
I dithered. It was sheer luck the district nurse came by early.” She hangs her
head, avoiding Gillian’s eyes.
Gillian’s hand lands on the younger woman’s shoulder. “Don’t beat
yourself up about it, love. He’s here. It was caught in time. Experience is a
great teacher. Next time you will know.”
But Jasmine is clever enough to realise that next time may not look
the same. She knows left to herself, she would have sat on her hands
waiting for fear of appearing foolish, all while Petey got sicker and sicker.
She resolves in future to trust her intuition. If something is not right, better
to act.
Petey only spends a couple of days in hospital. He is young and for
all that he has terminal cancer, his body is resilient. After that first day,
Jasmine does not visit him. Free from the normal routine, she takes the
opportunity to focus on her dissertation and makes rapid progress without
the usual interruptions. By the time Gillian brings her son back home,
Jasmine is almost finished. If she were at university, she would refine it
further, but here, she does not have the luxury of time. She deems it good
enough and submits.
When Petey shambles in and smiles at her, his grey eyes alighting
with good humour and his zest for life, her heart lifts. The slight lingering
fear she might lose him too soon evaporates. He gives her a hug but the
little strength he has can barely make an impression. It is more the warmth
of his arms and a sense of enclosure. It is enough. It is good to have him
home.
Amazingly, a week later, Petey’s bloodwork is sufficiently robust to
start the next round of chemo. But this time, Petey is noticeably weaker.
Jasmine realises the cumulative effect is taking its toll. Concerned, she
mentions her fears to Gillian.
 “Do you think he’s going to be strong enough to cope with the car
journey to the holiday cottage?”
Petey’s mother continues stirring the pan of rice on the stove, her
back to Jasmine. “We’ll make him a nest of quilts in the back. He can sleep.
It will be fine.”
“But if you cancel, you might get your money back.”
“It’s too late. Besides, he wants to go and it will be our last ever
holiday together.” Gillian’s voice is flat, emotionless, but Jasmine can tell
those words have cost her. Whatever the toll, it is a price both mother and
son are prepared to pay. And it is such a modest wish. They aren’t looking
to fly to an exotic island, or see the sights of some far-flung city. All they
want is to revisit a place that already has many happy memories and
Jasmine decides she will do whatever she can to make it happen.
When the day comes, Jasmine helps Petey in to the back seat of
Gillian’s car, together with quilts, cushions, a neck pillow, and a sick bowl.
Jasmine and Gillian have kept their packing to a minimum but even so, the
trunk of the car is overflowing. They set off early, hoping to avoid the worst
of any traffic, and make such good time they arrive before the cottage is
ready. Gillian finds a spot to park on the seafront and Jasmine nips out to
buy chips. Despite the overcast day and the blustery wind coming off the
sea, they bundle into coats and sit on a bench to eat. Petey’s eyes are
shining as he unlaces his trainers and rolls up his jeans to paddle in the edge
of the waves.
“Jesus, that’s cold!” he says, but he doesn’t retreat. Jasmine takes
pictures with her phone, avoiding the thought these are for the memory
bank, before she kicks off her shoes and they dance together in the freezing
water. They warm up in a café and although Petey cannot face a cream tea,
he’s happy to watch them scoff big, craggy scones topped with mounds of
thick, red jam.
Finally, they head off to the cottage, which, despite Jasmine’s
doubts, looks as cute in real life as it did in the photos. True, the leaves on
the roses around the door are only just beginning to unfurl, but the path to
the door is lined with showy tulips and fragrant grape hyacinth. A weary
Petey makes his way straight to the ground-floor bedroom and is asleep,
fully-clothed, in minutes.
Despite the long drive, Jasmine sleeps only fitfully. Her system
reacts poorly to change and the first night in a new bed is always alien to
her. When she hears a noise below, she gets up to investigate. The sky is
lightening to the grey-blue that precedes dawn, allowing her to move
around safely. She finds Petey unlocking a side door and hurries to help.
“I wanted to watch the sunrise,” he explains and Jasmine nods.
There is a little breakfast patio with painted cast-iron furniture and she
drags two chairs around to face the east. The first rays of a golden sun are
peaking above the horizon. They sit for a while in comfortable silence and
then Petey takes her hand. The old thrill she used to feel at his touch is
gone, but the sense of warmth and love still abides.
“Thank you,” he says quietly. And Jasmine knows, without being
told, the magnitude of emotion he is trying to convey. She doesn’t attempt
to deprecate or joke; she merely nods. They watch the sunrise together until
the light is strong enough to glitter off the tiny waves in the bay.
“I don’t want to die.”
“I know.” She gently tightens her fingers on his. There is nothing
more she can offer.
 All Change

On the last day of the holiday, Jasmine can see Petey is struggling. He
complains of a headache, not a new symptom but his energy levels seem
lower too. Jasmine is worried. No one voices their concern but there is
relief in the air as they start to pack up. Perhaps, she thinks, it is a good
thing about holidays. They make you appreciate home. Jasmine has never
been so pleased to see the soft lilac walls and twinkling fairy lights of
Kate’s room.
She has another reason for wanting to get back. Her exams are
looming. She needs to study and a return to their regular routines will help.
She has been troubled about her exams for a while. Petey is due to start
another cycle of chemotherapy and the accompanying fatigue will likely
wipe him out for days. She finally gives in and tells her tutor of her
concerns.
“I’m not sure coming back will be possible,” she says. “And the
distance is too great to commute. Maybe this was a mistake?”
But her tutor doesn’t seem surprised. “I wondered if it might come
to this. Leave it with me.”
The next time they meet on a video call, he has an answer. “I’ve
spoken to the Head of Department. We are prepared to support you. We can
arrange for you to sit your exams at a local exam centre. In this case, I have
spoken to the Bridgetown Sixth Form. You are an alumnus, I think? I hope
so, because I told them you were and explained our problem. There may be
a slight charge, but they will permit you to sit our exams in their centre.”
Jasmine sits back in relief. She can only imagine how many thanks
she owes to her tutor. He must have really gone to bat on her behalf. “Yes,”
she says. “I went to Bridgetown.” Never did she anticipate when she
lobbied her father to be allowed to attend the local sixth form how
important it might be. “I’m happy to pay the charge.” She reckons it will
probably be cheaper than her train fare, anyway. “And thank you,” she says
as they close off the call. “For everything.”
“De nada,” he responds, and Jasmine smiles.
The next day, she takes Petey for his chemo. They are on their way
up the steps from the car park when Petey stops. He looks ashen and he
seems to waver, swaying slightly. Jasmine lowers him until he is sitting on
the step. “Wait here,” she orders, pushing his head down between his knees.
She sprints up the remaining steps, grabs a wheelchair from the
entranceway, and rolls it back to Petey. She positions it at right angles to the
bottom step and locks on the brake. Standing below him, a hand under each
armpit, she leans back and uses her weight to pull him upright. He staggers
down the step, breathing heavily, and she pivots him to line up with the
chair.
But by the time they get to the clinic, Petey seems to have
recovered. He insists on walking in to see the doctor. Still, Jasmine is
terrified this odd turn may indicate his bloodwork will be too poorly for
chemo.
“Your tumour markers are high,” the doctor remarks.
“Does that mean he’s too ill for chemo?” she asks. “Will the
treatment go ahead?”
 “I think we’ll do this one and see how it goes,” he says, giving no
outward sign of assurance.
Despite Petey’s assertion he is fine, Jasmine makes him sit in the
wheelchair on their way out. She pushes him along the paths, ignoring his
protests until they get to the car. As soon as she locks the brake, Petey
stands unaided. “See,” he says pointedly as he opens the door and clambers
into the passenger seat.
Jasmine lets him have his mini triumph, but she takes the precaution
of mentioning the odd turn to Gillian when they are alone.
“Did you ask the doctor about it?” she asks.
“I wanted to, but Petey thought it was nothing. Just one of those
things, like when you stand up too quickly. And it might have been, but it
lasted too long. I think he was worried they wouldn’t give him more chemo.
I know I was.”
“But he’s okay now?”
Jasmine nods. “Seems to be.”
“And his bloodwork came back okay?”
“Well, they said they would go ahead with the chemo.” She shrugs
but resolves to call Anna that evening.
Jasmine messages first. Anna’s hours seem to be impossible to
predict, although she is only a medical student and not yet a doctor. But she
is almost qualified. Another couple of months and Anna will be treating
patients. Moreover, Jasmine knows how clever her sister is. And she has a
faith in Anna’s expertise that would surprise her sister.
Anna calls back immediately.
“You’re up late,” she greets Jasmine.
“I wanted to speak to you. And sometimes it seems you keep
vampire time.”
 Anna chuckles. “Go you. You’ll be quoting Supernatural next.”
“What’s that?”
“A TV programme, m’lud. Honestly, call yourself a student?”
“Well, I’m not getting much studying done. I’m too worried.”
Jasmine describes Petey’s turn.
Anna sighs. “What did the doctor say about his bloodwork?”
“All he said was the tumour markers were high but the chemo could
go ahead.”
Anna is silent.
“Anna?” she prompts.
“The good news is it’s not anaemia. Otherwise, the chemo would be
delayed.” Anna’s voice softens. “The bad news is high tumour markers
mean the chemo isn’t working, Jasmine. He’s doing another round just to
see, but the outlook isn’t good.”
“Oh.” Jasmine collapses back on the bed, stunned. This is one piece
of news she doesn’t intend to share with Petey or his mum.
She sees Anna turn away and can hear her light tapping. Anna
comes back to the screen. “I’ve just checked. The drug they are using is
effective in seventy-five per cent of cases.”
“That still means it doesn't work for one person out of every four.
How is that even possible?”
“Oncology is a different world.”
When she disconnects from talking to Anna, Jasmine lies down in
her bed, but sleep is elusive. She needs to stop thinking about cancer, so she
opens her laptop and starts reading through some academic papers,
preparing to take notes. But somehow, an analysis of voting patterns in
young adults seems irrelevant compared to the momentous news her sister
has just given her. That chemotherapy drugs don’t work on everyone. For
some reason, she had assumed they always work but lose their effectiveness
over time. She cannot understand how she missed this obvious issue. And
she cannot bring herself to care about politics tonight.
Petey starts the cycle of chemotherapy. He sleeps more often in the
reclining armchair in the front room. Drifting in and out of wakefulness,
watching the world go by without him. The school bus stops across the
road, letting the local kids dismount and scatter. Jasmine realises it was only
five years before that Petey himself was one of them. The anti-sickness
drugs help but still he is losing weight, despite the steroids. His appetite
disappears. Gillian even re-introduces meat into the house, in case a morsel
of bacon can revive his taste buds, but it is to no avail. She capitulates and
buys him a couple of tracksuit bottoms with smaller waist sizes, but his
height hasn’t diminished and his legs seem to stick way beyond the ends of
them.
The day before her exams begin, Jasmine is upstairs trying to revise
when she hears Gillian call from below, her voice urgent and fearful.
Jasmine swings out of her chair and dashes down the stairs. Petey is lying
angled across the kitchen floor, flat on his back, with Gillian straddling his
body, pushing down on his chest with all her might. Jasmine doesn’t need
Gillian’s instruction to call an ambulance. She already has her phone out of
her pocket and is dialling the emergency services.
When the operative asks, “Is the patient breathing?”, she replies,
“No. His mother is doing CPR.” Jasmine watches Gillian pause to hold
Petey’s nose and puff into his mouth before she goes back to the
compressions. She wonders when and where Gillian learnt to do
resuscitation, but the operative interrupts her thought, asking her to open the
front door. They stay on the line while Jasmine waits in the front garden.
 Two minutes later, flashing lights give warning before an estate car
emblazoned in yellow-and-green checkerboard stickers pulls to a halt on the
road outside. A man gets out, a green-clad angel. He moves with fast but
definite movements, extracting a case and striding to the door. Jasmine
shows him to the kitchen and watches as he opens his case and removes a
pair of scissors. He cuts the front of Petey’s T-shirt, hem to neck, and peels
the edges apart to expose a pale, hairless chest. With a start, Jasmine notices
how thin Petey has become, how his ribs are the only thing stopping his
skin from collapsing.
One by one, the paramedic places the pads. Beside her, Jasmine can
hear Gillian praying, “Don’t let this be it! Please, dear God, don’t let this be
it!” Jasmine feels like a traitor herself, because she is thinking, Maybe this
is best. If the chemo isn’t working, a quick, painless death might be better.
Maybe, this is the best we can hope for.
The paramedic rocks backwards, clearing the body, and the
defibrillator takes over. Just as the first shock ripples through Petey,
Jasmine hears a discordant siren blasting through the still open front door.
She runs to greet the new arrivals, a crew of two exiting an ambulance.
They unload some kit and push past her as she points straight ahead, her
body blocking the stairs. Their arrival leaves her pushed out of the kitchen
and she stands on the edges, trying to see vague glimpses of Petey. The
paramedics work together, exchanging cryptic messages, often comprising
letters of the alphabet and numbers. Gillian sees her and smiles, enough for
Jasmine to understand the defibrillator has done its job. Petey is alive. She
wishes she could rejoice as clearly as Gillian does. But then, Gillian doesn’t
know they are already on the last path. This, right here, is a symptom of the
end stage.
 The paramedics continue to work. Stuck on the periphery, Jasmine
still hears enough to realise they are taking him to the hospital. She and
Gillian are eventually displaced to the lounge doorway as a gurney is
wheeled in. Petey is transferred from floor to gurney and then he is out of
the door, together with oxygen mask and defibrillator still attached. Gillian
follows the paramedics, and once more, Jasmine is left in the sudden quiet,
surrounded by debris.
She sits heavily in a kitchen chair. She debates calling Anna, but
what can her sister do? The harshest reality of Petey’s illness overwhelms
her. There is no more hope. There are no other treatments. She is not God.
There will be no miracles.
She is unaware of how much time passes before she remembers she
has things to do. She clears up, packs a case for Petey and heads to the
hospital. She swings by the hospital shop and picks up a sandwich for
herself and Gillian. It won’t do Petey any good if his carers are
incapacitated.
Gillian’s earlier joy has disappeared. Petey is asleep; at least his
eyes are closed. His dark hair is stark against the pillow, framing his
rounded face – evidence of the high doses of steroids. He refused to shave
his hair. The radiation has removed patches but the chemo has had no
impact and he has merely re-styled his hair with the classic comb-over. Still
on oxygen, various machines trace seemingly random patterns.
Gillian looks up as Jasmine joins her. “It was a respiratory arrest,”
she whispers.
Jasmine can’t tell if she is trying not to wake her son or stop him
hearing the diagnosis, or if the news is just too weighty to be said out loud,
but Jasmine replies in the same tone. “What does that mean?”
“The tumour is affecting his ability to breathe.”
 “Oh.” Such a short word, so inadequate.
“The doctor thinks the chemo isn’t working.”
Jasmine sits beside Gillian and takes her hand. She cannot give
anything more than physical comfort and a willing ear if Gillian wants to
talk. She does not.
Eventually, Gillian rouses herself. “You go home, love,” she says.
“No point us both being here.”
Jasmine passes over the car key. “I’ll get a taxi back,” she says. She
has no idea when Gillian will leave her son, but it may be late and taxis may
be thin on the ground. Gillian nods, her attention elsewhere, but she slides
the key into her trouser pocket.
Jasmine goes to bed early. She expects to find it hard to sleep but
exhaustion takes over. The following morning, she catches a bus to the
exam hall. The car on the drive is the only indication Gillian made it home.
In one respect, the timing is fortunate. For Gillian is on leave this week to
cover Jasmine’s exams.
Jasmine feels ill-prepared. She has tried to fit in revision wherever
possible, but she knows she hasn’t done nearly enough. Never before has
she entered an exam hall with this feeling of dread. Normally, there is
confidence, even a small measure of excitement. But today, she has more in
common with the majority. She looks around at the young faces and
marvels at their innocence. These exams are their lives’ greatest test. It is
almost laughable to her; she was once this naïve.
The invigilator starts the exam and she reads through the questions.
She cannot answer any of them well. She picks the ones she has the best
chance on and begins. From time to time, kids get up and leave quietly,
sliding out of the hall. The invigilator calls the end of time. She stands and
leaves.
 She would like to go to the hospital, but the exam has shown how
woefully unprepared she is. She takes the bus back to Larkford village and
walks the short distance to Petey’s, surprised to find Gillian’s car in the
drive.
“Petey was asking after you,” Gillian says as she makes Jasmine a
cup of tea. “Will you come in for visiting this evening?”
Jasmine considers her morning’s resolve to study more. But she long
ago made her decision to support Petey. What would everything she has
done signify if she deserted him now? She nods, then says, “I’ll come with
you this evening, but I’ll need to study this afternoon.” It’s a compromise.
And so they continue. Then one day Gillian comes back and asks to
talk to Jasmine. She sits across the kitchen table and waits. Gillian puts two
mugs of tea down and takes her chair. The older woman’s face is careworn
and her eyes are red. She is not yet fifty but she looks a decade older.
“The doctors have suggested a hospice.”
“No …” Jasmine breathes the word. “Petey can’t want that?”
“He’d choose it, if he thought it would spare us.” Gillian lays her
hands flat on the table. “But I want to bring him home. If this is the end, I
want him here.”
Jasmine nods. She can understand why. Best for Petey, best for
Gillian.
“The thing is, it will be a lot of work. He’s not able to do much,
even with the oxygen. I’ve asked work for time off, and they’ve agreed.
Now, I’m asking you. Do you still want to help? You have been marvellous.
But I won’t judge you if you don’t want to stay till the bitter end. No one
will. Watching someone die can destroy people.”
“I hear what you are saying and I understand. But I started this
journey, knowing how it would end. I will stay. If it isn’t too much for you.”
 Gillian reaches across to grab Jasmine’s hand. “Oh! How could you
think that! There’s been so many days when the only reason I have got
through them has been you. I’ve been so lucky to have had you through all
this. To have done it alone would have been so much harder.”
“Then we are agreed.” Jasmine squeezes Gillian’s hand and looks
into the older woman’s eyes. “Bring your boy home.”
They resolve to bring Petey home on the day of her last exam. She
cannot wait for it to be over, to see Petey’s face when he knows he is home.
She jogs from the bus stop, something she hasn’t done since puberty. Then
she scrambles up the stairs and breathlessly pushes into his room. His grey
eyes light up at her entrance and she crosses the room. Sitting on the newly
installed hospital bed, she lowers her head to his, cheek to his cheek.
“Welcome home,” she whispers.
 The End of the Affair

Petey dies one glorious morning in June, just as the world is waking.
A window was cracked open to let the sour air from the room
escape, but the morning was still and no fresh breeze filters through. Yet the
songs of goldfinches and wagtails, chirping and trilling as they greeted the
dawn of a summer’s day, filled the room. The sun, swinging a hand-span
above the horizon, had begun to steal fingers of golden light through the
thin drapes.
By tacit agreement, neither Jasmine nor Gillian wanted to leave
Petey alone for a single second in case he woke and thought himself
abandoned. Jasmine could see Gillian diminishing before her eyes,
hollowed out by the grief yet to come, worn through by the care she had
tried to give her son. It was clear to both that this time Petey would not
rally; Gillian finally gave in to argument and summoned Kate back from
Afghanistan. Jasmine took the bulk of the night shifts, pressing his mother
to get some sleep. But although Gillian was in her bed, she was awake
when Jasmine came to get her in the darkness before sunrise. She looked as
exhausted as the previous evening.
Snuggled in Kate’s double bed, Jasmine too found it impossible to
sleep. Her thoughts remained in the room along the landing – so much
misery contained in one small space. In the end, she gave up trying and
made her way to the kitchen. She makes coffee for herself, with two heaped
spoons of granules, and tea for Gillian, strong and sweet. Then she elbowed
her way through the door, hands full of warm comfort, to help them face the
day ahead.
Gillian was lying on the bed beside Petey, her hand on his shoulder,
her eyes closed, mother and son both as drawn as each other. Jasmine
crossed the room to put the mugs down on a chest of drawers when Petey
gave a sigh, as if every trace of air had left his body. The tea slopped onto
the carpet as Jasmine hurried to get rid of her burdens. She crossed to the
bed, slid her hand under the quilt, and found Petey’s wrist. Curling her
fingers around his arm, she held them over his vein. His skin was still
warm. She adjusted her grip, moving gently up and down, desperate to feel
even the faintest of pulses. She closed her eyes, as if it might make her
sense of touch sharper. No trace. She withdrew her hand and considered for
a minute; it would be the cruellest trick to rouse his mother for a false
alarm. Once more, she laid her fingers gently on Petey’s body, this time on
the hollow to the side of his Adam’s apple. Pressed down. Nothing.
Her first instinct was to reach out and shake Gillian but then she
stopped. The moment Gillian awoke, it would all change. They would begin
a new normal, one in which Petey did not exist, where he would not marry,
would not have children, would not grow old. A new normal in which
Gillian buried her son and lived her life bereft of her child. What did it
matter if she took a few minutes now? Gillian would have the rest of her
life to mourn. Let her sleep a little longer.
This would be the only time Jasmine would have to grieve for her
friend, these few minutes. From the moment she touched his mother,
Gillian’s loss would take over and Jasmine would have to be strong instead.
So she stood by the side of the bed, her hand still on Petey’s wrist, with her
eyes closed as the tears dripped down her cheeks. She remembered the boy
on the bus and his happy grin; she remembered him pushing her books out
of the way to lift her onto the table, stepping between her legs to kiss her.
She remembered her lover’s body over hers, his piercing grey eyes holding
hers as he slid into her, trembling with the effort to keep it slow. She
thought of him dancing at parties, with a bottle of beer in each hand,
twisting and twirling with wild abandon. Petey capering, his long arms
flailing as they walked along the river, Petey always moving, always alive.
Now, Jasmine wipes her face, steels herself, and reaches out.
“Gillian,” she breathes, and the older woman’s eyes fly open. “He’s
gone.”
She sees comprehension extinguishing hope and the older woman’s
face crumples, a moan like a keen escaping as she clutches at the body.
Jasmine backs away. She has no place here, intruding on the last private
moment Gillian has with the boy she raised. She leaves mother and son
together, and closes the door. There are a myriad calls that have to be made,
to the doctor, to the funeral director and, with the heaviest heart, to Kate.
She stops on the landing, though, unable to go further. Leaning back
against the wall, Jasmine realises Petey was her first everything. Her first
love, her first kiss, her first lover, her first death.
 What Jasmine Did Next

“I’m back.”
Jasmine drops the keys into the bowl which stands on a small corner
table in the hallway and goes in search of Gillian. Petey’s mother is exactly
where Jasmine left her, on the hard wooden chair at the end of the kitchen
table.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” Jasmine says with a calmness she doesn’t
feel.
“How did it go?” Gillian rouses herself enough to ask.
“Fine.”
It had not been fine. They’d had five days to register Petey’s death
but Gillian had been obsessed with it, unable to move on and focus on the
funeral. At her insistence, Jasmine had called to make the appointment and
been given a cancellation the next day. How could you cancel a death?
she’d thought. Gillian was clearly in no state to attend, so Jasmine had
gone. She had sat in the little waiting area, two black plastic chairs and a
potted ficus. She perched on the edge of the seat, clutching Petey’s Cause of
Death certificate. A radio, playing low in the background, switched to the
bouncy opening bars of a Kylie song. It was a Petey favourite, one he could
not resist, always pulling her to her feet and spinning her around. Sitting
alone in the slightly dingy waiting room, tears came, big drops rolling down
her cheeks. She could not stop them. There was no sobbing, no ugly crying,
just the tears.
She had no tissues, no handkerchief. She used her sleeve, like a five-
year-old, wiping them from her face but still they came. The song ended
and the tears dried. She knew she must look like a madwoman as she
entered the registrar’s office, but reasoned she was not the first. She needn’t
have worried. The official barely looked at her as he took the certificate and
began to tap on his keyboard.
“What was your relationship to the deceased?”
For a moment, Jasmine considered her answer. “I was his
girlfriend,” she said at last. “Four years.” It was extraneous information, but
she had to say it. Then she added, because she knew it was more pertinent,
“I was present at his death.”
When the registrar was finished, Jasmine took the forms, the death
certificate and the extra copies she had paid for and folded them carefully.
She had no idea if Gillian would need them; Petey had been a young man
with barely a current account to his name, not an elderly businessman with
a portfolio of investments, but he might have had a workplace pension. She
should have brought a handbag, but she had not thought beyond exchanging
the medical certificate for a death certificate so they could cremate his body.
Although she knew she needed to get back, she had stopped for a moment
outside the building, just to breathe, before she set off up the street to find
where she had parked Gillian’s car.
But there is no need to burden Gillian with the story of her
emotional breakdown at a song. So Fine suffices and Jasmine makes tea.
They have not long finished when the doorbell rings. With unspoken
agreement, Jasmine gets up to answer it. There have been quite a few
callers, quiet murmurs of condolences on the doorstep, for Petey and his
mum are well liked in the village. Jasmine has dealt with them all as Gillian
hides in the kitchen, not up to receiving even the gentlest of well-wishers.
But when she opens the door, it is not a neighbour; it is Kate, looking
exhausted but hale. For the first time in weeks, Jasmine feels a small lift in
her shoulders – the tiniest, infinitesimal raise – but it is there.
“Where’s Mum?” Kate extracts herself from the welcoming hug and
Jasmine nods towards the end of the hall. If Jasmine felt a lightening of her
mood at Kate’s arrival, it is nothing to the transformation that comes over
Gillian. For the first time in the hours since Petey’s death, her eyes register
something other than despair.
“Oh! Kate!” she cries as she clings to her daughter and Jasmine
retreats backwards, quietly closing the kitchen door, leaving mother and
child together.
Kate’s arrival signals a major change for Jasmine. For weeks she has
been single-handedly looking after both Gillian and Petey, but now the
relief party has arrived. Kate takes charge. She deals with the crematorium
and the funeral directors. It is Kate who restrains her mother from spending
every last penny she has on Petey’s casket. Her mother is not a rich woman
and Petey would have been appalled if he thought she was spending her
pension fund on something that would soon be nothing but ash. It is Kate
who arranges the wake at the Blue Lion in Larkford, although in truth it
requires nothing beyond a request to the landlord.
So it is that a mere ten days after Petey’s passing, Gillian, flanked by
Kate and Jasmine follows his coffin down the central aisle of the packed
crematorium. The village has turned out en masse despite it being a
working day. Jasmine notices Flora, on the end of one row, reaching out a
hand to squeeze her arm as she passes. Distantly, she notes her own family,
ranged out, father, mother, and four daughters. She is oddly grateful Anna
has made the trip back from London but otherwise she ignores them. She is
not here as a representative of the Mortimer family. She is here as part of
Petey’s.
She is thankful Gillian has chosen traditional hymns, words of
mourning that have no association in her head with Petey, for she is
unwilling to risk a repeat of the incident outside the registrar’s office. Here
she is not only Petey’s girlfriend, she is also the Baron’s daughter, and she
feels the weight of public attention – something she usually avoids.
Kate sits stiff-backed like the soldier she is, and Jasmine realises she
might have more experience of death than any of the mourners present,
despite her youth. Jake had not been able to join her. Gillian clutches her
daughter’s hand on one side. On the other side snuggle her two young
nieces, who are crammed against her body as if love can be transferred by
pressure. Jasmine sits at the end of the pew, gladly yielding her place to the
youngsters, although she feels odd, as if she is giving Petey back to his
family. Family raises you, then lets you wander your own path until, finally,
family claims you once again at the end.
Petey’s father is missing. Gillian has had no contact for years and
Petey had forbidden anyone to look for him when he fell ill. Still, Gillian
had tried but no one seemed to know where he was. In the end, they placed
the death notification in the local paper and one national, and hoped.
The service is brief, but it is still long enough for Jasmine’s mind to
wander and it chooses to think about Ben. She recalls their argument and
the devastation she felt as she walked away from his student house after
their split. She recollects the Ben-shaped emptiness inside her as she set
about packing her clothes for the journey back. She remembers the sheer
heartbreak. She considers it all and finds no regret. Petey is gone and she is
alone. She would not take back one second of the time she gave to her
dying friend, even if it would have bought Ben’s love forever.
But she would have given almost anything else for some way to
have Ben sitting beside her in this moment, this final moment of farewell.
She dips her head and closes her eyes, extraordinarily sad there was no
other ending.
Jasmine’s thoughts are interrupted as Flora stands to give her
eulogy; Kate had asked Jasmine, but she declined. She was tired beyond
belief and had no words left inside her. Instead, his uncle speaks for the
family and Flora for his friends, words which leave the audience one
moment chortling, then weeping as they recall the boy he was and the loss
he leaves behind.
The line outside, as each mourner files past, is excruciating. Jasmine
does not know how Gillian bears it – endless platitudes of sorrow for the
loss. It makes her want to scream. The wake which follows is worse. She
escapes into the beer garden, accompanied by Flora, whose grief for her
childhood friend is only marginally less than hers.
And it is there, sitting on the rough wood of a picnic table, her feet
on the bench, where her sisters find her. She endures Eleanor’s hug. Anna,
more in tune with Jasmine’s feelings, simply squeezes her hand. And then
Phoebe steps forward.
“I don’t know why you’re so upset,” she says. “After all, you
dumped him.”
Jasmine, for all her pacifist principles, wants to hit her baby sister.
Instead, she walks rapidly away. She hears Eleanor’s shocked remonstrance
– “Phoebe!” – and Anna’s more caustic “Could you get any more stupid?”,
before Jasmine finds she is running. For she had dumped him. But she had
seen it as setting them both free to find a great love, much greater than
theirs. She had thought of a future Petey, buying his wife little presents,
taking his son to football, dancing at his daughter’s wedding. Petey happy.
They were supposed to grow apart as they grew old – short-term pain
overlaid with new contentment. Now that was all gone. Her friend rubbed
from the face of the earth, and she has nothing to replace it but grief and
anger at the unfairness of it all.
Jasmine is not fit. She cannot run for long before she is out of
breath. Refusing to enter her family’s Estate, she sticks to the main road
until she turns off just past the Victorian red-brick Community Centre
which used to house the village primary school. She stops at the little
playground at the rear. Wedging her bottom onto a swing seat intended for
someone half her age, she drops her head into her hands and takes deep
steadying breaths.
She is no longer needed here. Petey is gone, and it is Kate’s place to
look after Gillian, not hers. She cannot stay here, nor does she want to, but
she has no job, no other place to live. After Phoebe’s words at the wake,
there is no way she can return to her family home. If her already battered
soul had to endure more of her youngest sister’s mocking, it would crush
her. She takes out her phone and switches it on.
She messages Sean: I need help.
His reply is immediate: I am here for you. Whatever you need.
A place to go. Not for long. Till I find a job. With term over, their
lease for their university digs has finished.
And Sean, ever faithful, responds: Mi casa es su casa.
Once again, Jasmine is in need of sanctuary. Once again, Sean
comes to her rescue. Two days later, after a tearful goodbye with Gillian,
Flora drives Jasmine to the station.
 This time, as the train pulls into Hayburn station, she does not notice
the dereliction, the smokers outside the pub, the desperate people hurrying
home. She sees only Sean, waiting patiently for her. When she walks into
his home, she feels she is leaving her past behind, and when she climbs into
the immaculately made guest bed, she feels as if she could sleep for a week.
Day follows unchanging day. Jasmine had not thought beyond
leaving Larkford and her memories of Petey behind. Now she is stuck.
There is no studying; she has graduated in absentia barely noticing the date.
As a guest, she has no household chores. For the first time in years, she has
nothing to do and no direction.
Her situation is in distinct contrast to her hosts. Richard, as a
Member of Parliament, is a busy man. As his wife, Emily has an equally
busy social life, carefully crafted to offset her husband’s regular absences in
London. And Sean, he is madly in love. The hot mechanic he met last
Christmas is still hot, still willing, and has waited patiently for Sean’s
return. Jasmine sees them together for all of a handful of minutes before she
understands that in Georg, Sean has probably found his life’s partner.
After nearly a week where she cannot seem to move forward,
Jasmine finds herself alone in her room on Saturday night. Following
endless assurances on her part that she would be fine, Sean has finally left
for his date with Georg in the town. Emily is out with her friends, a chick
flick followed by drinks in a wine bar. She invited Jasmine but was clearly
relieved when the invitation was declined and did not press further. To
Jasmine, the thought of a night filled with the trivial affairs of a group of
married middle-aged women, meeting to moan about the perceived
inadequacies of their spouses and the awesomeness of their offspring, was
horrendous. A trip to the dentist would be preferable. She much preferred to
stay safely ensconced in the guest room, trying to progress further than the
opening passage of the latest political memoir. But as she reads the same
paragraph for the third time, she gives up and goes downstairs to warm a
cup of oat milk in the kitchen.
Like a dutiful guest, she stops by the lounge on her way, to put her
head around the door and ask if Richard wants anything. As she waits for
the kettle to boil, she realises she has never been alone with Sean’s father
before. Her friend has always been present to provide a buffer. The thought
makes her a little nervous as she elbows her way through the door, trying
not to spill tea from the slightly overfull cup as she places it on a waiting
coaster.
“Thank you, Jasmine.” Richard looks up from the report he is
reading, and then, seeing her standing holding her own drink, leans over
and sweeps his mess of paperwork to the floor, leaving the sofa clear.
“Sorry. Do sit down.”
Caught, Jasmine sits. She had not wanted company nor to intrude on
Richard’s evening, but to leave now would appear rude. There is a
moment’s awkward silence and then Richard coughs slightly, puts down his
paper, and leans forward. His bushy eyebrows narrow.
“You’ve always been a good friend to Sean,” he says. “Emily and I
appreciate that. I’m glad he has the opportunity to help you in return.”
She smiles. Parents always love praise of their children. She says,
“Who couldn’t help but like him? It’s always been easy to be his friend.”
Richard appears to grimace at her reply. Then he clears his throat
again and says, “I don’t know if you are aware, but Sean suffered quite a lot
at school. It isn’t easy being gay in an area like this. From the moment he
met you, your acceptance helped him feel he was normal. Laid some of
those demons to rest.”
 Richard looks down for a minute at the document he is holding, then
continues, “It is very hard, as a parent, to watch your child struggle and to
know you cannot help.”
Not sure how to respond to these confidences, Jasmine falls back on
platitudes. “I can only imagine,” she says, and though she knows it is a lie,
adds, “I’m sure you did what you could.” Even Jasmine’s obsessive need to
tell the truth quails at starting a war between her host and his son.
“Nevertheless. We could not help him and you did. His mother and
I, we are grateful.” Richard halts, shuffling his papers.
Jasmine really does not know what to say to this. It was nothing
seems too trite. Thank you, too blasé. So she raises her cup and sips her
drink, although it is still too hot and she feels the heat scald her lips.
Sean’s father stares at her for a long moment. Then he says, “Have
you thought about what you will do next? Now that you’ve graduated?”
Jasmine stirs under his gaze. Is this a hint to be gone? she thinks.
Despite Sean’s protestations, is she unwelcome in the house? It does not fit
with Richard’s previous words of gratitude. But if she is not to stay here,
where can she go? She cannot stand to be in Larkford, where every stone,
every tree, every person reminds her of Petey. Where else is there, if she
won’t go back to her parents? She realises it might be by her own choice,
but she is truly homeless and, having spent her annual allowance helping
Gillian, almost penniless.
“I haven’t thought about it,” she replies. “I haven’t really had time.
I’m sorry.” She thinks she might cry and casts about wildly for a tissue box.
Surely Emily, the pristine homemaker, would have one somewhere, a pastel
cube, scented probably.
Noticing her distress, Richard leans over, his large, warm hand falls
on her knee. Jasmine focuses on the liver spots mottling the back of it and
blinks rapidly.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says. “It’s just that I had a thought.
One of my researchers wasn’t supposed to start her maternity leave for a
couple of months, but this morning she gave birth prematurely. It’s going to
leave us short-handed and we are swamped at the moment.” Richard smiles
up at her.
“I have a vacancy and need someone at no notice. I had hoped Sean
…” Richard trails off.
Jasmine can imagine the horror with which her friend would regard
such a request. Years of studying for a degree in politics had turned his
vague interest into a hardened dislike. She cannot help but smile internally
at the thought. Sean would wait tables before he took a job in politics.
Richard continues. “So I thought of you?” A statement, but the little
lift in intonation at the end turns it into a question.
She hesitates. Jasmine deplores nepotism on principle, but this is a
job, albeit temporary, in Westminster – the ultimate dream. She has never
longed for celebrity in any form, but to be the power behind the throne, that
is what appeals. She chews her lip. She is tempted.
But the idea of compromise is unfamiliar. Jasmine has her
principles. “It’s very kind of you to consider me. But surely you have no
shortage of better-qualified candidates?”
He lifts the hand lying on her knee and then pats her. In other
circumstances, Jasmine would find it patronising.
“It’s true. Westminster is besieged by the brightest and best, all
waving their first-class Honours from Oxford or Cambridge.” He chuckles
at his own image. “And I know from Sean you don’t have that.”
Jasmine blushes as he alludes to her degree result. Sean has
obviously shared her disappointment with his father. Looking after Petey
cost her two grades off her degree. While she has passed, she has achieved
far lower than the top result she was on track for at the start of her final
year. It doesn’t bode well for her job search. Politics degrees abound. A
first-class degree would have helped her through the initial CV sift. She will
now have to lower her sights dramatically.
“But what you have is better.” Richard sits back in his chair,
removing his hand. “What every MP wants is someone they can get along
with, but what every MP longs for is loyalty. What you did for your friend
…” He pauses, and Jasmine is supremely grateful when he continues
without uttering Petey’s name: “Well, that speaks volumes for your loyalty.
And I know we can rub along.” He waves his hand vaguely in the air.
“Besides all that, I also know you’re organised and hardworking. In my
opinion, all that blue sky thinking nonsense is overrated. I need good, clean,
factual research. Think about it, eh? I know this post is only temporary and
you will be looking for something permanent long-term, but if you want it,
it’s yours. To be fair, with the short notice, you would be doing me and my
team a big favour.”
In the end, it isn’t the job or Richard’s argument or the thought she
might be doing her host a favour that convinces her. It is simply she has
nowhere else to go.
Part II: Present
 Bad, Worse, Worst

Another day, another disaster, thinks Jasmine. No wait. Another day,

another catastrophe. Or what is bigger than catastrophe – a cataclysm?
In the five years Jasmine has worked for Richard Exmore, she has
dealt with hundreds of crises, from minor setbacks to major misfortunes.
But this was so far beyond a spoiled shirt immediately before a television
interview, or a spreadsheet error resulting in the wrong figures in a White
Paper. A disaster may be your Member of Parliament dying of a massive
heart attack and a catastrophe when your MP dies of a massive heart attack
with his dick inside a woman other than his wife. But this, this is indeed a
cataclysm. Every newspaper in Britain, tabloids and broadsheets alike, is
revelling in the story. She considers the metaphor, pigs in shit, very apt.
By sheer coincidence, Jasmine is in Hayburn. Based in London, she
operates independently of Richard’s constituency office, although she has
always ensured she is on good terms with them all. Occasionally, though,
her boss’s parliamentary work overlaps his community interests and
necessitates a trip north. Over the years, Jasmine has built up a network of
contacts. Since that first post as maternity cover, she has made herself
indispensable. She is good at her job, both clever and efficient, and she
trades this, helping others less so until she has favours owed by many an
underling. Lacking good looks, charm, and humour, the transactional
approach works well for her. Today, it has paid off. Jasmine receives a call
in the early hours, telling her what is coming down the line.
The news of her employer’s death has shaken her, the manner of it
more so, but she is a political animal. She understands the more important
issue is the fallout. The news broke too late for the print editions but by
morning it is on the news apps. It is still innocuous at this point, nothing
more than the fact of his passing. When she arrives at the local office, she
finds the caseworkers sitting disconsolately at their desks. No one is
working. Their grief for their employer is intensified by the understanding
that they are all now unemployed.
Jasmine finds she is less affected by grief than the others. She can
close off her mind and focus on work. Perhaps she is just more practiced at
loss. She’d known Richard for as long as she had known Petey, but
Richard’s passing is distressing to her only as a reminder of the transience
of life and of her previous, more significant loss. She looks around at her
colleagues, two of them weeping delicately into hankies. Although it is not
her place to do so, she sends them all home; it is not a constituency surgery
day. She pins a notice to the door – Closed Due To Bereavement – then sits
at a desk and continues to work.
Her report is for a Select Committee, so she feels obliged to
continue with her research and the information-gathering meetings which
are scheduled for the afternoon. So it is that Jasmine is alone in the Hayburn
office when a car draws up outside, the passenger gets out, and Emily
Exmore slams into the campaign office.
Richard’s wife, normally so pristine and put-together, full slap and
lipstick, looks deranged with her hair awry and traces of mascara on her
jawbone. Luckily, the staff have all gone, as Emily has no concern for
discretion when she screeches her challenge at Jasmine: “Did you know?”
 Looking directly at her, Jasmine answers as calmly and confidently
as she can: “No, I had no idea. I never once saw him be inappropriate in his
behaviour to anyone. And he certainly never tried anything with me.”
“Of course he didn’t,” his wife snarls. “An ugly cow like you? That
was why I suggested you. Who would ever be attracted to you? With your
frizzy hair and your sensible shoes!”
Jasmine blanches, shocked into silence. When sense returns, she
realises if her plainness had ever been a factor in her appointment, it did not
say much about the state of the Exmores’ marriage and explains much of
the current situation. If any of it is true. She has known Emily long enough
to realise she is a fantasist at times, especially where her son and husband
are concerned.
“Did you ever meet her?” Emily’s words cut through the
introspection.
Jasmine is tired and it makes her uncharacteristically slow. “Irene?”
she queries.
“Who the fuck else would I mean?” Emily spits, all her censorious
epithets on swearing forgotten, all her carefully assumed, middle-class
manners evaporating. Jasmine had witnessed her rebuke Sean, a grown
man, any time he transgressed beyond what his mother deemed acceptable
language. “Now you know your father is a politician,” his mother would
say. “It might not be fair, but what you wear and say and do reflects on
him.” Maybe now Sean’s father was dead, the strictures no longer applied.
“No. I didn’t even know she existed.” Jasmine is almost sure this is
true. Some small doubt remains that she might have been introduced to
Irene at a dinner or drinks or some other random event. She meets so many
people, she only keeps track of the useful ones. There is no room in her
brain for the others.
 Perhaps she betrays that tiny uncertainty, because Emily is
unconvinced. “I don’t believe you,” she hisses. “You were always with him
in London. Even when he was here, you would text and call at all hours.”
Jasmine has always been abstemious in troubling her boss on
weekends and during “family time”. It occurs to her not all those texts and
calls were actually from her. If Richard had been conducting an illicit affair,
what better camouflage than to claim they were work? But pointing it out is
unlikely to help the situation.
“I was in the office. I wasn’t by his side all day and I never stayed in
his London home,” Jasmine protests, but the other woman isn’t listening.
“You think you’ll take over? Stand instead of him? Well, I can
guarantee you won’t. I will do everything in my power to make sure they
never choose you!” Pleased with her threat, Emily turns her back and slams
the door behind her.
The short exchange has so many implications. The horrible,
personal insult, Jasmine is inclined to put down to the woman’s emotional
turmoil in the wake of her loss and the discovery of her husband’s flagrant
infidelity. Unlike some, Emily had never been a political wife. Not sharp or
witty or erudite, and knowing that, she had always been content to focus on
her home and her family. She made the mandatory appearances at his side
when a plus one was required, but was always on the train home the
following morning. Emily had no other focus in life than her son and her
husband. To discover how much of her faith has been misplaced must be
awful. Jasmine finds she has only sympathy for the woman, despite her
wounding words.
The threat, Jasmine also discounts. Emily is not well-enough
connected to do any damage, and the Labour Party will need to put up the
strongest candidate they can find for the seat in the wake of the scandal that
is inevitably coming. Besides, Jasmine finds people tiring. She has never
had any wish at all to represent a constituency in Parliament. The power
behind the throne, Atlee to Churchill, Campbell to Blair, formulating policy
and proposing strategy is her joy, not pressing flesh and placating the
desperate.
What hurts her the most is Sean. How had Emily known she was in
Hayburn and at the Constituency Office, not at work in London? While
Sean hadn’t taken part in his mother’s attack, Jasmine is certain the person
who drove her, who stayed in the car waiting, was her son. It feels like a
betrayal of their friendship, that he might believe she was involved. It is
what upsets her most.
And Jasmine knows that worse is to come. The identity of the
woman with Richard Exmore that night was not released with the original
story. She was, after all, an innocent by-stander, although Jasmine might
scoff at that description. Although she had been nameless with the first
announcement, everyone knew it could not last. Standard crisis
management was to get ahead of the story, release the details, control the
narrative, but the masters at Labour headquarters had been unable to deflect
attention or re-frame the tale. Short of another war breaking out in a
previously peaceful European country – preferably Ireland or France,
somewhere nearby – or the emergence of a faster-spreading, deadlier virus,
the story was going to break.
By the end of the first day, the press realise Richard had not died
alone. The story is no longer simply a portly MP unsurprisingly dying of a
heart attack. It is impossible everyone who knows the name of his lover will
withstand the fervour of the British tabloids in pursuit of the more salacious
angles of this tragedy. Money will be offered, pressure applied.
 The Mail gets it first – it is the only paper to carry it in its print
versions but all the news apps have it by morning, scurrying to make up
ground. The pack is off. The name is out and everyone waits: Jasmine, the
Labour Party, the family.
When Jasmine wakes in the cold pale hours before dawn and checks
her phone, she almost cries. Richard’s lifetime of service and his constant
efforts to improve the lot of his constituents will be sunk by this nebulous
iceberg spun of whispers and insinuations. Despite the early hour, her first
instinct is to call Sean, her old employer’s son, once her friend.
“Have you seen the news?” she asks, voice full of wary concern.
She is relieved he even answered. There was a risk he would reject her call.
“Yep.”
“Is your mum safe?” Despite Emily’s rant at her, Jasmine has seen
enough since she started working in the political world not to wish the
horror of press intrusion on anybody.
“Yep.”
“Are you okay?” There is no point in asking how Emily is. How
would anyone feel to find their trust and their love betrayed? Sean, at least,
had always had a more cynical relationship with his father. He often felt
Richard had prioritised politics over family.
“Yep.”
Jasmine tries to break the terse answers. “What are you going to do
today?”
“Hide.”
She gives up. Maybe it is too soon. “I’m here if you need me. Give
everyone my love and take care of yourself.”
“Will do.”
And he is gone.
 A lot of relationships will be damaged by the scandal. That she and
Sean are caught up in it is unsurprising. The family wonders exactly how
much she knew, how much she hid, how far she was complicit. The more
vehemently she protests her ignorance, the more others will presume her
knowledge. The extraordinary unpleasantness of the conversation with
Emily the day before is seared into her brain for eternity. But Emily will not
be the only one to believe her implicated in Richard’s affair. The biggest
question is how far people think her treachery by association may go?
Richard’s lover, Irene Peters, born Irina Petrova, is a beautiful
woman. Put her picture next to that of Jasmine’s late boss – balding, rotund,
his suit, as ever, slightly shabby – and it is hard to believe, on her part, it
was a love match. The press doesn’t even need words to build the story. Her
birth name was common enough in Russia to have given Jasmine faint hope
they would not have uncovered more, but in reality, she always knew this
hope was in vain. Irene is beautiful, she is Russian, and she is also the
daughter of a man who is a childhood friend of the Russian Premier. A man
long suspected of links to the Russian FSB. Why would such a woman be
interested in an inauspicious Member of Parliament from an obscure
northern constituency?
For nearly two decades, Richard Exmore, Jasmine’s late – and at
this moment, unlamented – employer, had faithfully served his constituents.
He was a local, from a working-class background, and he had started his
working life in a factory before becoming a Labour councillor and
subsequently an MP. He had championed the hospitals, the schools, and the
public services people relied on.
He had been one of the hundreds of MPs who lived and worked,
quietly ignored by most of the population. Few outside Westminster could
have named him or his constituency. Even within his own constituency
borders, more residents would have failed to recall his name when
questioned than not. They voted for the Party, not the man.
For all that, Richard had been a good MP. Until his death, Jasmine
would have sworn he was also a decent man. She and Richard had worked
well together. Then along came Irina. Richard was obviously no longer able
to defend himself, but even if he had been, Jasmine doubted he could have.
She had worked closely with the man for years and even she had wondered
sometimes what on earth his wife had seen in him. Richard was steady and
kind but a little bombastic and a lot boring. He was not destined for an
office higher than backbench MP. There was little remarkable about him.
Except that in among the constituency surgeries, the fundraisers in support
of the local NHS and the debates in the Commons, Richard Exmore also sat
on the Parliamentary Select Committee for Arms Export Controls. In one
little nook of his constituency sits a large factory making arms, and
factories mean jobs – a subject close to Richard’s heart. Suddenly, Irina no
longer seems like an indiscretion; now she seems to bring the stench of
corruption at best, treason at worst.
Before she even gets out of bed, Jasmine reads the coverage in every
major paper and a few of the online-only ones, too. She checks the coverage
in the US media and even skims Bild and Le Monde. Finally, she unlocks
the Pandora’s box that is social media.
The mainstream media, wary of falling foul of the libel laws, have
been careful to hint. To put two statements together which imply cause and
effect but do not actually state it. Such as, Richard Exmore died in bed with
his young Russian-born mistress. Autoerotic asphyxiation is known to carry
a risk of inadvertent death. And, as if the taint of treachery were not
enough, suddenly half the country think Richard Exmore’s cause of death
was far more salacious than years of Emily Exmore’s excellent but salt-and-
fat-laden cooking.
No such restraint inhibits the denizens of the internet. Jasmine only
has to read a handful to see how badly this is playing. She does not have the
stomach to continue reading for long. Anyone who believes the general
populace has moved on from the Victorian attitudes of prudishness,
hypocrisy and jingoism, need only read a few of the posts on social media
to be thoroughly disabused.
Richard Exmore’s legacy of hard work and public service is indeed
gone, and Jasmine now has no time to waste on sentiment.
 Once More unto the Breach

About the same time Jasmine is facing the onslaught of a woman betrayed,
deep in the bowels of Westminster three men sit in three armchairs, each
placed at the corner of a triangle.
“It’s a fucking mess,” says the Chief Whip of the Labour Party. “Did
you know?”
Tom Sandford, MP of a constituency neighbouring Hayburn and
long-time friend of Richard Exmore, shifts uncomfortably. “He had been
rather bouncy of late,” he answers cautiously. “I did wonder what was
going on.” Now was not the time to confess Richard’s drunken evening full
of unwanted confidences. As far as he was aware, only two people knew
about that night and one of them was dead.
“There will be a by-election, of course. We can drag it out a bit.
Give everyone time to forget,” says the Chief Whip.
“Forget? Have people forgotten Profumo? That was over half a
century ago! This isn’t going away,” interjects the Director of
Communications for the Leader of the Opposition. “And look what
happened to the Tories in the election afterwards. We need that seat.
Richard held it against the Red Wall defection. To win the next election,
we’re going to need every seat we’ve got and a lot more we haven’t.”
“Tom,” he continues, “what is the grassroots party like?”
 “Not terribly active, more of a social club, really. It was a safe seat,
after all. The swing to the Tories at the last election took us all by surprise.”
“We’ll need someone on the ground then to get them moving. Any
ideas?”
The MP considers for a minute. “His researcher is remarkably
competent. She’s not from the area but she’s had contact with the Party, the
local councillors and many of the local businessmen. And she’s currently
out of a job.”
“But is she tainted by association? Might she have known about the
affair?” The Director of Communications asks the hard questions.
“I doubt it,” Tom replies. “She was his researcher, not his personal
assistant. And she’s odd. A crusader. I would say she’s more loyal to the
cause than the person.”
“Excellent!” The Chief Whip barely holds off from rubbing his
hands. “Obviously we can’t pay her, but we can let her know she’ll be taken
care of after the by-election. There’s always a special advisor job going
somewhere. She’ll have redundancy payouts till then.”
“We’ll still need a brilliant Campaign Manager and a superb
candidate. It’ll be a shame to waste serious talent on a shithole like
Hayburn, but it can’t be helped. We all know the shit that’s coming down
the line,” warns the Director of Communications.
Three middle-aged, white males each look morosely into their
drinks and huff. It may take a minor miracle to save Hayburn and the world
is sadly short on those.

***
 In Hayburn, with their MP dead, the Constituency Office staff are
leaderless. While Pamela Taylor, who heads up the office, is a fearless
administrator, she lacks any talent for strategy and direction. Unaware of
the Party’s power mongers’ plans for her, Jasmine steps into the breach,
anyway. It is Jasmine who briefs the local campaign army of door knockers
and leaflet pushers, the few left, on how to respond.
She starts with a pep talk.
“We all had a relationship with Richard,” she says. “Each of us
knows the truth of what he is. We need to hold to that. Believe what you
know, what he did for you. Ignore the rest, especially what you see printed
in the papers. After all, how many of them are known for their fair,
unbiased reporting?”
She waits until the laughter dies down, although she hadn’t intended
the question as a joke.
“People will raise it on the doorstep though. Distinguish between
those who knew Richard personally and those who didn’t. Those who did,
ask if he helped them and tell them to focus on that. Don’t forget, Richard
spent years helping constituents. There will be many out there who have
benefited from his aid. If they didn’t know Richard, the best we can do at
the moment until we get a candidate is to focus on the Labour Party.”
At least to date in Hayburn, the Party has always trumped the
Member of Parliament. That is exceptionally valuable now.
She includes a final warning. “Whatever you do, do not be drawn on
smearing Richard or endorsing the rumours.”
Respect for the dead, even one looking as grubby as Richard
Exmore, will buy them something, even if not much.
She knows Labour HQ is scrambling for a new candidate. But who?
At the next election, less than a year away, Labour will be fighting to retake
all the seats lost in the previous election. The strongest candidates will
already have been allocated to the attempt to win back the heartland. But if
they do not field someone who epitomises the Party, the Labour voters in
Hayburn won’t desert and vote Tory, they just won’t vote. And that will be
enough to lose a seat which has been red for as long as it has existed.
Jasmine is just about to close her laptop and go home when she sees
an email notification. She sits up in her seat, for she recognises the name on
the email address. This one is from the Director of Communications for the
Labour Party. Jasmine can’t recall ever receiving a direct email from such a
powerful figure before. She has received hundreds of his general missives
but this one appears directed at her and is titled “Labour Party candidate for
Hayburn”.
She opens it quickly and skim reads the text looking for
information. Jasmine has long been a fan of the bullet list but the
Communications Director is obviously less succinct. She reads it through
once and then starts again. They are applying Special Measures to impose a
candidate on Hayburn rather than running the normal months-long process
of applications, nominations, long and short listings and campaigning to
choose a candidate. Jasmine skips over his reasoning as in her head it
makes perfect sense with the looming General Election. The name. She
wants the name. If it is a seasoned campaigner, they will have their own
team and she and her colleagues will be out of work. If it is someone new,
there is a chance they might keep the old team in place.
She tracks down the email until she finds it. Then she rears back in
horror and slams the lid of the laptop shut. She looks around the empty
office, closes her eyes, and says one word.
“Fuck.”
 The New Candidate

Jasmine is usually the first in to the office. She values early mornings; they
are a chance to get things done before the world arrives, demanding input
into their own pretty problems. But her productivity this morning soon
disappears. No sooner has she dropped her phone on her desk and opened
the lid of her laptop, than the door opens and Sean walks in.
She freezes. This is the first time she has seen Sean since before his
father’s death. The day before Richard’s funeral, he had sent her a text
pleading with her not to attend for his mother’s sake. Jasmine had given it a
lot of thought, but in the end, she had obliged. In an uncharacteristic
attempt at guile, she had taken the precaution of telling the most prolific
office gossip the reason she would not be in the church. She phrased it
delicately, avoiding repeating Emily’s allegation Jasmine had been
complicit, merely suggesting that a grief-stricken Emily thought Jasmine
could have prevented Richard’s death and blamed her. Her confidante had
tutted at Emily’s absurd notion and dutifully spread the word. Jasmine will
need Richard’s allies and friends in the coming weeks and the quickest way
to alienate them is to appear as if she is joining the ranks of the politically
astute who have been loudly disowning lifelong friendships.
Grief was an emotion Jasmine understood well. Jasmine has no wish
to add to the burden of a grieving widow and Emily is grieving. The day of
the funeral, she had been in Hayburn but she stayed in her little rental until
she judged all the mourners had departed. Then she drove to the cemetery
and stood on the trampled grass beside the bare earth mound that was
Richard’s final resting place. Jasmine was a practical person; she had no
belief in a Heaven or a Hell or even the concept of a soul. Death was final
and complete in her mind, a total eradication of the person. Yet still she
travelled across the town to stand by Richard’s grave to say her final
goodbye. She didn’t understand why it seemed fitting, only that it was.
When she left, she knew she would never visit again. After all, she had
never been back to where Petey’s ashes were interred and she had loved
him.
She takes a moment to look at her friend. He is thinner, more
subdued, but that is to be expected. His hair is unkempt and he looks more
like a Cornish tin miner from the late eighteenth century than the sharp-
sheared city boy she is used to. But Sean, standing among the grubby,
decades-old desks and tatty chairs, is a truly beautiful sight and her heart
lifts in hope.
When her tongue unfreezes, she rushes out the words she has
wanted to say for ages. “Honestly, truly, I didn’t know.”
Sean shifts his feet and drops his eyes, but he doesn’t speak.
“Are you okay?” Jasmine asks, concerned his silence comes from
distress.
“That’s what I came to ask you,” Sean finally lifts his head. “I’m not
angry with you, Jasmine. I’ve just been busy.”
It’s Jasmine’s turn for silence. A small corner of her mind is saying,
Too busy to text?
“I’ve hardly even seen Georg and I live with him. Mum’s just been
…”
 “Distraught? Devastated? Difficult?” Jasmine says. When she puts
her mind to it, she can imagine only too well how Emily Exmore is
handling things. “I’m not surprised.”
“You weren’t like this,” Sean sighs. “It’s like she’s obsessed. And
when you’re an only child, there’s no one else to take a turn, no one else to
look after her, even for a moment. It’s unrelenting.”
“Your mum and I are very different,” Jasmine keeps her words low,
inviting him to further confidences. “And Petey’s death wasn’t sudden.
Your mother was married for decades. She dedicated her life to him and she
now has the added anguish of wondering if he ever loved her, whether their
whole marriage was a sham.”
“I know all that. Even if I didn’t, she’s been pretty vocal on the
subject. And I am patient with her. Except, sometimes it feels like no one
else can feel anything but her.”
Jasmine stands abruptly, her chair rolling backwards. She wants to
rush over and put her arms around her friend but doesn’t know if they are
yet reconciled. She hesitates, then she skirts the desk and places her hand on
his upper arm. Squeezes and holding tight, she sends messages of love and
support through her fingertips.
“I would help if I could.”
The first weak smile appears on Sean’s face. “I know. She blames
you and she blames Irene. It’s easier than blaming him. Sometimes, she
even imagines you put Irina up to it. She’d go mental if you went anywhere
near her.”
“If it helps her deal with everything, I’m happy to be the scapegoat.”
Jasmine shrugs.
“But it’s not fair to you!”
“The world isn’t fair. To believe it is, is to believe in fairy tales.”
 “What a load of pompous twaddle, Jasmine! I can tell no one has
been pulling you up when you start with the overblown rhetoric. I’ve only
been gone a couple of weeks and you’re already reverting. By the way, you
can let go now. I’m starting to lose feeling in my fingers.”
She releases his arm and steps back, relieved to see signs that Sean’s
essential lightness of being have survived the trauma of the last few weeks.
“Sorry. But it’s so good to see you. I’ve been worried about you.”
“Yeah, well,” Sean sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “I didn’t
mean to cut you out. I just didn’t have anything left inside.”
“How have you been?” Jasmine makes the words as gentle as
possible, muting her usual brisk nature.
“Up and down,” Sean looks away for a moment. Then his eyes
come back to hers. “I can go for ages thinking I’m coping okay and then
something random happens and I’m in tears.”
Jasmine nods. “I call them grief bubbles. Even now I get them, five
years on. Though not so often. You’re just bumbling on with life and then a
gesture, or a song or a phrase, anything, releases a memory and you realise
what you’ve lost all over again.”
“You know,” Sean lifts a hand and scrubs at his nose, “he wasn’t the
best of dads, gone most of the week, off hobnobbing with the local bigwigs
at the weekends. But like all kids love their dads, I did love him. And I feel
robbed I’ll never get to know him properly and maybe appreciate him a bit
more without the limitations of seeing him through a child’s eyes.”
All restraint disappears. Jasmine wraps her arms around him and
hugs him tight. They stand together for a couple of minutes, Sean pinned
and unable to move by her not inconsiderable strength. When she finally
releases him, she asks, “Can Georg help?”
 “He tries, but the truth is, he’s never lost anyone and he’s a little
bemused by it all. And he’s such a guy – stoic, uncomfortable with emotion.
He’d be happier helping in practical ways, like giving Mum a lift to the
supermarket, but she’s never really taken to him either.” Sean half raises his
hands and then drops them again. Jasmine doesn’t need him to explain.
Emily accepts Sean’s choice of partner because she doesn’t want to lose her
son, but if Sean were to turn around tomorrow and say his homosexuality
was all a phase, she would be ecstatic. Even Jasmine would be viewed as an
improvement.
“Look, I don’t have long.” Sean glances at his phone. “I’ve got to
get off to work in a minute.”
“You’re going into work?” she interrupts.
“It’s the only thing keeping me sane. I’ve told Mum it’s important
and she accepts me sacrificing myself for my career, but the truth is they
won’t let me near anything difficult at the moment. I’m the most highly
paid filing clerk in the building.”
“I’m sure you’re doing more than that!”
“Not really. But I didn’t come all the way here to talk about myself.
Mum was notified yesterday. I assume you’ve heard?”
“About the new candidate?” Jasmine can’t believe she has managed
to put it out of her mind but seeing Sean again after his absence has stopped
her fretting about it.
Sean nods, his eyes fixed on her face. “Jasmine, are you going to be
all right?”
She purses her lips together. “Yes,” she says firmly. “I’ll have to be.
I have no choice.”
Sean leans closer. His voice is low and urgent. “Have you thought
about what you are going to do when Ben Kahn walks through the door?”
 In the years since they parted, Jasmine has done her best to
ruthlessly suppress any thoughts of him. From the moment she had arrived
in Petey’s home, she had made a conscious choice not to hanker after Ben,
not to follow him on social media, not to search for him on the internet. She
had never anticipated that on an island with roughly seventy million people,
she would ever stumble across him again. But she had failed to appreciate
statistics and the relatively small political world.
She had tried to forget about Ben and it had been relatively easy.
She had been living life at full throttle for so long, most nights she fell into
bed exhausted. Her days had been crammed, first with caring for Petey at
the same time as studying, and later with learning a new job in a new place.
She had very much been thrown in at the deep end and as soon as she had
begun to adjust, Richard had had to defend his seat in what would become
the great Red Wall defection. As Jasmine demonstrated her competence,
Richard would off-load more onto her schedule. And in the political world,
crisis followed crisis. Brexit, Covid, war.
There had been the occasional lonely evening when her mind drifted
towards thoughts of Ben but she had always been careful to find something
else to do before he could become entrenched. And then there were times
when she met men and saw a spark of interest in their eyes. But they were
invariably too short, or too pale or too skinny. Besides, she really didn’t
have time for a relationship.
Unfortunately, Jasmine has confused not thinking about Ben with
being over him. But now he has been chosen as the new candidate for
Hayburn, she cannot not think about him. And that is a problem.
 Arrival

The night before Ben Khan is due to arrive in Hayburn, Jasmine struggles
to sleep. In her head, she is adamant she will not dwell on their past but
thoughts keep slipping in. Questions. Has he missed her at over the years?
Has he changed? Is he single?
Telling herself it is necessary to know your candidate, she gets up
and searches the web for traces of him. As she once knew him intimately,
she has a better starting point than most. As well as his carefully managed
social media, she targets his parents’, aunts’ and uncles’ pages. She checks
out his university friends and looks for connections. As far as she can see,
he isn’t in a relationship, although one girl features in photos with him too
often for comfort. But when Jasmine tracks her current whereabouts down
to Australia, she relaxes. It doesn’t occur to Jasmine to wonder why she
calms when she finds the girl safely across the other side of the world, but
then again, it is very late. Hours past midnight, she closes her laptop and
slides back into bed, but it is still long minutes until her brain agrees to let
go of Ben Khan and she sleeps.
The following morning, Jasmine waits along with a horde of others
in the Campaign Office. She can sense the excitement. Roger, a retired
social worker and the Labour Party Chair, stands near the door with
Lindsey, a part-time public accountant who acts as the nominal Secretary.
They are chatting with two young student activists. Jasmine keeps her head
down at a desk in the corner, her back to the door. She knows more than one
of her colleagues is combing the internet for anything they can glean on
Ben Kahn, looking for a clue as to his character much as she had last night.
But she doesn’t yet feel the need to reveal her connection to him, nor what
she knows of his character.
Even if her fellow volunteers are all agog, Jasmine is determined to
be composed. The urgent need to put Richard Exmore in the past before the
expected General Election later in the year means the Labour Party has
suspended the normal selection procedure and the new candidate is an
unknown entity. He is unvetted by any locals and they are understandably
curious. It is sheer nosiness which accounts for the number of people in the
office today.
Jasmine concentrates on her emails, rephrasing her rather direct
request for a meeting with the one of the local faith group leaders, adding
the surrounding pointless fluff that seems so essential to smooth
communications. Over the years of working for Richard, she has become a
dab hand at asking after people’s families, holidays, health concerns, with
an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of backstories. It had enabled her to
bail her boss out of tight corners several times.
Focussed on the minutiae of email etiquette, she misses Ben’s grand
entrance, only looking up when he is already surrounded by admirers. She
thinks how it was always so. Ben has that elusive attribute, charisma. It is
not just good looks. In Westminster, she has come across many handsome
men, but most of them had Tosser stamped across their foreheads. Nor is it
self-belief. Westminster is chock-full of the egotistical from all parts of the
political spectrum. She has met a handful of people she would regard as
charismatic but most of them lack talent. Ben, she well knows, has both. He
is young for this step, becoming an MP, but she cannot think of anyone
better to save Hayburn after the ignominy of Richard’s manner of passing.
Obviously, the upper echelons of the Labour Party agree.
The crowd surrounding him thins. A figure moves aside and there
he is. He has his back to her, but she can see his broad shoulders sheathed in
a white dress shirt. His dark hair tickles the collar and she makes a mental
note to book him an appointment with a barber. His youthfulness can count
for him as long as he doesn’t look like a teenage rebel. She watches him
work. A shake of a hand, a comment, a laugh, and thinks how easy her job
would have been if they didn’t have Richard’s legacy to overcome. She
knows the Conservatives will play dirty and run a negative campaign. It has
already begun, albeit surreptitiously. Their candidate, Rosalyn Carter, is a
solicitor, a church-goer, the very antithesis to Richard.
Jasmine’s greatest hope is they are fighting the last candidate, not
the new one. The Tory candidate’s fuddy-duddiness will contrast with Ben’s
quickness and energy. Grandmothers will want to introduce Ben to their
granddaughters. Fathers will want to be his mate and youngsters will see
someone they can relate to.
Roger has taken note of those still at their desks, the team who will
work hardest to get this candidate elected. He looks around until he locates
Jasmine and she knows it is only a matter of time before he shepherds Ben
away from his acolytes to introduce him to his core team. She drops her
eyes to her screen and steels herself. It’s a moment, she tells herself. Just a
moment. Then they will find a new level, not lovers, not exes, just co-
workers.
“Jasmine,” Roger’s deep, age-roughened voice intrudes. “Let me
introduce our new candidate, Ben Kahn. Ben, this is your campaign
manager, Jasmine Mortimer.”
 And there he is, just as handsome, just as wonderful as he was the
first time. She stands quickly, brushing her palm against her skirt to
eliminate the sweat. He is in front of her, every part of his face so familiar.
The scar on the edge of his eyebrow from falling out of a tree as a child.
The long, dark lashes any woman would envy. The full, wide lips currently
not smiling at her. A tsunami of memories pushes at her mind. They seem
to obliterate her ability to speak.
“Jasmine,” Ben says flatly as a greeting and holds out his hand for
the briefest of shakes. Then he turns to Roger to forestall his introductory
speech. “We’ve met before.”
No warmth, no explanations, nothing.
“Ah! Good. Good.” Roger bounces on his toes. “Well, Jasmine used
to work for Richard Exmore, so there aren’t many of the local VIPs she
doesn’t know. She’s been doing a sterling job over the last weeks to keep
everything going. Don’t know what we’d have done without her.”
“Okay.” Ben’s lips pinch momentarily. “We’ll need to book in a time
to get together.”
“Already done,” Jasmine gathers what remains of her reason and
replies as calmly as she can manage. “You’re set up on the system.” She
taps a laptop on her desk. “This is for you. Login details on a note on the
screen. Diary set up and meetings being booked in as we can get them.
We’ve prepared a briefing document of some of the most pressing local
issues and it’s waiting in your inbox. Most importantly, we’ve got you a sit
down with the local paper tomorrow.”
“See,” Roger says with a smile and a proud look in his eye as he
nods towards Jasmine. “She’s formidable.”
Jasmine blanches and Ben flushes at Roger’s inadvertent use of the
word Ben himself had once applied to Jasmine. Roger is oblivious, already
swinging away to point Ben at the next activist. Ben leans forward, picking
the laptop and charger up from her desk, his body uncomfortably close to
hers. She feels the warmth of him, the intervening years dropping away
with the innate familiarity. Then he is gone, moving on.
Jasmine drops into her chair, poleaxed. In all her deliberations
yesterday, she had forgotten to factor in the very presence of the man. She
had thought she was well-prepared for this meeting, but a few seconds had
blown that illusion apart. She puts her hands on her keyboard so it seems as
if she is working, but they are trembling too much to type and she quickly
drops them back to her lap.
She can feel him moving about behind her, greeting the entire team,
spending a few moments with everyone, turning his gorgeous warm eyes on
them, making each feel seen and understood. All except her. There had been
no warmth, no acceptance, no understanding for her.
Her ears seem attuned to the murmur of his voice, the occasional
eruption of his laugh, above all other background noises. And he certainly
seems to be enjoying himself. He is winning them over, one by one.
Jasmine can see it – she will be the only one left outside his clan. She takes
a deep breath. She has a job to do and will do it to the best of her ability.
When it is over, she will leave. Hayburn is not her home – she is not
actually sure where home is – but there are plenty of jobs in plenty of other
places. If the Labour Party do not honour their promise of a job with a
minister, her years of working for a Member of Parliament, even one as
tarnished as the Right Honourable Richard Exmore must count in her
favour. She is no longer an inexperienced graduate with an average degree.
Surely, any lobbying company worth its salt would take her in an eye blink?
She is not without options.
 In the meantime, it is her job to get her candidate elected, no matter
who that candidate is. It would help if they liked each other, but that will
not be an option. And where it is missing, mutual respect for competence
will do. If she will need to demonstrate her competence, she had better get
back to work. She pulls her hands out of her lap and checks they are steady
enough before she opens up the next email in the list to compose her reply.
Ben does not stay at the campaign headquarters much longer; a new
candidate has a host of people to meet. Roger whisks him away to meet the
local councillors. When Jasmine feels it is safe, she stands to make herself a
much-needed cup of tea, but when she ventures into the tiny kitchenette, it
is already occupied by two student activists, Lou and Hattie. They make
way for Jasmine, but do not pause their conversation.
“You’re meeting him for a drink?” Hattie’s eyebrows disappear into
her hair. Jasmine ignores their gossiping and flicks the kettle on.
“Yep!” Lou’s reply is smug.
“He asked you out?” Hattie’s voice is so high it’s almost a screech.
“Don’t be silly,” Lou tells her friend. “I asked him! What are you?
Some sort of Regency heroine who needs to wait around for a bloke to
work out what you want?”
“No!” But it comes out wavering between question and denial.
“He’s so hot, he could bake my potato whenever he wants. There are
going to be women chucking their undies at him left, right, and centre. I just
got in first.” She shrugs. “Snoozers are losers.”
“But you don’t even know if he’s got a girlfriend!”
“Duh! He wouldn’t be accepting a date with me if he had!”
Jasmine chokes back a snort as she pours hot water into her mug. If
Lou thinks that holds for all men, she is unbelievably naïve. But Jasmine’s
superiority doesn’t last long.
 “Uh, Jasmine? You knew Ben at university?” Lou ventures. “What
about a heads-up?”
Ben? She was talking about Ben? Lou has asked her Ben out? But
she could not call him that. Why had she not anticipated this? Steeled
herself for it. She puts down the oat milk before her cup overflows and
turns to look at the girl properly. She is pretty, the antithesis of Jasmine.
Smooth, silky blonde hair pulled gently back into a low ponytail. A few
loose strands framing her face. Big blue eyes which stare at Jasmine
hopefully. A tailored white shirt over size-small skinny jeans. Effortless
chic even on a student budget.
Jasmine wants to say, He will break your heart. But she doesn’t
answer. Ben has obviously told people they were students together, but she
doubts he added more. She cannot think Lou would be crass enough to ask
Ben’s ex for dating advice. She extracts the teabag and she says, “I think
he’s vegetarian.”
“Oh! Thanks. Good one. I was going to suggest we get burgers at
that new place.”
Hattie sniggers. “He wasn’t very polite about you, Jasmine. Lou
asked him if you had changed much since uni and he said he thought you
were frumpier.” Lou elbows her friend and glares at her.
Perhaps Hattie’s unkindness is caused by jealousy of her mate’s
good fortune. But more likely, her meanness is to cure her own discontent
by making someone else unhappy. Jasmine makes a mental note to assign
the woman the most boring tasks she can think of over the next week. More
immediately, she cannot afford to let these giddy girls think she is overly
affected by his remark. As the campaign manager, she needs everyone to do
as she says, even the candidate.
 “For my part,” she responds as she reaches for a cookie, “I thought
he was much the same. But perhaps he’s got meaner.”
“Ooh!” says Lou, shaking her fingers. “Burn!”
And Jasmine escapes their tête-à-tête, carrying her tea back to her
desk. She wants to find an empty room and cry, but the office is full of
people. Frumpier? Her mind zeroes in on the word. Frumpier – implying
she was always frumpy but now is even more so. Is that what he thought
back then? Was that all she had been? A pity shag?
No. He had been inundated with offers, but he had chosen her. He
had taken her home to meet his family. That wasn’t the action of someone
who thought her frumpy. She looks down at her loose grey dress. While it is
comfortable to work in when pulling fifteen-hour days, it isn’t the most
flattering of outfits. This morning, knowing Ben was due, Jasmine had
determined not to dress up. Perhaps she had gone too far. As a teenager she
had always scorned the superficiality of judging someone by what they
wore, but five years in Westminster has taught her that others don’t and
looks matter. She has a wardrobe full of smart business wear, all carefully
sourced as most sustainable fashion brands seem to think life is spent on the
beach. Frumpier! She will show him!
But deep inside, she knows the anger is a front. His words have
made one thing absolutely clear. All the evidence from this morning’s visit
indicates Ben no longer loves her, although she is still very much in love
with him.
 Business As Usual

Jasmine has until after lunch to subdue her devastation. Much as she would
like to have scheduled a one-to-one with Ben several weeks into the future,
the unavoidable fact is she is the campaign manager and he is the candidate
for an election in just over three weeks. Unless she wants to forgo her best
chance for a political career after the stain of working for Richard Exmore,
she needs to put her hurt feelings to one side and focus on the job. And the
job is to get Ben Khan elected as the member for Hayburn.
The morning was to introduce Ben to the people who would
campaign on his behalf, the people who would deliver leaflets, knock on
doors, call on phones. Lunch was a chance to meet the Labour Party
committee. Jasmine was happy to skip it. She has met all of them before
and has a fairly low opinion of their usefulness. As a vegan, she would be
lucky to get anything to eat beyond a handful of crisps and would spend her
time dodging people who were determined their latest bugbear should be
the centre-point of her campaign.
She is more than content to let Ben drink the warm boxed white
wine and nibble at the soggy egg salad sandwiches, all while practising his
sincere face, so that she can get on with some real work. But they cannot
avoid each other for long. On the dot of two, Ben walks into the office, nods
amiably to everyone, and heads for the sectioned-off space at the back, his
new office. Despite her recent lunch, Jasmine’s stomach suddenly feels
empty. With a deep breath, she picks up her phone, laptop and notebook,
and enters the lion’s den.
There is a desk and three chairs. Ben stands behind the desk. She
knows the psychology of seating deems the chair at right angles to him as
the open, non-confrontational position, so she takes the chair opposite, the
desk between them. Ben sits, crossing his legs with his ankle resting on one
knee. He leans back.
“I’ll be honest,” he says, looking directly at her but avoiding her
eyes. “I wasn't pleased to find out you were here. I asked for a different
campaign manager but they said I had to accept you or wait another five
and a half years until the next election.”
Wow! Straight out of the gate, Ben is telling her he tried to get her
fired. Anger flares. But Jasmine is sharper than she looks. Ben is a political
animal. This is not just pique; this is calculated. If she storms out, he gets a
new campaign manager and she loses the promised Special Advisor post.
It’s a power play, much like his pose.
“Diddums,” she says. By being obnoxious, Ben has given her a life
raft. She holds onto the irritation; it is better than anguish. “Poor you. Now,
I have spent the last five years developing a comprehensive knowledge of
all things Hayburn. I know the local press; I know which bigwigs might
donate money. I know the political geography and the local issues.
Unfortunately for you, your best chance of getting elected is me. Make no
mistake, even in the current political climate, Richard’s majority was not
high enough that his manner of passing will not create a serious dent in
your chances.”
“About that—” Ben begins, but Jasmine cuts him short.
 “Don’t even go there.” She stares him flat in the eye. “You know
me. If I’d have known, do you think I would have done nothing?” Which is
probably why Richard was very careful to keep it from her.
Ben leans forward. “Okay,” he says at last. “I accept what you say.”
Jasmine leans back and makes her challenge. “Can you draw a line
on our past for the sake of your future and move forward from here?
Because if you can’t, we might as well pack up now.”
Silence. Then, “Yes.” The word is slow, deliberate, reluctant.
Not sure if they’ve turned a corner or reached a temporary reprieve,
Jasmine opens her laptop. “Right, let’s start with your diary.” She
businesslike, even brusque, moving on quickly. The next hour is spent
briefing Ben on the work she has done so far. There have been several polls
run on voting intentions in the constituency, post-scandal, and they do not
make for happy reading. Jasmine and her core team have been running
social media interventions, but until the candidate was announced, they had
not been able to deflect the conversation from Richard Exmore and Irina
Petrova.
Jasmine is grateful for one thing. She knows Ben’s character
thoroughly, his strengths and his weaknesses. She might have changed
massively in five years, but his life has trundled along smoothly. Having
combed the internet for every digital vestige, she is well-informed as to how
Ben’s life has unfolded since they parted. It will enable them to hit the
ground running. She has already got ideas for copy that highlight his assets
and photo opportunities that emphasise his manliness.
The more she talks, the less nervous she is. At lunch, when Sean
called to see how she was, she’d been close to despair. She could not see
how they could ever function as a team. But Sean’s unwavering support,
even mired as he was in his own misery, had grounded her and given her
the determination to try. And it is working. She and Ben are co-operating.
As their scheduled slot nears its close, Jasmine stands and slides a
card across the table – Sean’s barber. “He’s opening early, especially for
you. Eight o’clock tomorrow.”
Ben’s hand goes to the dark locks that flop invitingly at the top of
his head. “It’s not that bad, surely.”
A memory of running her fingers through his glorious, thick hair
flashes in her mind and Jasmine has to restrain a gasp. “It could do with a
trim,” is all she says as she gathers her things together. Ben nods and looks
down at his phone as she moves to the door.
She stops and turns around.
“One more thing,” she says and his head comes back up. “The last
Labour candidate obviously left this constituency mired in a sex scandal.
We won’t survive another one.”
“What are you implying?”
“Keep your pants zipped. Especially around nubile young girls. At
least until after the election.” Until Jasmine was gone.
“Got it.” He grins flippantly. “Can only bonk the elderly and
middle-aged.”
Jasmine does not dignify it with a reply. She has made her point. He
is far from stupid.

***

When eight o’clock rolls around, Jasmine packs up, leaving Ben still
working, personally signing letters to go to voters in villages too remote or
too small to warrant a visit. Lou and her friend left a couple of hours before
and Jasmine wonders when will Ben head out for his date with Lou. The
thought of them together makes her chest burn. Then her phone chimes with
a message from Sean.
Come to mine when you finish. Georg’s sister is over.
She blinks and re-reads the message but it still makes no sense. She
has no idea why Sean’s partner and his sister are significant, but she is not
about to turn down an invitation from Sean, even one so late. Their
relationship is not as sound as it once was and Jasmine needs her friend too
much to risk upsetting him, especially so soon after his father’s death. His
words don’t long remain a puzzle. Sean pulls her into the house as soon as
she knocks on the door and steers her to a chair in the kitchen. Three of
them line up before her – Sean, Georg, and his sister, Agnes.
“This is an intervention, my lovely,” Sean says and Georg nods.
“What?” Jasmine’s eyebrows squish.
“You are a wonderful, strong, beautiful person.” Sean’s hand lifts
her chin, so she is looking directly into his eyes.
“Uh? Thank you.”
His hand releases her and he steps back. Georg adds, “And you are a
very busy woman doing very important work.”
“But sometimes you need to care for yourself the way you care for
others,” finishes Agnes. She produces a plastic cape from behind her back
with a flourish.
“What?” A somewhat more alarmed Jasmine sits up in her chair.
“Sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose,” Sean misquotes. “You
need a haircut.”
“Split ends,” explains Agnes, producing her scissors.
“If you hold still and let Agnes work, then we’ll feed you
afterwards. I’ve made black bean burritos,” says Sean. Carrot and stick.
Jasmine feels her stomach rumble.
“I shouldn’t have told you what he said,” she moans.
“He called her ‘frumpy’,” Sean explains to Georg.
“Bastard!” Georg expostulates.
“Frumpier,” Jasmine corrects.
“He won’t call you frumpy tomorrow,” Agnes forecasts. As Jasmine
lifts up a hand to stop her, she reassures, “All vegan products.”
In the end, it takes three hours. At least they relent and let her eat
while her hair stews in little bits of foil, but as soon as she is finished,
Agnes returns. Her eyebrows are shaped and a face mask applied. When
Agnes finally turns off the hairdryer and steps back, they utter a
synchronised “Ah!” of approval. A mirror is produced and Jasmine stares.
Her hair is still her hair, curly and untameable, but somehow it glows. It has
a vibrancy she has never seen before.
She looks up at Agnes, her eyes a little more liquid than usual. This
kindness at the end of a hard day from someone she hardly knows has
cracked Jasmine’s shell. Sean has long since disappeared in response to a
call from his mother, so Agnes and Georg see her out, handing her an
umbrella to protect her newly coiffed hair from the pouring rain.
As Jasmine dashes to her car, she hears Agnes call out, “Can’t wait
to hear what happens when he sees you tomorrow.”
 A New Chapter

Determined to look like a kick-ass campaign manager, Jasmine surveys her

options the next morning and sighs. With most of her clothes still in
London, she has a limited choice. Eventually, she pulls out the suit she
brought for Richard’s funeral and teams it with the most upbeat blouse in
her possession, hoping the bright pattern offsets the sombreness of the suit.
Normally the first in the office, Jasmine is alarmed to find the door
unlocked and is making a mental note to berate whoever was last out
yesterday, when Ben appears.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
He jumps at the shock. His eyes flick to her, flick away, flick back.
It’s all the reaction she gets, but it is a reaction. She has little time to
be gratified before reality intervenes as he says carelessly, “I didn’t finish
the letters last night. I had somewhere else I had to be. I came in early this
morning to sign the last of them.”
Of course, his date with Lou. How could she forget? She is irritated
with herself for fretting about how it went and says, “I didn’t mean, why are
you early? I meant, why aren’t you at the breakfast meeting?”
“I’m just leaving now. Pamela’s already there setting up.” He
mentions Jasmine’s deputy, the scarily organised woman who for many
years single-handedly raised three rumbustious boys, while also running
Richard Exmore’s constituency office. “She said not to bother until
everything is ready. Said I’d just get under her feet.”
 He moves past her but turns back when he’s at the door. “By the
way, I was thinking we should involve the interns at these events, let them
shadow us, learn how we do things.”
Us? Jasmine doubts whether any interns want to shadow her, but
she keeps her tone even as she replies, “As long as you treat them all
equally,” she says. “If the press sees you with one of them more than the
others, it will start tongues wagging. And gossip can be more harmful than
fact.” She is certain she knows where this idea came from and she doubts it
originated in Ben’s head. Still, if he wants to spend every other minute
explaining his every move, Jasmine is happy to let him.
“Oh, yes,” he mutters as he suddenly realises he will have to spend
hours with a team of earnest and nervous youngsters to score a few minutes
with Lou. “I’ll think about it a bit more.”
She notes he doesn’t seem so keen on the idea now. She can’t resist
tweaking the knife. “Obviously, it will be a massive time commitment, so
it’s really good of you. We were all students once.” She throws in the slight
reference to their shared past, almost too afraid in case it explodes like a
grenade.
Ben flushes. She doesn’t wait for him to leave, heading off to the
little kitchenette to make herself a strong cup of tea, maybe with a teaspoon
of sugar, to stop her heart from quaking.
She doesn’t see Ben again until the late morning, by which time she
has had plenty of compliments, even if few seem able to identify exactly
what has changed about her appearance. Although vanity has never been
one of Jasmine’s faults, she finds her spirits inexplicably lift with each
positive remark. Which is just as well. Because she fully expects the
forthcoming meeting to be very difficult, as they decide on strategy with the
candidate for the first time.
 When Ben enters the meeting room, Jasmine is still sticking magic
whiteboard to the walls, knowing not everyone is comfortable with
technology. He ignores her to focus on Roger instead. As the local Labour
Party chair, Roger’s support will be crucial to this campaign and like any
successful politician, Ben almost unconsciously gravitates to the key
players in the room.
Jasmine has yet to start the meeting when Sean walks in the door.
“Ah! Sean.” Roger shakes his hand warmly, then releases him.
“Ben.” Sean’s greeting is perfunctory.
“Sean.” Ben’s head tilts. “Why are you here?”
Jasmine is about to reply, but Sean gets there before her.
“What’s that, Ben? It’s been a long time. Yes, it has, five years.
How’s life treating you? Good, huh? Your father still alive?”
Ben has the grace to look abashed, and while Jasmine agrees Ben
roundly deserves Sean’s verbal slapping, she needs the meeting to proceed
without setting off any more explosive devices.
“Sean’s father was the Hayburn MP for a long time,” Jasmine
interrupts. “There are many in his constituency who were very fond of him
despite recent events, many people he has helped.” Jasmine looks pointedly
at Ben. “They will not be disposed to welcome you or help you. The
endorsement of the family will go a long way to bringing them on board.
Sean has graciously agreed to help where he can. We are extremely grateful
as we recognise what a difficult time it is for his family at the moment.”
“I apologise, Sean.” Ben drops his head. “My condolences. It must
be difficult for you and your family. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Jasmine watches Sean. She wonders if he realises why Ben reacted
so poorly. Ben’s immediate association was to place Sean as Jasmine’s
friend and not as the son of his father. His hostility to Sean is not a good
presentiment to his agreement to put their past behind them.
Sean lets out a breath. He is one of the most good-natured people
Jasmine has ever known, but he doesn’t have a lot of time for Ben. He was,
after all, the one who picked up the pieces of her life each time it imploded.
“In answer to your first question, I’m here because Jasmine asked
me to come. My father was very fond of her. As long as she wants me to
support your campaign, I will.” Sean makes his allegiance crystal clear.
He walks away to take a seat and Jasmine moves quickly to get the
meeting started. They are half an hour in before the next trip wire. Under
discussion is the likelihood of support from Party heavyweights.
“My mum has said she’ll come this weekend,” Ben says, and the
room goes quiet. Jasmine looks at Roger, but he is carefully avoiding her
eyes. As well he should. This is her job – speaking truth to power. She
clears her throat. “Much as we all respect your mother, she’s the one person
who cannot come.”
“Why not?” Ben’s question is confrontational and Jasmine realises
how thin is the veil of cooperation between them.
“You’re a nepo baby.” Sean’s tone is off-hand but Jasmine knows he
means the insult.
“Thank you, Sean.” She feels like a teacher trying to keep hold of an
unruly class. “I might have put it rather less bluntly, but yes. There is some
resentment locally that you have been imposed on Hayburn as a candidate.
There is some concern you haven’t earned this candidacy but been given it
because of your mother.” She looks to Roger, who finally finds the courage
to confirm her words.
“I’m afraid there have been some mutterings,” Roger mumbles.
 “One or two of the councillors thought they were in with a chance.
Then you come along with your empty résumé and you don’t even live
here.” Sean is clearly enjoying playing devil’s advocate.
“We know the reasons why Labour HQ has imposed a candidate;
there isn’t time to run a selection campaign and if we don’t get the by-
election done quickly, we’ll be waiting until the General Election which
will be months. Months in which the Tories will be dragging out Richard’s
manner of passing every chance they get.” Jasmine summarises the
situation before Ben can start protesting. “But it is a bitter pill for some to
swallow when they’ve spent years working for this chance to have it taken
away. And because you are so young, they might never get another chance.
If you get elected now and can hold this seat at the next General Election,
you will be in Parliament for decades. You can understand how they might
feel.”
Ben nods slowly.
“So can I take it you will have a word with your mum? Any of her
front bench colleagues are welcome, but it’s best if she stays away.”
When she sees Ben is reluctant, with fingers crossed he refuses, she
offers, “I’ll talk to her if you like?”
But he shakes his head and Jasmine is relieved. She remembers
what a force of nature Hannah Greene is and doesn’t envy Ben having to
explain to her she is not welcome. Not least because the stronger the parent,
the more fraught the challenge from the child as the child grows to adult.
This will be a rite of passage for Ben, but it may be good for him. People
look at Jasmine and hear her speak and know she is from privilege. But Ben
thinks of himself as working class, although he is a product of successive
generations of social mobility; leaving aside his mixed ethnicity, he has
suffered no more disadvantage than Jasmine.
 Jasmine moves the meeting on. Three hours later, with much
negotiating, a little cajoling, and a couple of veiled threats, they have a
campaign strategy. It will not survive much beyond the first set of responses
on the doorstep, but it is a start.
Sean is the first to leave and Jasmine lets him go without trying to
talk to him. He needs to get back to work and she will call him later.
Eventually, everyone filters out except her. She is the last having
photographed the whiteboard sheets for later transcription and cleaned them
off for possible re-use. As she exits the room, she sees Lou bringing Ben a
cup of coffee and watches him smile at her. Her outfit today is a tight-fitting
T-shirt with a plunging v-neckline which showcases her cleavage paired
with jeggings. It is a good choice. Ben always was a boob-man. For some
guys it is a shapely rear, for others long legs, but in this Ben has always
conformed to the stereotypical, tabloid-reading, working-class male. Lou
makes a comment. He laughs, and suddenly Jasmine cannot stand to be in
the office observing them any longer. She grabs her bag and heads out. She
will eat her Marmite sandwich in the park nearby.
It is a cold and lonely lunch, with only a couple of expectant
pigeons for company. And unfortunately, absence doesn’t make her brain
forget. Left to itself, unoccupied by the myriad of usual interruptions, her
mind finds ample time to imagine the interaction between Lou and Ben and
their growing closeness. Eventually, she shakes out her crumbs, carefully
folds the greaseproof paper wrapping, and puts it back into her bag for
disposal at the campaign headquarters. She casts one quick look around –
the broken swings the council cannot afford to repair, the metal shutters on
shops firmly closed even in the middle of the day, the graffiti it is never
worth cleaning off – and she remembers why she is here. She strongly
believes these people deserve a better life and Labour is the only party
which will give it to them. Despite everything that has happened between
them and all the ways Ben may not be the man she wants him to be, she is
absolutely certain he will serve these people to the best of his impressive
abilities. He will fight for them and their futures will be better as a result.
That is what is important – not her bruised heart nor her unrequited love.
She straightens up, standing tall with shoulders back and she breathes deep.
It is time to return.
That afternoon, she and Ben are scheduled to run through the speech
he is giving in the evening. After a quiet word with the dean of the biggest
sixth form college in the constituency, they are hosting a hustings for all the
candidates. Nearly a thousand youngsters who have no issues with Ben’s
lack of experience and who probably don’t care about Richard Exmore’s
marital infidelities. A thousand youngsters who would be likely to vote
Labour, if only she and Ben can inspire them to vote at all.
The interns are already there, drumming up interest for Ben’s visit,
overseen by the ever-efficient Pamela. Jasmine could not conceive of
anyone better able to control a horde of teenagers and had been prepared to
plead on bended knee, if necessary. But Pamela had agreed without the need
for theatrics. Pragmatism had trumped jealousy and Jasmine had added Lou
to the group, knowing a pretty young woman could help lure others. Her
open friendliness, in this case, is as useful as her attractiveness.
It leaves her and Ben alone to practise his speech and rehearse
answers to likely questions. Jasmine has been dreading this moment since
their last meeting. They need to work together, but the whole of their
history together lies between them and she cannot see a way through.
They are in the meeting room at campaign headquarters, surrounded
by boxes of leaflets and envelopes and crates of the tablets used for
recording information when canvassing. There are a couple of volunteers
manning the phones in the room next door, nothing but a couple of sheets of
plasterboard separating the others. Still, it feels strangely intimate
sequestered in the room with all the clutter, reminiscent of the old, old
easiness of the two of them together.
Except Ben is clearly no more keen to be in the room than she is.
“Well, let’s get on with it,” he says, moving to the end of the conference
table.
“From the start, then.”
As he begins his speech, Jasmine is heartened. She is aware of the
mammoth task ahead of them, she has seen the polling numbers. They are
not in danger of Labour voters switching sides like the last Red Wall
defection. But it doesn’t take that to lose. It only needs Labour voters to
stay at home, convinced of the endemic corruption of politicians of all
parties.
He has amended the speech she wrote in places to suit his style and
it works. She notices, although she only sent him the speech the day before,
he seldom needs to refer to his notes. He has obviously spent time learning
it and she is surprised and pleased. Given the limited amount of free time
available to him, it is unexpected. When he draws to a close, she gives him
a short burst of applause, five claps, to signify her approval and then asks
the first of her questions.
“What do you think of the stories coming out about Richard
Exmore?”
“I didn’t know Mr Exmore personally. I understand there is a
parliamentary inquiry under way. I will wait for their report before I make
any judgements. My sincere condolences go out to his family, though.”
“Good,” she says. “Sidestep the elephant trap. Abusing Richard is
not going to win you friends, but you can’t defend him either with the Tory
tabloids baying for his soul. And that bit about his family shows you are
sympathetic.”
They continue. On the next question, he uses the word
“instantiation” and Jasmine pulls him up.
“This is a sixth form, not a university debate club. Keep your
sentences short and your words simple.”
And on. Question, response. They cover all the topics likely to
matter to youngsters: climate change, Brexit, energy, zero hours contracts,
student loans. Ben gives a considered reply to each, nothing wildly adrift
from current Labour policy but sufficiently personalised to show where his
priorities lie.
The timer on Jasmine’s phone brings them to a halt. Jasmine stands
and says, “See you there,” desperately hoping Ben doesn’t ask for a lift. But
she need not have worried. Ben nods and heads into his little office to
collect his things, and she takes the opportunity to leave quickly.
The sixth form college has the slightly damp, slightly musky smell
of badly ventilated municipal buildings. She is gratified to see a mob of
youngsters clustered around the Labour Party desk. The Tories are
twiddling their thumbs and the Liberal Democrats are not much better. They
still haven’t overthrown the stigma of treachery over student loans. Jasmine
has always thought of this as a masterpiece of political skulduggery. It was
a Conservative policy through and through and yet it was the Lib Dems
who ended up taking the blame.
Much more worrying, though, is the crowd around the Greens. The
last thing Jasmine wants is to split the Labour vote with the Green party.
That would definitely herald a Conservative victory. For all Hayburn’s
poverty, there are a host of Tory voting stalwarts in the countryside and in
the affluent villages who will never jump ship.
 Jasmine finds Pamela already in the auditorium and takes a seat
beside her. As the room begins to fill up, Lou comes to sit beside them with
a strapping young lad in tow, whom she introduces as Dave. He has the
appearance and physique of a rugby player and his eyes are fixed on Lou, a
look of appreciation on his face. The other candidates file in and Jasmine
starts to panic at the lack of Ben. She begins to regret not giving him a lift,
picturing him lost among the unfamiliar streets, unable to get enough signal
to get his maps app to work. She almost faints in relief to see him barrelling
through the doors, looking flustered and muttering about parking. She
watches his eyes rest briefly on Dave, who is entertaining Lou so well she
hasn’t even noticed Ben’s arrival.
Ben slides into the end seat on the other side of Pamela just as the
dean takes the podium. Each candidate has ten minutes for a speech and ten
minutes to answer audience questions. Order was determined by party vote
share at the last election, so Ben is first. It is both a blessing and a curse.
First is a chance to create impact and for those with a low boredom
threshold, it gets a message across before they zone out. But last is also
good. You can learn from the reaction of the audience and adapt your
responses to questions. You can also plant the last lingering image in the
audience's mind.
Pamela reaches out and pats Ben’s back as the dean invites him to
take his place on the stage. Ben’s eyes catch Jasmine’s as he stands and she
gives him a thumbs-up encouragement. She mouths, “You’ve got this.” And
he nods.
It is always hard going on first. The audience is cold. Beside her,
Lou is turned away, whispering a reply to a comment from Dave. She is
oblivious to Ben’s sudden need for reassurance as he turns his back on them
and takes his place at the lectern. As Jasmine knows him well, she can see
he is nervous in the set of his shoulders, the tightness in his jaw, but to
others she believes he probably looks poised.
“Hello, everyone,” Ben starts. They had agreed this opening to
avoid the trap of gender assignment, a far less controversial issue to the
young than the middle-aged.
“Phew. I almost didn’t make it on time. I thought I’d have to tell the
dean the dog ate my car.”
This was not scripted but Jasmine nods. He’s feeling the mood of
the room. It works – the audience perk up and their laughter clearly relaxes
Ben. He gives his speech without incident but when the floor is open for
questions, the first comes from the team sitting next to the Conservative
candidate.
“What do you think of the stories coming out about Richard
Exmore?”
Jasmine almost laughs, which would be decidedly awkward to
explain. When Ben gives his answer smoothly and immediately moves on,
selecting another questioner, she is hard pressed to restrain a fist pump. All
the other questions are a doddle. Yes, he supports on-shore wind (take that,
Green Party). Yes, he accepts climate change – the scientists have long
since reached consensus on this and he’s unclear why we are still debating
it. Yes, something needs to be done about the levels of student debt,
particularly the interest rates, and he supports Labour’s stance of a wide-
ranging review of the whole process.
Ben was a good orator when they were at university. He is even
better now. He can modulate his voice well, his gestures underscore his
words without being over-dramatic or distracting. He can appear as if he is
talking directly to every member of the audience personally. It shows he is
just as good with a crowd as he is in small groups and one-to-ones. She
makes a note to add more large group events to their schedule. If Ben can
do this enough times, he’ll win just by this method alone. They are
constrained on time. The election will take place in a few weeks and she has
to reach as many people as she can in the time. There are several hundred
here tonight. Ben could never have reached so many going door-to-door.
When he takes his seat again, Jasmine wants to lean over and give
him a hug. She has to content herself with watching Pamela give him a high
five. Lou, however, blows him a kiss. The room quietens for the
Conservative candidate. It does not go well. She makes references in her
speech to songs and TV programmes aired before these kids were even
born. Jasmine can’t help but wonder at the calibre of her support team. Are
they all so ancient they cannot relate to youth?
When the Green Party candidate stands up, Jasmine sucks in her
breath. Another woman, Jasmine notes, an implicit insinuation that after
Richard, only a woman can be trusted to run the area without plunging them
into scandal. But the woman reads her speech from her notes, mostly
looking down and not engaging with the audience at all. The increasing
rustling among the students signals their disengagement.
Ben is a stunning success. He is mobbed after the hustings end.
Jasmine, Pamela, Dave, and Lou wait until the adoring masses thin and
disappear. Jasmine is elated at how well it has all gone. It is a triumph and
her spirits soar. They can do this. They can win.
Then she hears Lou ask, “Ben, if you drove, can you give me a lift
back? Hattie left earlier.”
Jasmine sees the eagerness in Ben’s eyes as he agrees and she is sure
the disappointment in hers is only matched by that in Dave’s.
 Mr and Mrs Smith

Jasmine does not enjoy door-knocking. Her upper-class accent signposts her
privileged upbringing, putting her at an immediate disadvantage in
connecting with the average Hayburn voter, who frequently struggles to
make a pay packet last. As soon as she opens her mouth, she is greeted with
the response, “Not from round here, are you, love?”
The word “love” in this case is most decidedly used to patronise, not
as an endearment. Jasmine does not understand the tribalism. Looking at
Hayburn’s crime statistics, she would suppose not being a local should
make her more trustworthy, not less. But here, there is a widening circle of
distrust, starting with family, stretching to “round here”, extending through
“up North”, onward to English, then British and on the very fringes, to be
treated with the utmost suspicion, foreigners.
In Jasmine’s own experience, she has met many extremely pleasant
foreigners and many extremely unpleasant members of her own nearest and
dearest, and she can’t imagine her experience is unique. Still, she
acknowledges the existence of tribalism even if it is completely nonsensical
and generally spends her time co-ordinating the teams of volunteers,
leaving the task of communication to others. Occasionally, though, she
needs to lead by example and join their efforts, particularly if sickness or a
significant football match has depleted their numbers of volunteers.
 Today is one such day. There is some reprieve for Jasmine as the
canvassing area is one which almost qualifies as affluent and her accent
may be taken as aspirational. The houses in this neighbourhood are semi-
detached Victorian villas. In contrast to the back-to-back terraces whose
front doors open directly onto the street, each of these houses has a little
front garden, with a low wall sealing them off from the world. The little
patch out front is often an indication of the owner’s mindset. It can be a
patch of weeds, a wildflower garden; or an arid gravel desert, bare of life;
or it can be a beautifully tended delight, with cottage garden borders and
whimsical gnomes hiding among the vegetation.
Big bay windows showcase signs of life. This is the optimum time
for door-knocking, when folks are back from work, but before they’ve
settled down to watch telly for the night, a two-hour window of opportunity.
The door-knockers work in pairs for safety and Jasmine is paired with
Hattie. She was so focused on making sure she didn’t end up with Ben, she
failed to notice he had managed to pair off with Lou until they were all set
and trundling off to their designated streets.
To speed things up, Jasmine and Hattie each take a side of the street.
But after every house, they check in with each other before moving on to
the next. They work quickly, both of them carrying a tablet to enter the
information garnered from an address; do they intend to vote, whom do
they intend voting for, and do they need help to get to the polling station.
Tory voters get nothing, confirmed Labour supporters a smile and a thumbs-
up. The undecideds get more attention, time spent chatting on the doorstep
uncovering and addressing concerns. Everyone gets a leaflet, if they accept
one.
As they work, they have the occasional door shut in their faces. One
person shouts in a querulous voice through a locked door for them to go
away and Jasmine makes a note to call the resident instead and make sure
they have transport to the polling station on the day. Far more encouraging
are those who listen, who give them a chance to make the case for Ben
Khan to represent these constituents in Parliament.
It is the last house on the street where things go awry. A woman
answers the door with a baby on her hip, a toddler at her legs, and flat, dead
eyes. She is pretty – immaculate make-up, rare on a mother with such
young children and no help. Her clothes are simple but classy, jeans and a
striped shirt.
Jasmine is mid-way through her introduction when the baby smiles
at her. She halts and with a gentle “Hello” smiles back. The child, suddenly
shy, burrows into its mother’s shoulder, dragging her shirt open. Livid
bruises streak the woman’s skin over her collarbone – shades of red and
purple, mixed with green and yellow, fresh injuries overlying older ones.
She is already pulling the shirt back into place as Jasmine’s eyes lift
to meet hers. Softly, Jasmine asks, “Did your partner do that?”
The woman stops.
Nod.
“Is he here?”
Nod.
Jasmine can feel the woman’s despair and desperately wants to
respond, dragging the mother and her children out of the house to safety.
She is not attempting to hide or retreat, and Jasmine can sense she is at a
crisis point. But she also knows the most dangerous time for any victim of
domestic violence is when they try to leave.
She keeps her voice very low. “If you decide to leave, don’t tell him.
Don’t pack. Just take your children and go.” She picks up a campaign flyer,
turns it around to face the woman, and points at the printed address. “Come
here and ask for Jasmine. Someone will always know how to find me. I will
help you.”
One more thing occurs to her. “And leave your phone behind. He’ll
track it.”
A toilet flushes. A door opens at the rear of the house. Through the
hallway and the kitchen, Jasmine sees a man emerge. He looks normal,
unremarkable – if she passed him in the street she would not have noticed
him. There is absolutely nothing about him to indicate he is evil. Yet here in
this house, day after day, he unleashes his own type of brutality. The woman
backs away and turns, pushing the door shut. Jasmine stands outside for a
few seconds, praying she has not jeopardised this woman further. To the
world, she appears to be studying her tablet, but every part of her is
straining to hear what happens next. She will call the police if she has to.
Muffled, dim, she hears words. A demand. “Who was that?”
A reply, faint, indistinct. “Labour Party. They left a leaflet. Here.”
A child’s giggle. Then nothing. Jasmine looks down at her tablet.
The data from the electoral register gives the address and the name of the
occupants: Mr Adam Smith and Mrs Natasha Smith. Jasmine turns to go.
She has already lingered too long, every second increasingly suspicious.
Jasmine looks at the house from the pavement. She slides her eyes
to the neighbours. These people must know; they must hear. She knows she
shouldn’t judge – maybe they call the police, maybe they turn up the
television. Domestic violence is always complicated. Feelings of
worthlessness, fear, and even love stop people seeking help. It can take a
long time and many attempts to break free.
Hattie, oblivious, is already waiting for Jasmine. No one had
answered her knock. As the two of them move off together in the direction
of the meet-up point, Jasmine is quiet. She lets Hattie ramble on as she
thinks about her encounter. Was there something she could have said or
done differently? Something that would have had an impact, tipped the
scales, without endangering Mrs Smith more? Jasmine longs to save her,
but she has enough awareness salvation can’t be forced on anyone.
Hattie pushes open the door of the pub where the canvassing team is
set to congregate, and Jasmine sees most are already here. Ben is sitting
next to Lou, the two of them looking very cosy. The shaft of jealousy is
sharp and expected. Jasmine tries to ignore it. She nods to the landlord, a
friend of Sean’s, and he comes directly to her end of the bar to take her
order; a white wine for Hattie and fizzy elderflower for herself. She has
more work to do when they finish here tonight. Besides, she knows better
than to risk the acidic plonk served by the typical Hayburn pub. Hattie takes
a seat as close as she can get to Lou, but Jasmine sits beside Pamela.
Lou’s voice is raised as she is telling the story of her evening. “And
so he opens the door,” she says, choking back a giggle, “starkers.” She
stops to swallow a laugh, then leans forward as if sharing a secret. “Not a
stitch,” she explains. “And his thingy …” She makes a fist and then rotates
her forearm until it is vertical. “And Ben jumps back like he thinks it is
going to attack him. And his voice squeaks like a little boy’s as he shoves a
leaflet at the bloke and says,” she raises her pitch, “‘Vote Labour’, and then
he turns and runs.”
The table erupts in laughter. Ben smiles and waits for the laughs to
subside before he responds, “Well, I thought he might try to shake my hand
and I was certain I knew where his hand had just been. Who answers the
door, mid-wank?” He spreads his hands wide, palms up.
The table erupts again.
And Pamela leans over to Jasmine. “What do you think is going on
there?” she says, eyes on the pair, voice low, words meant for Jasmine
alone. And Jasmine wonders the very same thing.
 An Unexpected Interlude

One advantage of having Ben’s mother on the front bench has been the ease
with which Jasmine can persuade Labour grandees to visit, lending their
weight and gravitas to the young candidate. Sometimes their staff have even
approached her.
By and large, she leaves them to Ben to handle; he knows many of
them as they are family friends. Today’s visit is different. The Labour
Director of Communications is due. This is not the typical visit, here to
press flesh as photographers snap fodder for social media, the local papers
and, if a particularly slow news day, the national press. This visit is not
newsworthy, but it is the most significant of Jasmine’s career because the
DoC can make or break Jasmine.
When his car pulls up in front of the campaign headquarters in the
spot Jasmine coned off that morning – even though the act was of dubious
legality – Jasmine, Pamela, and Ben are waiting. Both of the women are
nervous, Jasmine because she knows what is at stake and Pamela because
Jasmine is. In the many years she has known Jasmine, ever since Jasmine
started working for Richard, the older woman has always been impressed
with Jasmine’s unflappable confidence. Some might call it arrogance and
entitlement, but Pamela knows it is backed up with talent and competence.
 Jasmine is familiar with the DoC’s face from video calls and Labour
propaganda photos. Since the surprising email asking her to step in to
prepare the ground for the by-election in Hayburn, she has been in regular,
although intermittent, contact with the DoC. His reputation as a rottweiler is
well-known, but so far she has avoided a mauling. She has used the same
tactic here as she used previously – take a temporary job and make yourself
indispensable. Still, it could change at any moment.
When the DoC walks into the office, Jasmine is surprised. He is
tiny, shorter than her and nearly half her width. She feels like a great
lumpen ox beside him. His voice, though, makes up for his size. She is sure
it is deliberate as he booms, “Great spot here. Almost better than a high
street. Imagine the traffic that goes past every day. And every one of them
sees your face.” He nods at Ben. “I take it the location’s your work?” He
swivels to Jasmine and at her nod, says, “Thought so. Good girl.”
Finding a campaign headquarters was always troublesome. You
don’t want to spend any of your budget because it is limited by election law
and needed for other things. Using the current constituency office is
prohibited. Jasmine knows of campaigns that have been run out of a garage
or a living room. They are seldom successful. When she managed to talk
the landlord into letting them use the empty shop for a few weeks on the
promise they would repaint the black walls the previous occupant had
installed and no other charge, she had practically skipped home. One day
with a large roller, a couple of ten-litre tubs of obliterating matt, and a few
old sheets had transformed the shop from a vampire’s den to a workable
space. The old storeroom at the back was transformed into an office for the
candidate that Jasmine purloined whenever he was out. A meeting room
doubled as a dumping ground for leaflets and supplies and a larger space for
desks for volunteers to man phonelines, send emails, and complete
paperwork. But more than any of that was the double shop front, on a main
arterial road. Jasmine has filled the window with giant posters of Ben and
campaign slogans. They change these regularly. It cuts down on daylight
inside the space, but is worth it for the exposure it gets.
Jasmine can practically feel Ben stiffen at her side as he bristles at
the blatantly patronising comment from the DoC. She prays he holds his
tongue. This is not his battle to fight and now is not the time to make an
enemy of the DoC. Mercifully, the man is on a tight schedule.
“I’ve been looking at the numbers,” he launches straight into it after
Ben shows him into his small office, “and I’m impressed. We thought we’d
take a nosedive what with all the tabloids piling in, but it’s not been the
bloodbath we expected. We’ve even seen a tiny uptick in the last day or so.
Too early to say if it’s a trend or an aberration, but …” He turns to Ben,
“I’ve looked over Jasmine’s plan and I have to say I think it is sound. Do
whatever she tells you to do and you won’t go far wrong.”
Ben nods, like he never tried to get Jasmine removed from the
campaign. They talk over some of the issues they have found on the
doorstep talking to residents and what Ben may and may not be able to
promise in the future. Then the DoC glances at his phone and stands.
“Anything you need from us, you’ve got. Anyone gives you any
trouble, you send them to me. I’m a rule bender by nature but no breaking
election rules, here. The entire country is watching this one. And we need
the win. This is probably the last by-election before the General Election.
Let’s go in riding the wave of success.” He turns to go.
“And Jasmine,” he says, looking directly at her. “I meant what I said
and I’m a man who keeps his promises.”
As the DoC whirls out, Jasmine takes a few minutes to breathe. She
sneaks into the little kitchen and stands with the tea caddy in her hands but
doesn’t switch on the kettle. She just needs to rebalance. Unfortunately, her
time out is interrupted.
Ben walks into the kitchen, a face like thunder. “What did he mean
by that?”
Jasmine ponders acting coy for a moment but then sighs. “It’s
nothing sinister and it really is none of your business.” She puts the tea
caddy down and turns to go, but Ben’s hand lands on her upper arm. Her
heartbeat picks up and memories of his touch flash in her mind. She is close
to losing it.
“I think it is. What promise?” Ben demands.
“A job!” she cries, exasperated. “When all this is over. And only if
we win. What did you think it was?”
“Oh?” Ben’s brow furrows. “I thought …” He stops.
“You thought, what? That I’d work for you?” She stares him directly
in the eye. “No, thanks.” A future watching him climb the career ladder
with her stuck in his parliamentary office? A future watching him fall in
love with the woman he makes his wife? Neither appeals.
“Even if Richard were still alive, I was planning to move on. But
now I’m tainted by his death and the suspicion I knew about Irina Petrova.
No one would touch me. But if we win…” Jasmine leaves it up to him to
understand what it would mean for her career.
“And if we lose?” he asks.
“Then we’ll both be looking for another job. The difference is,
you’ll get another chance and I’ll be stacking shelves in the supermarket.”
She moves past him but stops in the doorway. “Promise me one
thing, though? Promise me that Pamela will head up your constituency
office. If you win, of course.” Jasmine may want more, but Pamela’s whole
life is here in Hayburn.
 “I’m not an idiot, Jasmine. I can see what an asset she is. And I
understand older folk might find it easier to confide in her than me. I will
win here. I’d have thought you’d have more faith in us than that.”
Faith in us. Jasmine wants to laugh. Bitterly. She’d had faith in them
once before and look how that had turned out. She turns and stalks away.
That afternoon, she and Ben are visiting a local factory making
heavy machinery. It was a relic of the old days when steel works and coal
mines abounded and it made sense to be close by. Nowadays, the furnaces
and mines are gone, but it remains, importing the steel and parts it needs. It
continues to be one of the biggest employers in the neighbourhood.
Privately owned by a local family who were supporters of Richard, the
family want to sound out the new young whippersnapper for themselves. A
tour of the factory, a chance to speak to the workers and the union
representatives, and a meeting with the board has been arranged. Jasmine
has practically mortgaged her soul to set up the visit, understanding the
opportunities for photos showcasing Ben already at work in the local
economy and the chance to convince one or two donors.
It starts well enough. The tour is great and the meeting with the
board goes well. Jasmine has pre-primed Ben with the issues the company
faces trading in post-Brexit Britain, the rising costs of energy and raw
materials especially with global competition. For all his youth, Ben has an
amazing ability to grasp complex situations and to work through to the core
issues. The meeting with the workers, though, is a disaster.
Early on, a union representative, mid-fifties, beefy, red-faced, asks
Ben, “Have you ever done a day’s manual labour in your life?”
Like a practised politician, Ben sidesteps the question.
And Jasmine groans internally. These are stereotypical, working-
class, northern men. Blunt, unpretentious, honest. It is the worst thing he
could do. In that one moment, he loses his audience. The questions become
increasingly hostile and Ben seems increasingly uncomfortable.
Beleaguered is not a good look, not a look voters want.
Jasmine gets him out of the meeting as soon as she can.
When they are both sitting in in his car, he puts his head back. “That
was bad, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” she says. She will have to pick him up, but first she needs
him to learn. “Sidestepping the question was a mistake.”
“But you see it on television all the time. I’ve even seen my mother
do it and she’s more of a straight-talker than most.”
“Politicians being interviewed by journalists can try that, maybe run
down the clock until the journo has to move on. But not those talking
directly to voters. Not here.”
“So what should I have said?” he grumps. “Yeah, mate. Look at my
soft hands? These aren’t built for rough work?”
She shrugs off the sarcasm. Ben is cross with himself, not her. “You
answer honestly. No, I haven’t. But then, I’ve never worked as a surgeon,
either. And yet I can still appreciate the problems with the NHS. I’ve never
milked a cow but I know the challenges our farmers are facing.”
“That simple, eh?” He drops his head forward. “And I didn’t think
of it.”
He is genuinely upset and Jasmine so very much wants to console
him. She puts her hand on his arm, intending to comfort him, and realises
almost immediately it is a bad idea. The feel of his muscle tight under her
fingers as he clenches the steering wheel kicks memories of his body
flexing under hers into the forefront of her mind.
She swallows hard and drops her hand. “Look,” she says. “It’s one
group. These are diehard unionists. They may not vote for you but they
would die before they vote Tory. If they didn’t defect last time, they won’t
now.”
Ben is silent for a moment. Then he nods. “Okay. You don’t think it
is irrecoverable?”
“Not if you learn from this.”
He nods again and starts the engine.
Halfway back Jasmine’s phone rings. She checks the screen,
prepared to reject the call to continue focussing on Ben. But the name on
the screen gives her pause. Jacob Winter. It seems like decades ago he had
slipped her his number just in case in Gillian’s kitchen. When he was dating
Kate and Petey was still alive and the world was a different place. She had
never used it but that he should call was unusual enough for her to answer.
“Jake?” A greeting and a question all in one word.
“I know you’re busy,” he starts, “but have you got a moment?”
“Sure.”
“I need a favour.” Jacob had always been up front. It’s one of the
things she likes about him.
“Shoot.”
“You may know Eleanor and I have been trying for a baby.” Jasmine
didn’t know and is grateful not to have to keep the shock off her face. But
when she thinks about it, it makes sense. Eleanor is her eldest sister, over
four years older. Her biological clock would be ticking louder.
“She miscarried today.” His voice cracks and he pauses for a beat.
“For the second time.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jasmine is genuinely sad. “For both of you.”
“The thing is, she’s absolutely beside herself. And I can’t seem to
get through. She won’t speak to me about it.”
“What about Anna?”
 “She’s in Los Angeles at a conference. Besides …”
“Besides?”
“You understand loss. Anna sees death but she doesn’t understand
loss. Loss and death are different. Eleanor’s more likely to talk to you than
anyone else.”
Jasmine nods, although Jacob can’t see her. She wouldn’t want
Anna’s version of consolation either. For Jacob to call, he must be
desperate. She considers who his options might be. Eleanor’s relationship
with their mother is only marginally better than hers. His own mother is a
non-starter; Eleanor would skin him alive. And it is not the type of thing
that someone private like Eleanor would talk about with friends, especially
if they are all happily procreating themselves. Neither would Eleanor’s best
friend, their cousin Serena, suit. She has long sworn she has no intention of
ever having children.
Jacob is right. There was no one else Eleanor might talk to but her.
“I’ll need to speak to the candidate,” she says, “and I’ll text you.”
She ends the call and turns her head.
“Speak,” Ben instructs.
“My sister Eleanor is having some …” she hesitates, then continues,
“personal problems.” If Eleanor doesn’t want to talk about losing her baby
with her friends, she surely doesn’t want it shared with strangers. “That was
my brother-in-law. He would like me to visit her. To cheer her up.”
“We’re not running a church outing here, Jasmine.”
“I know, but I won’t be long.” The problem with keeping someone’s
confidences is that it minimises the severity to others. She can’t explain
how necessary her absence might be, without disclosing some of Eleanor’s
suffering. All Jasmine can do is argue how little it will affect him. “If you
drop me at the station now, I’ll be back by lunch tomorrow. You can do the
stand-up with the team first thing and Pamela can cover until I get back.”
He sighs. “You never could resist being someone’s saviour.” His
words are grouchy but his tone is soft, and when he pulls the car to a halt in
front of the train station, she takes it as his assent.
Jasmine spends the journey making arrangements and dealing with
her emails. Mercifully, Pamela agrees to cover her diary without a murmur.
Jacob is waiting for her at Bridgetown, the nearest railway station to
Larkford. They sit in comfortable silence. Jacob has never been one to
chatter and Jasmine is aware he has his own grief to process along with his
concern for his wife. He parks outside Glebe Cottage, the little flint-and-
brick home he shares with Eleanor.
It has the same footprint as Gillian’s house; the Victorians had a
handful of boilerplate designs which they rolled out across the nation in
different sizes. It must have been quite an adjustment for Eleanor after the
grandeur of Larkford Hall but whenever Jasmine talks to her sister, she
seems happy enough. Jasmine thinks Eleanor would probably accept a
kitchen cupboard if she had Jacob Winter to share it with.
Eleanor is in the kitchen when they get in. Jasmine cannot
remember the last time she saw her sister looking a mess but here is the
proof it can happen. Eleanor’s hair is uncombed and she is slumped in a
chair still wearing her dressing gown. Jacob takes a casserole dish out of the
oven and puts it on the table. A pasta bake with Mediterranean vegetables.
Eleanor, who has always had a healthy appetite to power her dynamo
personality, barely eats. Jacob clears her plate away with a frown but
doesn’t say anything.
He chivvies the two of them into the front room while he clears up
the dinner things.
 “He told you?” Eleanor asks. Jasmine nods and Eleanor starts to cry.
Jasmine is shocked. She cannot ever remember seeing Eleanor in
tears. She has always been the sensible older sister, the person who can be
relied on to speak sense, to come up with scrupulously fair solutions for her
warring siblings. For a second, Jasmine stands frozen, then she enfolds her
sister into her arms and lets her sob into her jacket.
“He was my baby,” Eleanor cries and Jasmine lets the grief pour out
without trying to hush her sister. It is every mother’s job to keep her baby
safe, but the frightening thing is, it’s not always possible. It’s true from the
very start until the very end.
It’s a while before Eleanor is calm enough to talk, but Jasmine waits
patiently. Typically, Eleanor starts with, “I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up but
I’m off my meds. After last time, I didn’t want to risk anything.”
“I didn’t mind,” Jasmine says. “Jacob is prettier.” It’s the mildest of
comments but Eleanor responds earnestly.
“Yes, they say newborns look like their fathers. I was hoping it was
true.” Another sob. “Jacob’s had to do so much. It’s not fair on him. He’s
lost someone too. I’ve been trying not to dump my grief on him, to be
strong.”
“But he doesn’t need you to be strong. This is a tragedy you both
feel. It’s okay to feel it together.” Jasmine strokes down her sister’s back.
“Look, Eleanor. Your hormones are all over the place at the moment. But
you know me, I’ll always tell it to you straight. Take some time, give your
body a rest. Focus on loving your husband and feeling his love in return.
You’ve got a precious gift in him. Appreciate it.”
Eleanor dips her head in shame. “I know,” she mumbles.
“Take the pressure off. If something happens, it happens. But try not
to invest in it until it is here. It’s just a group of cells until it’s not. With or
without a child, Jacob will still love you. That’s a gift not everyone gets in
their lifetime.”
“But what if I can’t love myself?”
“Don’t be stupid, Eleanor. Being a woman is more than just being a
baby-making machine. Motherhood is not the be-all-and-end-all of a life.
Look at Mother Theresa, Dolly Parton, and your favourite, Jane Austen.
You’ve spent thirty years already finding joy in the world without a child.
You’ve done it once; you can do it again.”
Eleanor’s voice is low. “But what if I can’t produce an heir?”
“Is that truly troubling you?” Jasmine draws a breath. It had never
even occurred to her that Eleanor might be struggling under dynastic
expectations. “You’ve got four sisters! And while I don’t hold out much
hope for Anna or myself, Lily is most definitely going to want kids. There
is going to be an heir somewhere. And if by some tiny chance none of the
five of us manage to produce a single child, there is nothing wrong with the
Estate going to one of Auntie Mary’s boys. I’ve always liked Robert.”
She stops and studies her sister. “This is a tragedy, but it’s not a
catastrophe. Don’t make it one.” She pauses for a minute, wondering
whether to continue. Then she says, “You will carry this little ball of grief
your entire life. But other things will come and eventually, this will recede
into the background. It will always be there, but it doesn’t need to define
you.”
Eleanor lifts her head and looks across at her. “Is that how you feel
about Petey?”
“Yes,” Jasmine says. Except it’s not a little ball. Eleanor takes her
sister’s hand and squeezes it. And it is how Jacob finds them later, sitting
together in silence on the sofa, still holding hands.
 When he shoulders in, carrying two cups of tea, Jasmine takes it as
her excuse to go to bed. She stops to wish them both goodnight but sees
Jacob crouch in front of his wife. His hands frame her head and he kisses
her gently on the forehead. Eleanor collapses into him and his arms enfold
her.
Jasmine holds her tongue and softly closes the door. She enters the
guest room to find a towel and a soft man’s T-shirt waiting on the bed, a
towelled dressing gown hanging on the back of the door. She detects Jake’s
fingerprints. Even with his own grief and concern for his wife, he has
noticed Jasmine came without a suitcase. She will have to reuse her clothes
tomorrow but at least she doesn’t need to sleep in them or worry about
trundling to the toilet in the night naked.
As she lies back in the bed and pulls up the duvet, she remembers
when Eleanor first told her about him. A text from Eleanor had come out of
nowhere and when Jasmine realised it was Jake Winter, Kate’s ex-
boyfriend, her sister was talking about, she had nearly fallen off her chair in
shock. Two more unlikely partners she couldn’t imagine. Her sister, clever,
aloof, judgemental, oozing privilege with every perfectly enunciated vowel,
and the cocky, kind hottie? But when she had seen them together, first at
their wedding and now, today, each of them worried more for the other than
themselves, their love is obvious. It makes them stronger.
Maybe it is why she and Ben hadn’t made it. He had underestimated
her and she had overestimated him. There had never been genuine
understanding. To endure, love has to be realistic. It’s no good loving a
fantasy person. For the first time, she understands her relationship with Ben
had just not been good enough.
Jasmine would have liked to spend some time with Gillian or Flora.
She hasn’t seen either often over the years. She had lost herself in work. It
made life meaningful. To be busy was an excuse not to grieve. Sadly, she
still is too busy. She needs to get back to Hayburn. She has already
answered several emails and texts when she goes downstairs. Eleanor and
Jacob are already in the kitchen, both fully dressed. She declines their offer
of breakfast with the excuse she will buy a sandwich on the train. While
Jacob gets his car keys, she hugs her sister.
“Thank you,” Eleanor whispers. And Jasmine realises that for the
first time they are parting as equals. For years, Eleanor had protected
Jasmine from the twins’ attacks when their mother had not noticed nor
cared to. It had remained the dynamic as they grew older. But this marks a
change in their relationship and Jasmine finds she is buoyed by Eleanor’s
recognition.
When she gets off the train in Hayburn, she realises she is minutely,
imperceptibly but irrevocably changed.
 Mrs Smith Again

A couple of days after Jasmine’s return from Larkford, she is camping out
in Ben’s office while he is accompanied by Pamela at a function for Labour
councillors. As head of Richard’s constituency office for over a decade,
Pamela knows them far better and can steer Ben more adroitly. Jasmine
doesn’t mind as it gives her a chance to work on revising expenditure and
their ever-decreasing budget. She is lost in a spreadsheet when there is a
gentle tap on the door.
“There’s a woman to see you?” Dave’s forehead is creased and he
conveys the statement as a question.
“I’m not expecting anyone.” Jasmine replies, pulling up her calendar
app to check she hasn’t missed something.
“She says she hasn’t got an appointment. And …” Dave dithers.
“Well, she’s got a couple of kids with her.”
“Oh?” That’s unusual. “Best show her in here. And bring some of
those cookies Pamela brought in, if you wouldn’t mind. They might keep
the kids occupied.” Jasmine has little experience of caring for children and
no sense an abundance of sugary treats might have an adverse effect.
As Dave shepherds the visitors in, Jasmine looks up. Blonde hair
pulled back into a ponytail, baby once again on one hip, another holding her
hand.
 “Mrs Smith?” Jasmine stands quickly and goes to pull out a chair
for her.
The woman sits and settles the baby on her lap. Her son clambers on
the only other chair and starts playing with his stuffed lion, kicking his
heels against the chair leg.
“Tea?” Jasmine asks but Mrs Smith shakes her head. “Cookies?”
Jasmine mouths silently to Dave and he disappears.
Jasmine takes her seat again, pulling her chair clear of the desk so it
forms less of a barrier. “What can I do for you?”
The woman bites her lip. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come. This was a
mistake.” She starts to rise.
“No.” Jasmine is out of her chair in an instant, a hand outstretched
to touch the woman’s shoulder lightly. “Stay. Talk. Don’t mind me. I’ve
been told I’m scary but I’m really very nice.”
Dave takes that moment to pop back in with half a dozen homemade
chocolate chip cookies piled on a small plate. He offers them to the toddler
first but the little boy looks up at his mum and waits for her nod before he
takes it.
“One,” she says. And his tiny hand reaches out to grab it. The baby
is not so restrained. When both children are happily smearing chocolate
chunks over their cheeks, Dave proffers the plate towards the mother. Mrs
Smith declines and Jasmine, regretfully, also shakes her head before Dave
withdraws.
“You said you could help!” The young mother rocks back and forth
in the chair, clearly agitated.
“I did. I meant it. But I need to know what help do you need?”
The woman is silent.
“Mrs Smith?” Jasmine prompts.
 “Natasha,” Mrs Smith responds and drags a finger under her nose.
She sniffs. “I need to get away.”
“From your husband?” Jasmine wants to be absolutely clear.
Natasha nods without stopping the rocking.
“Is he hurting you?” she probes gently.
Another nod. Then, “He said he’d kill the children. If I left. He’d
kill them.”
Jasmine blanches. There is a chance her husband was exaggerating,
using the threat to control his wife. But it isn’t unknown for it to happen.
Every sixth sense Jasmine possesses is screaming at her to believe it and
she long ago learned to trust her inner self. She doesn't doubt how sincerely
Natasha believes in her husband’s threat.
“Your family?” Jasmine asks gently.
Natasha shakes her head. “Dad left when I was a baby. Mum’s got
mental health issues. My stepdad’s a dealer. There’s gear all over their
place.”
“Friends?”
“I haven’t got any left.” Jasmine closes her eyes at Natasha’s frank
admission. Straight out of the controlling asshole’s playbook. Separate the
victim from friends and family. In this case, he appears to have had an easy
job with the family.
“Stay here. I’ll help but it will take some time.”
Jasmine leaves the little family in the office and closes the door on
them. She is way out of her comfort zone but she does know someone who
has probably done this before and who might be able to help. She hauls out
her phone and calls Pamela. The call goes straight to voicemail but she
leaves a message. She stands in the main office, tapping her phone against
her fingers, trying to fathom what to do next.
 Dave looks up from the desk he is working at, a plate of crumbs by
his side, the last traces of Pamela’s cookies. “Is everything alright?”
“Not really,” Jasmine replies and heads off to the kitchen. A cookie
wouldn’t go amiss and might help. There are only two left and Jasmine
swipes one. She is standing with her back to the door, when she hears some
confusion behind her.
Ben’s voice, clear and surprised, “I’m sorry. Who are you?”
Jasmine whirls out of the kitchen and goes to intercept. Ben and Lou
are standing in the doorway of his office.
“They’re with me,” she says. She sees the toddler has a sheet of
paper and is now drawing with some pens on the floor. The baby is asleep
in his mother’s arms. She pulls the door shut. “And we’ll need your office
for a bit longer. Is Pamela with you?”
“No.” Ben is abrupt.
Lou is more helpful: “She said she had some errands to run. She’ll
be a couple of hours.”
But Ben waves her silent. “Jasmine, why are there kids in my
office?”
Jasmine pushes him towards the meeting room and Lou trails after
them. When they are safely isolated, she turns to Ben. “She’s a domestic
violence victim. She’s left her husband.”
“Okay. But why is she here?”
“I met her.”
“Still not an answer.”
“I told her I would help.”
“You?”
“Yes. Her husband has threatened to kill the children.” Jasmine
catches the horrified look on Lou’s face and wishes the girl weren’t in the
room with them.
Ben explodes. “For God’s sake, Jasmine! This is a minefield. What
is it about you? First your sister, now this. Haven’t you learnt by now? You
can’t save the world!”
Jasmine’s hackles rise. “I’m not trying to save the world. Just three
people.”
Ben’s hand goes to his head and he grabs his hair. “These are always
complicated scenarios. She needs proper, professional help. And here you
are, without any training, blundering around like a bull in a china shop.
Have you at least called social services?”
From the look on Jasmine’s face, Ben clearly draws his own
conclusions.
“What have you done?”
“I called Pamela. She’ll have dealt with this sort of thing before.”
“And what did Pamela say?”
“She didn’t answer. Her phone might be off.”
“Jasmine,” Ben says, calmer now, “they can’t stay here. The
volunteers will be trickling in soon for tonight’s canvassing. The more
people who see her, the greater the chance someone will recognise her.
They tell someone who tells someone else who tells her husband. Hayburn
is not so large.”
Jasmine’s fingers go to her mouth at the thought. But before they
can get any further, the dulled wail of a baby crying comes through the
walls.
When Jasmine opens the door of Ben’s office, the noise escalates
drastically. It seems to go through her head. “What’s wrong?” she calls.
“He’s probably thirsty.” Natatsha jiggles him to try and distract him.
“Have you got a bottle or a sippy cup?”
 “No. Haven’t you?”
“You said to leave everything.” That’s right. She’d said that. And
Ben was right. Listening to the baby cry, everyone in the building would
soon know Natasha was here. Although the cry is fit to drive every thought
out of her head, Jasmine realises here is only one thing she can do.
She walks past Dave, who has his hands over his ears. Poking her
head into the meeting room, she tells Ben, “I’ll take her to my place.”
“That’s not a solution,” Ben warns.
“I know,” she agrees. “But it’ll do for now. When Pamela gets here,
can you get her to call me?”
Jasmine ducks back out and goes to collect her handbag. She
realises they will have to walk to the apartment she is renting. Even if
Jasmine had taken her car that morning, she doesn’t have a car seat or any
of the paraphernalia you need for children. She doesn’t even know what a
sippy cup is, let alone know where to find one. She searches through her
mental list of Hayburn acquaintances and can only come up with one name.
She calls Sean. He doesn’t pick up, but she leaves a short voice
message summarising the situation. When Georg’s sister, Agnes, had been
doing her hair, Jasmine is sure she’d mentioned picking up her eldest boy
from school. The younger child must therefore be about the right age to
have some of this stuff lying around.
As she and Natasha leave the campaign headquarters, the little boy
slips his hand into hers and the effect is extraordinary. Out of principle,
Jasmine would have been prepared to fight to the death to defend this
woman and her family, but with that tiny hand in hers, she feels the need to
protect with every fibre of Natasha’s being.
Jasmine’s poky little apartment seems overfull with three extra
people in it, even if two of them are tiny. She turns on the television and
switches to a children’s channel, leaving the little boy mesmerised by some
cloth creatures, his treasured stuffed lion beside him. The baby, who had
quietened on the walk, has begun to grizzle again. His mother is raiding the
kitchen cupboards, eventually filling a glass with water and attempting to
help the baby drink from it. Despite the best efforts of a tea towel, both
mother and baby are soon soaked but it seems to satisfy the infant. Natasha
appears exhausted and sits on the sofa, almost comatose until she does
actually fall asleep, the baby nestled against her.
Jasmine waits. Courtesy of her own erratic eating habits, she has a
cupboard full of melt-in-the-mouth snacks of lurid colours and she keeps
the toddler quiet by feeding him them. She figures while a diet of snacks
everyday may be problematic, this one-off surfeit probably won’t matter.
She does cut up a stray apple she finds in the fridge and adds that to the
toddler’s bowl in an attempt to rebalance the nutrient deficit.
Essentially alone with her thoughts, Jasmine considers Ben’s words.
She has to admit he is right. She is blundering around. She knows nothing
about supporting a woman like Natasha, nothing about caring for children,
and nothing about protecting them all. But she also knows she could not
have turned her away. From the moment she saw those bruises, she had to
act. It is not in her soul to do nothing, to walk away as if she hadn’t noticed.
Her mother has often complained about her father’s tendency to interfere in
random people’s lives. It is often portrayed as self-importance. But Jasmine
suspects they share the same trait and it is deeper than that. It is a
fundamental inability to walk away from injustice. In this moment, she
understands her father better than she has ever done before.
But Lord Larkford was born the eldest male, into a role that
conferred leadership on him. Jasmine has none of those resources and, truly,
she is feeling overwhelmed. She looks across at Natasha, lying on the sofa
with her eyes closed and realises her feelings are nothing to the scale of
Natasha’s. The courage it must have taken the woman to risk everything, to
try for safety, was immense. Jasmine feels dwarfed by her strength.
A message from Sean buzzes on her phone: Sorted.
And then, moments later, a call from the office.
“Ben?” Jasmine answers.
“Pamela.”
“Oh, thank God!” Jasmine says, although she doesn’t believe in
God. “Did Ben tell you everything?”
“Yes. I’m trying to get them into a refuge tonight. Are you okay to
keep them at yours until then?”
Jasmine assures her and then rings off. An hour later, Sean turns up,
dragging a suitcase full of kiddie clutter: clothes, toys, formula, and a sippy
cup.
But while his bounty is welcome, his news is not.
“What does your ex look like?” he asks Natasha.
“Average height, average build, short dark hair, good-looking.
Why?”
“I think he may be outside.”
Natasha’s eyes widen and she looks on the verge of collapse. “How
did he find me?” she gasps. “I did what you said. I left my phone behind. I
left it all behind!” She turns to Jasmine, frantic.
Jasmine turns to Sean. “Are you sure?”
“No, but there’s a guy stood watching the building. He’s not even
attempting to hide. I think he wants Natasha to see him.”
“But how does he know where we are?” Natasha is crying now, but
Jasmine ignores it. Her brain is working.
 “There must be a tracker,” she says. “Otherwise, why this one place
in the whole of Hayburn?”
Jasmine checks Natasha over, even running her fingers through the
woman’s hair, but comes up with nothing. Natasha isn’t even wearing a
watch. She momentarily considers prising apart the woman’s shoes to see if
anything is hidden in the heel, but she is interrupted by Sean.
“Found it!” he says, and he holds up the stuffed lion. He points to a
small tag around the neck which reads, “My name is Fred.” The toddler is
looking worried and Natasha moves to comfort him. Sean unclips the tag
and returns the lion to the child after squashing it thoroughly to ensure there
are no unexpected hard parts concealed inside.
“This is coming with me,” he says, holding up the suspected tracker.
“Jasmine, where are your car keys? I’m going for a little drive.”
In the end, they gather everything in a black bin liner. All the clothes
and the shoes, anything the family was wearing when they left the house
that morning. Just in case. Natasha is now drowning in some of Jasmine’s
clothes and a pair of her trainers, laced tight. The kids are in some of the
outfits Agnes had supplied but barefoot. Jasmine gives Natasha all the cash
she has on her, but it isn’t much. She wishes it was more.
The plan is simple. They will wait until Pamela calls to say Natasha
has a place in a refuge. Then Sean leaves by the back door out into the
carpark. Jasmine watches him from the bedroom as he heads for her car and
tosses the bin bag onto the back seat. His job is the most dangerous, luring
away Natasha’s ex. He’s going to drive south. He will drop the bin bag of
clothes in a dumpster outside a motel en-route. The little tracker he plans to
plant on the first lorry with foreign plates, possibly heading towards a port,
he comes across at a service station. Then he will drive Jasmine’s car on to
her home in London and park it there. It leaves her without a car here, but it
is safer for her than driving around in a car Natasha’s ex might recognise.
They are hopeful that, without gaining access to the building, her husband
will not know exactly which of the apartments was sheltering his family.
Pamela, meanwhile, will drive past the building, checking the
watcher has gone. When she is sure all is clear, she will message and pull
into the parking lot. Natasha and the children will get in and Pamela will
take them to meet up with the refuge staff. Jasmine wonders how her life
has taken such a peculiar turn. She feels like a bit player in a spy drama.
When Pamela’s message arrives, Jasmine hurries the little family
down the stairs, carrying the toddler in her arms. She opens the rear door of
Pamela’s car and her regard for her colleague increases exponentially. From
somewhere, Pamela has sourced a baby carrier and a car seat, and strapped
them safely into the rear. While Natasha sorts the baby, Jasmine secures the
toddler. When he beams up at her, in a fit of unusual sentimentality, she
leans in and gives him a kiss on his forehead. It has been so little time but
already he has a place in her heart. It occurs to her that when Eleanor finally
has a baby, she might become be a most excellent aunt.
The doors slam, Pamela waves, and the car full of domestic refugees
heads off into the night. Jasmine climbs the steps to her rental, exhausted.
She keeps the lights on and the curtains closed as she moves about the
apartment waiting for a message from Pamela. Finally it comes – Delivered
safe – and Jasmine collapses into bed.
When she gets to campaign headquarters the following morning, she
is not pleased to find Ben there before her. She is even less happy to find
Lou with him. She briefly wonders if they rode in together and the thought
brings a shaft of pain. Then she shakes herself. Ben would not be so
catastrophically stupid.
“What happened with your friends?” he asks.
 “They’ve gone to a refuge.”
“That’s what should have happened from the start. She should have
rung the National Domestic Abuse Helpline. If this guy is as dangerous as
you think he is, what you did put you in danger.” Then he adds, as if he
realises that consideration is unlikely to dissuade Jasmine, “It put her and
her children in danger. It put everyone here in danger.” His hand stretches
out to indicate Lou.
Jasmine would like to fight back, but on this he is probably correct –
and his particular concern for Lou is affecting her. “Maybe,” she says with a
shrug.
But Ben has not finished making his point. “You know, she’s as
likely to go back to him as she is to leave him. It’s always been the same
with you. You make your decisions and you don’t care who is hurt in the
fallout.”
Jasmine catches sight of Lou, eyes wide, watching the drama
playing out in front of her. “I need coffee if I’ve got to listen to this.” She
storms into the little kitchen and shuts the door firmly behind her. She leans
back against it, to draw a deep breath. But it is only two thin sheets of
hardboard and it does little to muffle the sound of Lou’s voice from the
other side.
“What was that about?” Lou’s says, curiosity in every syllable.
“Nothing.” Ben obviously regrets his remarks in front of her.
“Not nothing. ‘It’s always been the same with you.’ What exactly is
that? What’s going on between you two?”
On the other side of the door, Jasmine prays Ben dissembles, even
that he outright lies. That he tells her it’s nothing again. After all, there is no
need for Ben to confide in Lou about their past together. Not unless her
good opinion is everything to him.
 When she hears Ben reply, the first tear falls. “We dated at
university. I was in love with her.”
“And?”
“And she left me for her ex.”
Behind the kitchen door, Jasmine wants to scream her defence, but
she cannot show her face, crying like a madwoman. She stays in the
kitchen, taking silent gulps to calm herself, mopping her tears with the
kitchen towel. She hears them move away and then the clunk of his office
door shutting, but she doesn’t reappear until the sound of others arriving
leaks through to her sanctuary.
The words Ben said stay with her. They are what he believes. And
not one word is a lie, but it is also so far from the truth.
 The Village Town Hall

After the success of the hustings at the sixth form college, Jasmine has tried
to maximise Ben’s ability with larger crowds. His skill brings into play
opportunities she had thought they would have to let slide – in particular,
targeting the larger villages. She does not have the resources to send door-
knockers to the half-dozen or so villages when she has three large towns to
cover. But she can squeeze an evening in a village hall answering voter’s
questions into Ben’s schedule.
She analyses the data they hold to determine which to target first
and lines them up in order of importance. The next problem is to talk one of
the users of the village hall into giving up their scheduled slot to allow Ben
to stage a Town Hall. The indoor badminton club are not keen, and the
musical theatre group are adamant they cannot yield their dress rehearsal so
close to their performance, but she hits pay-dirt with the Scout troop. A
very obliging Scoutmaster offers to take the groups off for a nature hike
instead. Jasmine mentally notes the Scout troop. If Ben wins, he will attend
their next Gang Show.
Lou and Dave, who are fast becoming her go-to guys for recruiting a
crew, volunteer to set up chairs, give out leaflets, and generally mill around
helping anyone with mobility issues. Pamela makes sure everything is in
place and Jasmine walks Ben through yet another speech. This time her
practice questions focus on public transport, bin collections, the cost of city
centre car parking, and sewage spills into local rivers.
It turns out Ben’s magic works equally well on the middle-aged as
youngsters. The grey hair brigade turns up in their masses, with a few
younger residents, too. From her own experience of village life, Jasmine
supposes this derives more from a lack of entertainment than from an
enthusiasm for politics, but she doesn’t care. It is a chance for them to see
Ben as a person, someone they can relate to, someone real, which is often
sadly lacking in national politics.
Ben stands at the front of the seated audience – the stage is full of
scenery for the amateur production of Shrek the Musical and Jasmine
rapidly decided she didn’t want her candidate forever associated in the
villager’s minds with a couple of ogres and a donkey. She has curtained it
off and positions him at the front of the chairs instead.
Ben gives a little speech, throwing in a few of the niche local issues
they uncovered, and Jasmine watches, feeling proud. They have been
working together so much, she is almost inured to the prickles of memory
each time he makes a habitual gesture or uses a phrase familiar from the
past. Like a nose, she thinks, over-exposed to a perfume and no longer able
to smell it.
The first question comes from an old man, his hair long gone and
the skin on his forehead flaking from his thin frame. His voice trembles as
he speaks but he fixes a suspicious beady eye on Ben as he says, “My bin
was missed this week. Will you make sure they collect it next week?”
Jasmine prays Ben does not laugh but she need not have worried.
Ben’s reply is respectful. “That must have been very inconvenient. Was it a
one-off or does it keep happening?”
 A quick exchange suggests it was an unintended mistake and Ben
moves on to thornier issues. Villagers tend to be naturally conservative and
a little sanctimonious. He is asked about Richard Exmore’s indiscretions
several times, phrased differently each time, but he skilfully by-passes each
one. He will not be drawn on condemning Richard until the inquiry is over
and Jasmine is grateful her new boss is not trying to make hay from the
demise of the old one. The help Richard gave her when she was at the
lowest point in her life, offering her employment, distraction and eventually
a purpose, still trumps his romantic indiscretions until and unless he is
proven traitor.
When the village Town Hall concludes, the team adjourns to the
village pub for a little refreshment before they head home. Jasmine doesn’t
stay long. Not overly fond of real ales and hoppy beer, the pub’s claim to
fame, she is happy to leave everyone to it. She is feeling satisfied as she
picks up her tote bag. Looking around at her team, she realises how far they
have come since they first started knocking on doors, how anyone of them
can answer even the most contentious questions with ease. They are all
chatting excitedly. They know it went well, they can feel the campaign
gaining momentum. She should let Ben know she is heading home but he is
nowhere to be seen. She briefly considers waiting for him, but she is tired
and is longing for her bed. It’s been a physical and emotional rollercoaster.
She will text him when she gets in.
She heads out of the pub, crosses the street, and sets off up the road
to where she left Sean’s car. Knowing she was likely to leave before the
others, who would either be drowning sorrows or celebrating, she’d asked
for yet another favour. In an old village like this, there is no street lighting.
It makes progress tricky and Jasmine keeps her head down, focusing on her
footing on the uneven paving. But there are occasional pools of light from
uncurtained windows or porch lights left on to welcome home their absent
owners.
At one point, she looks up and stops dead. Two people are standing,
a stone’s throw away, leaning against a car, pressed together, lips, hips, legs.
They are bathed in silver from a security light. Jasmine’s breath catches as
her stomach clenches and she feels sick. Her heart feels like it is breaking
inside her chest. Oblivious to the world, lost in his lust, Ben is kissing Lou,
hard. Jasmine stands still in shock, watching until hurt fuels anger, enough
so she lifts her phone, turns the flash off, and takes the shot, even as her
hands shake.
She sees them part, Ben opening the car door for Lou. Another kiss
as if they are tearing themselves apart, then Lou slides into the driver’s seat.
Ben closes the door and walks off across the street, heading back to the pub.
Lou, meanwhile, slowly manoeuvres out of the space and drives away. Still,
Jasmine stands, fighting for control of her thoughts, blinking back tears. It
is minutes before she feels her legs are solid enough to carry on walking.
When she reaches the car, she clambers in and puts her head on the steering
wheel. It is one thing to know he doesn’t love her anymore, another thing
entirely to witness it so clearly.
She feels foolish for loving him still. How could she ever have
become this thing? This weak woman who pines over a man who doesn’t
want her. She is disappointed in herself, but despite everything, she cannot
seem to switch those feelings off. When the turmoil has subsided enough to
drive safely, she switches on the ignition and heads back to Hayburn. She
drops the car back to Sean’s, his home dark and lifeless, and pushes the key
through the letterbox. Then she calls a taxi and returns to her cold, empty
rental.
 Somewhere along the way, Jasmine manages to suppress the
distressed lover sufficiently to function as a campaign manager. As the taxi
pulls into her carpark of her building, she sends a text.
I need to see you at seven tomorrow morning. We have to talk.
The following morning, Jasmine wonders why she bothered going
to bed, for she has had little sleep. She tossed and turned, alternating
between anger and wretchedness. Some time around midnight, tears
overwhelmed her and after, although she felt hollowed out, she was calmer
emotionally. Enough to sleep. But sleep itself was troublesome. Time after
time, she dreamt. And each time, the path of the dream was the same,
although the background varied. A holiday and a beach. A home and a
shower. A hilltop and a sunset. Each time she was about to kiss Ben, a
moment full of desire and sultry promise. Her lips hovering a millimetre
above his, lust pulsing through her body. And each time, she woke. Her
mind still full of longing, her body throbbing with need.
Eventually, she gives up. Further sleep is pointless if it is not restful,
and she has to get control of her thoughts before she tackles Ben later. She
cannot afford to dwell on her heartache; she has to focus on her work. Ben
has been nothing short of reckless. All her hard work, all the work of the
volunteers, could be for nothing if word of Ben’s behaviour gets out. Her
future, Pamela’s future, Hayburn’s future lost because Ben wants to play
Lothario. There is only one emotion she is allowed to have today, and that
is fury.
She is tight-lipped as she opens the door to the campaign office. It is
unlocked, so she knows Ben is there before her. She finds him in his office,
his laptop open, eyes down as he types. He looks up, smiling, as he hears
her approach. Then he notices her expression.
 “What’s up?” he asks cautiously. “I thought it went quite well
yesterday.”
Jasmine drops her bag on a chair. She opens her phone.
“It did,” she says. “The problem is this.” She hands the phone over,
the photo zoomed in and enlarged, to show a grainy Ben and a shadowed
Lou.
Ben studies the picture for a minute, then he says, “Have you been
spying on me?”
“Don’t!” Jasmine can barely control her voice, but her anger is clear.
“Don’t even try it! I know every trick in the political book. Offense is the
best defence? When has that ever worked on a professional?”
He drops his eyes again. “Can’t I have any private life?”
If Jasmine ever doubted Ben was a political animal, the doubt would
have been destroyed now. But she is immune to the guilt trip. “You had one
thing, one thing, you absolutely had to do.” Jasmine waves her index finger
at him. “And that was to stay away from any scandal. Just for three weeks.
Three. Weeks. She’s an intern, for God’s sake! What were you thinking?
Have you forgotten Monica Lewinsky?” She draws a breath. “And you’re
no Bill Clinton. You’re fighting a seat in a constituency already rocked by a
sex scandal and here you have a young girl pinned up against a car while
you stick your tongue down her throat!” Jasmine is almost growling.
Ben at least has the sense to look abashed.
“In the street, Ben! What the hell? Private lives are only private if
you damned well keep them that way. If it had been anyone else, this photo
would not have been on my phone; it would have been on the front page of
the local press this morning! In fact, this is so salacious, it would make the
nationals. And the Tory tabloids would rip you to shreds. You’d be lucky to
keep your deposit after they finished.”
 “It was just a kiss!”
“You’re a candidate. She’s an intern. Do you not get this?” Jasmine
would really like to throw her phone at him.
“It was entirely consensual,” he protests. “She’s been chasing me.”
“Of course she has! You’re the handsome, powerful, soon-to-be MP
and she’s not long out of school. Of course she’s chasing you. But you
aren’t supposed to respond.” She taps his desk to empathise each word.
“Now if you think she’s The One, she’s your Happy Ever After, then
okay. We’ll stand her beside you in all the photos. We’ll have her meet your
mother. The PR will be amazing – how you met the love of your life on the
campaign trail in Hayburn.”
Ben blanches and Jasmine sees it. She has him. Whatever is going
on between him and Lou, it isn’t that. Yet.
“But if you hurt her and she goes to the press, we are done. There is
no amount of spin that could get you out of the mess.”
Jasmine picks up her bag and turns to leave. She’s made her point.
“Think about that, Ben.”
 How to Win

Jasmine avoids Ben all day. If only his physical absence were enough to
remove him from her mind as well. Sitting at a desk in the main office, with
her laptop open in front of her, she replays the argument in her head. Each
time she gets to the part when Ben reacts to the prospect of a lifetime with
Lou, it seems less significant. After all, Ben is an intelligent and sensible
man. He wouldn’t place this incredible opportunity at risk for anything
other than the most powerful of emotions. She can see no other explanation
than love, and that depresses her beyond belief.
She cannot understand why that is. Even if she is idiotic enough to
persist in loving Ben when he no longer loves her, still she should want
what makes him happy. And if it is Lou who makes him happy, then she
should wish them well. But when she tries to put her own feelings to one
side and look at the situation dispassionately, she cannot see how they fit
together. She accepts the unlikeliest partners can find happiness together.
Her own sister and Jake are illustrative of that. But Lou is young and
unformed and, in Jasmine’s admittedly biased opinion, slightly superficial.
Lou thrives on the drama of a campaign rather than the deep political
commitment which motivates both Ben and Jasmine.
She dare not think what Hannah Greene would make of Lou.
Jasmine recalls her own first meeting with Ben’s mother and how nervous
she was. She pictures Lou giggling over memes with Hannah. Hannah’s wit
is sharp and instant. She wields it as a weapon and it is what has kept her
feared by the misogynists who infest Parliament. Lou is more cute pet
videos and celebrity gossip.
A reminder interrupts her thoughts. Her avoidance of Ben will have
to end, unless she fancies walking to their next appointment. Since her car
is now in London, she’s arranged a lift with him. With a sigh, she collects
her things and goes to find him. Ben is already packed and ready to go
when she knocks on his office door. He greets her with a smile as if this
morning’s argument were an insignificant event, long forgotten. And
maybe, for him, it was.
Although Jasmine has very much not forgotten their row, she
recognises they have to continue to work together. It will not be a success if
she takes every opportunity to remind him of his failings. She schools her
face to a neutral expression.
“Ready for the Rugby Club?” he asks as he shrugs into his jacket. “I
must admit I’m looking forward to this. I haven’t been to a game in ages.”
“Game?” Jasmine’s brow furrows. “We’re not going to a game.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s a blood drive. We’re donating blood.”
Ben’s head shoots around. “What? No. I can’t give blood.”
It’s Jasmine’s turn to react. “What do you mean, you can’t give
blood?” She pauses for a moment. “Please don’t tell me you’ve paid for
sex?” Her hands come up to frame her face.
“What? No!” he protests.
“Taken drugs?”
“No!”
 “Then what is it?” Another pause. She debates whether she can ask
this, but she needs to know. “Anal sex?”
Ben’s mouth gapes open. “What the … ? No! Nothing like that.”
“Then why can’t you donate?”
Ben holds still. Then he drops his head and mutters, “I’m not good
with blood.”
“What does that mean, you’re not good with blood?”
“What do you think it means, Jasmine.”
“Do you faint?”
“More woozy. I’ve never fainted.” He says it with pride and Jasmine
struggles to hide her scorn at his tiny achievement.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before? It’s been in your diary for a
week.”
“It just says Hayburn Rugby Club. If it had said blood donation, I
might have warned you.”
“Problem is, I’ve got the local press coming and the staff are staying
late specifically for us. Can’t you just not look? When they prick your
finger to test your iron levels, just stare at the floor. Then when they are
putting the needle in and taking the blood, just look to the other side. It’s
easy. The equipment is all on one side and below the chair.”
Ben turns pale just with her words, but he shrugs. “I’ll try, but you’d
better stay close.”
Jasmine huffs. It was sheer coincidence the Blood and Transplant
Service were due in Hayburn, so close to the election. If she hovers around
Ben, she will forgo her own chance to donate. She could easily give blood
another time, but the team won’t be back for Hayburn for a while. By then
she will be back in London. It can’t be helped. No one is going to be taking
pictures of her. As long as the candidate is seen doing his bit, it is all that
counts. “Yes, okay,” she agrees, and Ben looks a tiny bit happier.
He is quiet as he drives them out. Jasmine recognises a few of the
volunteers’ cars in the carpark, including Lou’s. She’d be happier if the
young woman were elsewhere, especially when Ben is around reporters, but
she couldn’t foresee their passionate embrace last night. And this was the
quid quo pro for the Blood Service. A group of donors in return for opening
a little later.
Jasmine greets the reporter from the local paper as she walks
through the door. Then she has a word with the man on the desk, signing
everyone in. “Let’s get the photo done first,” she says. “While everyone is
here.”
He disappears off and in a matter of minutes, the staff and the
volunteers are milling together at one end of the room. The reporter has
them ordered and posed in an instant. Photos are taken, then everyone
scatters. Staff back to their posts, volunteers to their seats, waiting to be
called. Jasmines hopes that with his photo taken the reporter heads off and
she can get Ben away somehow without anyone noticing he hasn’t given
blood. But those hopes are dashed as the man grabs a blood donation form
himself. It puts paid to her idea of slipping Ben out the back.
The sign-in man is back at his desk. Jasmine leans forward,
conspiratorially. “Can we get this one through first?” she asks and nods at
Ben. His normal confidence is missing and he gives every appearance of
being as nervous as the proverbial long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking
chairs. Some small part of Jasmine regards this as justifiable karma for
kissing Lou in front of her. Although she realises Ben would never have
done it, had he been aware she was there.
 “Come on,” she says, carrying his water and leading him to the
chairs. She waits beside him as he does his paperwork. When the nurse
comes to collect him, she whispers, “Don’t look”, before he is led away.
As soon as he reappears, Jasmine joins him. She keeps his focus on
her and not the collection chairs. If the nurse who comes to collect them
thinks Jasmine’s presence is odd, she makes no comment. She chatters
away to Ben, clearly a little smitten, as she cleans his skin and preps for the
donation. Ben revives a smidgen with the attention. Enough that the whole
donation goes well. He is careful to look away before the nurse pushes the
needle into his arm and he continues to look to the side until she returns
when the bag-full alarm sounds.
It looks like they are home clear as Ben makes his way to the
recovery area to munch his chocolate biscuit and slurp his orange squash.
Lou walks up with a sultry smile and a suggestive, “Hiya.” Jasmine is
relieved when she is quickly joined by Dave. Until Dave calls out, “Hey,
Lou, you’re leaking!”
All eyes flick to Lou’s arm as the white bandage turns red under the
roll. Jasmine sees Ben turn pale despite his dark colouring. He wilts. “Get
me out of here!” he whispers to her. Personally, Jasmine thinks he should
have his head between his knees not trying to stand.
Lou’s attention is distracted by the well-wishers telling her to press
down with her fingers. Dave is fixated on Lou. Jasmine glances around. The
reporter is being shepherded to a donation chair by the same pretty nurse
who took Ben’s blood. She hauls him upright and helps him out of the door.
Once outside, she roots around in his jean pocket for his car key, untroubled
by inappropriate thoughts. She stuffs him in the passenger seat and pushes
his head down.
“Are you going to be sick?” she asks.
 “No.” The word is more a pant.
“Stay there.”
She makes her way back inside. Standing in the centre of the room,
she raises her voice.
“I just wanted to thank everyone for coming to this blood drive and
the remarkable staff who make it happen. We all go home tonight knowing
we have made a difference. Give yourselves a clap!” As the applause rings
out, she waves a goodbye and slides out the building.
Ben is recovering as she climbs behind the wheel and backs out of
the parking space. Never once when she envisaged her role as a campaign
manager had she foreseen nursemaid. She drives back to Hayburn,
pondering how healthy can a relationship be, if it requires a person to hide
their weaknesses? But Jasmine’s sanctimony is cut short when she
remembers she didn’t know about Ben’s aversion to blood either, and she
had once thought she knew everything about him.
 Mr Smith

Two more successful village Town Halls, relentless canvassing and a

whirlwind schedule of appearances for Ben, and Jasmine can feel the tide
turning. Less than a week to go and she has the biggest event yet. The
Leader of the Opposition is coming to town. Everyone is keen to meet the
person who may well be the Prime Minister next year. If this were the
General Election, the chance of getting someone of the Leader’s stature in a
place like Hayburn would be tiny. But this is a by-election. Only Hayburn
in all of the country is going to the polls and Labour can throw some might
behind their candidate.
It’s a great day for the visit, a Saturday. Their schedule includes the
local hospital, the biggest shopping centre in the district and a football
match in the afternoon. In the evening is a function for the local Labour
activists and councillors, designed both to thank and to invigorate for the
last push. An entire day of the Leader’s time is solid gold, an almost
unthinkable boost. Jasmine prays no unforeseen crisis derails the planned
visit.
The closer they get to voting day, the more work Jasmine has. She
has often been tempted to sleep under her desk to save the walk back to her
apartment but has forced herself, drooping with weariness, to make the
journey. She eats at her desk and blesses Agnes every day for the easy-care
hair style that allows her to wash it and go.
Today, she was up at dawn even though she didn’t make it to bed
until midnight. She puts on her best charcoal trouser suit and a bright red
top – Labour’s colour. She has binned anything blue in her wardrobe in case
she wears it accidentally. She can only imagine the derision if she is
photographed looking like a Tory supporter standing next to Ben, or worse,
the Leader.
Jasmine and Ben are in his office sorting last-minute crises by phone
and email when Dave knocks on the door.
“Um,” he starts, obviously hesitant to disturb them. “That woman is
back again.”
Ben glances up, his words sharp. “What woman?”
“The one with the two kids?” Dave prompts. Then adds, “Pretty,
blonde.” As if it is more likely to jog Ben’s memory.
“Natasha?” Jasmine asks.
“I didn’t ask her name. Do you want me to go back and get it?”
“No,” says Jasmine, fairly sure it is Natasha. How many other
women with two kids does she know? But she cannot understand why the
little family might be here again, now they are safe in the refuge. Maybe it
is to thank them. If so, better to get her in and out as quickly as possible.
“Bring her in.”
Ben shoots her an impatient look. A look which says, We don’t have
time for this. But it is too late. Dave has withdrawn his head and reappears
pretty quickly with the little family – mother, toddler, baby, stuffed lion.
One glance at Natasha is enough to end any notion she is here to
thank them. She is in tears. Her clothing is crumpled and she has bags under
her eyes. She looks in a worse state now than she was for her first visit.
 “I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.” She
collapses into the chair Jasmine has just vacated, baby on her lap, toddler
between her legs. “We’ve spent the night on a bench in the park.”
“Why?” Jasmine crouches down and tilts her head to look at
Natasha’s face but the woman has her hands up. Ben passes her a
handkerchief and she takes a second to look at him curiously. Who under
fifty carries a handkerchief? But she takes the scrap of cloth and gently
presses it into Natasha’s hands. Softly, she prompts, “Tell us what
happened.”
“He found us! He found the refuge. They wanted to call the police
but I told them, He is the police!” Natasha’s voice falters as a fresh wave of
tears takes over, and Jasmine stands and looks at Ben. The enormity of this
complication is not lost on either of them. Neither is the urgency of dealing
with the problem before the Leader arrives.
Jasmine crouches down again. “Natasha, what does Adam do with
the police?”
“He’s an inspector.” She sniffs out.
Jasmine puffs out a breath and looks back up at Ben. He shakes his
head in dismay. He has no ideas either.
Ben moves in on Natasha’s other side and dips down, too. “Have
you had breakfast?”
She shakes her head.
Ben goes to the door, opens it and looks around for a minute before
calling, “Lou?”
Jasmine wonders if he chose Lou because of their closeness or
because she is less threatening to Natasha than the burly Dave. Then she
tells herself to stop being silly.
 When Lou arrives, she looks down at the distraught woman and
Jasmine can see the instant kindness and sympathy on her face. Perhaps
Ben’s taste in women is not so bad after all.
“Lou, can you take Natasha and her children to the kitchen and get
them some breakfast? I think I saw some pastries from Pamela on the
counter. And maybe hot chocolate?”
At the mention of the word “chocolate” the little boy’s eyes light up
and when Lou offers him her hand, he doesn’t hesitate to take it. Natasha
also struggles to her feet. Lou encircles her body with one arm and helps
her to rise. Then, chattering all the time about the yumminess of custard
pastries versus jam ones, she leads the little group away.
Jasmine drops back into her seat as Ben shuts the door and blows
out his breath.
“He’s an inspector of police,” she echoes numbly.
“He’ll have friends in the force, a network of power and influence,”
he says.
“And she has no one. She won’t be safe anywhere in the county! If
she’s in a refuge, he’ll find it.” At Ben’s silence, she reminds him, “He’s
threatened to kill the children.”
“I still think that’s unlikely.” Ben shakes his head. “Plenty of people
threaten; few actually do anything.”
“He hunted her down at my place. He’d put a tracker on them. Now,
he’s traced her to the refuge.”
“He came to yours?” Ben casts an angry look at her. “You didn’t tell
me that!”
Jasmine shakes her head. This is a diversion. “Sean led him away. It
was fine.”
 “Yes, but if I’d known earlier, I would have suggested she get a
restraining order.”
Jasmine throws up her hands. “And who enforces a restraining
order? The police. Why won’t you trust me on this? She’s in danger.”
“Look …” Ben scratches his head. “I said I thought it unlikely he
would kill his own children, but I didn’t say the risk is zero. Because the
consequences of getting it wrong are so drastic, I do think something needs
to be done.”
“So you agree? She won’t be safe anywhere in the county? So, how
do we help her?”
“Well, she needs a job, a home, and a community somewhere far
away from here.”
“Exactly!” Jasmine cries, glad Ben finally seems to accept there is
an issue.
“And let me think. Do we know anyone who might own an entire
village, employ hundreds of people and have a few houses to spare?”
Jasmine freezes as the realisation comes crashing down. She has
become so used to thinking of herself as an independent entity, not reliant
on her family, their money or their connections, she has entirely forgotten
that being a Mortimer, a scion of the British aristocracy, comes with
advantages. She would be the first to maintain the state should look after its
citizens and protect women like Natasha. But she is also a pragmatist;
whenever the situation becomes complex, the state and its many rules tends
to fall down. This is often the role of charities – to make up for the state’s
limitations. But she is reminded of the old adage, charity begins at home.
The solution to Natasha Smith’s problems may be in her own hands, if
Jasmine can find it in herself to go on bended knee to her family.
 She remembers a tiny hand slipping into hers, trust freely given that
Jasmine will keep him safe from harm. And she knows she cannot fail the
little family.
Without a word, she picks up her laptop and exits Ben’s office. She
dimly hears him call, “Bye, Jasmine”, in a tone laced with sarcasm, but her
mind has long since shuttled him to the rear. Instead, it is tackling a new
problem. If she is to make the approach, whom should she call?
Without doubt, Jake owes her a favour, but he is not really in a
position to dole out houses and jobs. She briefly considers Eleanor, but their
relationship is newly rebalanced and she doesn’t want to revert back to the
childhood roles of supplicant and protector.
Really, truly, in the end, there is only one person who can sort this.
But it feels like the ultimate capitulation. Her head tips back and she closes
her eyes.
She is going to have to call her father.
Jasmine takes some minutes to mentally rehearse the call, to prepare
the ground leading up to her big ask. Then she picks up her phone and exits
the building. She does not want this call overheard by anyone else. When
she considers the etiquette, she realises if she is asking for everything she
needs for Natasha, she has to do it to face-to-face. She makes a video call.
Her father picks up immediately. “Jasmine?” he says. His face
shows his surprise for just an instant before it settles into his usual affable
demeanour.
“Daddy.” She pauses. Now she comes to it, she doesn’t know how
to begin.
“Whatever you need, sweetheart.”
She frowns. “What do you mean?”
 “In all the years since you left home, you’ve never once called until
today. Therefore, you must need something.”
“But we speak every week,” she objects.
“No, darling. Your mother and I call you every week. You don’t call
us. And as you never call, so it must be something important. And if it is
important to you, then there is no argument.”
Jasmine is nonplussed. In all her rehearsals, she had not foreseen the
conversation going this way. She feels a need to get the discussion under
control. “It is important, but it’s also enormous. And not without danger. So
you can’t just blindly agree to it!”
“Stop a minute.” Her father’s face fills the screen as he leans
forward but his tone is incredulous. “Are you in trouble?”
“It’s not me. Well, only peripherally.”
“Explain!”
So Jasmine finally gets to give the speech she has rehearsed. She
explains how she met Natasha Smith and her children, how she had offered
the woman help, how Natasha had come seeking that help. She describes
the night Adam Smith turned up outside her apartment and how they found
the tracker, and she hears her father’s breathing change – shorter, heavier.
She presses on. She tells him about Adam Smith turning up at the
refuge and Natasha’s desperate flight with nowhere to go. And finally, she
tells him why Adam could find his wife, why it is so imperative Natasha
find somewhere safe, far away.
“He threatened to kill their kids if she left. You know as well as I do
it’s happened before.”
“It’s rare …” Her father purses his lips. “But it’s not unheard of.
And he’s a police officer?”
“An inspector.”
 Her father makes a gruff noise. “It does make things a lot harder.
She’ll need to stay under the radar for a bit until she’s got some legal
protections in place. But make no mistake, that might not be
straightforward. He could accuse her of deliberately alienating the
children.”
“Would that matter?”
“If the court believed him, they might take the children off her and
give them to him?”
“But he’s threatened to kill them!” Jasmine cries.
“So she says, but has she got proof? That gives me an idea. I happen
to know a really good firm of private investigators. I might ask them to
have a little poke around. See what they can uncover. It’s amazing what
people put on social media and chat groups.”
“You’ll help?” Jasmine sags against someone’s garden wall in relief.
“I told you at the start, sweetheart. Whatever you need.”
“A job for her, as well?”
“The baby doesn’t make it easy. She’s probably won’t be able to
afford childcare, but I was talking to your Aunty Mary the other day. You
know she’s running kennels now for her rescue greyhounds. She needs
some help walking them. Your friend could do that if she put the baby in
one of those carrier things. It’s only part-time, but it’s a start.”
“A home?”
“One of the east gate house tenants is moving out in a fortnight. We
were going to renovate before letting it out again. If Mrs Smith is prepared
to live in it while the work is ongoing, we could do it for a peppercorn rent.
Long-term, we’d need to sort something else out but we can deal with that
then. I guess she can stay at the Hall for a fortnight.”
“So she can come to you today? Can you take her immediately?”
 Her father chuckles. “Your mother will have a fit at the short notice,
but yes, she can come today.”
“Thank you, Daddy.” Then she says the words that haven’t crossed
her lips for a decade. “I love you.”
“Love you too, sweetheart.” And he is gone.
Jasmine’s brain is on fire. She’s partway there. But one thing she
absolutely knows, Natasha Smith cannot stay at the Hall. Such a thing
would start the tongue of every gossip in the village, drawing attention that
is not only unwanted put potentially dangerous. Not only that, but the
grandeur of the Hall intimidates ordinary people – Petey hated being in it.
To someone who is struggling to keep the spark of their own identity alive,
it would be crushing. She considers the options. Eleanor and Jacob are still
reeling from their latest loss. They will need their privacy for a long time.
Flora would be willing and loves children but her place is tiny and three
extra bodies would be unbearable.
But there is someone, someone longing for grandchildren but with a
daughter who is relentlessly focused on her career and whose son never got
a chance to father kids of his own. Jasmine calls Gillian. This time the call
goes more as she has planned. Gillian lets Jasmine lead the conversation
with only occasional interjections of “the poor soul” and “how terrible”.
When Jasmine gets to her request – a fortnight’s sanctuary for Natasha and
her children until the gate house is available – Gillian is bristling.
“Of course she can stay with me!”
“You realise if her husband finds her, you could be in danger?”
Jasmine doesn’t want Gillian’s big heart to blind her to the situation.
“Pfft!” Gillian scoffs. “Kate’s based about an hour away for the next
few months. He tries anything here, she’ll have half the British Army on his
tail.”
 Although Jasmine thinks the claim a massive over-exaggeration, it
does help to know Gillian and Natasha would have some protection they
can call on. And Jasmine will also call Jacob to let him know of Natasha’s
predicament. The Winters are a remarkable family.
“It will be lovely to have a house full of children! Boys, you said?”
Gillian is happily making plans. “I think I still have Petey’s wooden railway
set in the loft. He had all the Thomas the Tank Engine trains.”
There is the possibility, she realises, Natasha won’t make it to the
east gate lodge house. Gillian’s hospitality might be too welcoming.
There is only one problem remaining. She checks the time. The
Leader is due in half an hour and every hand she has needs to be on deck.
But problem-solving has always been her strength. She calls the one person
who has always had her back, who has been with her through thick and
thin, her best friend in all the world, Sean.
“Why are you calling?” he answers. “You should be too busy to
call.”
“I am. But a little problem cropped up today. Actually, it’s a massive
problem.”
“They’ve found a bomb? No, you wouldn’t be calling me. Your
apartment’s on fire and you need some place to stay? Your leg is broken and
you need a lift to the hospital?”
“Stop! None of the above. And I don’t have time for games today.”
Quickly, Jasmine takes him through the events of the morning. As he was
already involved in the Smith saga, it doesn’t take long to get to the point.
“So can you pick them up and take them to Petey’s mum’s? I’ll send you
the address.”
“Be there in ten,” he says and disconnects. Jasmine breathes a sigh
of relief.
 As soon as she opens the door to campaign headquarters, Ben’s
voice rings out. “Thank God you’re back. All hell’s breaking loose.” And
she is once more immersed in the minutiae of the impending visit.
Ten minutes later, true to his word, Sean walks in the door and Ben
nearly loses it. “What the hell is he doing here?” he challenges.
“Nice to see you too.” Sean delights in riling Ben but Jasmine is
aware her candidate is about to explode.
“He’s the one person who can’t be here,” he hisses at her. “The
Leader cannot be seen with him until the inquiry exonerates Richard
Exmore. The Tory tabloids will have a field day!”
“Hush!” she orders him, one finger up, and his eyes bug out. “He’s
here to take Natasha. Or do you want her hiding in the kitchen when the
Leader comes?”
Ben simmers down instantly. Jasmine hauls Sean into the meeting
room where Lou is doing a stellar job of amusing the children. Jasmine
takes a seat next to Natasha, who has her hands clasped around a cup of tea
as if it is the only thing tethering her to earth.
“You remember Sean?” she says to Natasha.
“You brought the clothes,” she nods and gives him a brilliant smile.
It is a smile that could ensnare a man’s heart. Jasmine can see why Adam
Smith is so desperate to hold onto his wife. It is to his deep shame he
couldn’t have done it through love and compassion rather than threats and
controlling behaviour.
She wants to plough on but she knows Natasha has had a lot to deal
with in a very short time. It is an awful time for her to be making crucial
decisions with long-term consequences, but they have no choice. While Lou
occupies the little boys, Jasmine slowly lays out the plan, pausing to answer
Natasha’s questions, giving her every chance to object. It is important
Natasha feels this is a step she is taking, not a solution being thrust on her.
“So this woman, Gillian? She lost her own son?” Jasmine can see
Natasha’s eyes fill with tears at Gillian’s pain. Natasha’s capacity for
sympathy for another human while dealing with her own problems is
astounding. Her eyes find her children. “And she will help us?”
“Yes. But you must understand. It is a very different place in the
countryside. It’s far from everything you know. It may not be easy for you.”
Natasha looks around her. “There is nothing for us here.” Privately,
Jasmine has to agree.
“My Aunty Mary may have some work for you,” she says, but she
wants to be sure Natasha understands she is not obliged to help out in return
for sanctuary. This is not modern slavery in disguise. “But you absolutely
don’t have to take it, if you don’t like it or you don’t like dogs.”
“I love dogs,” Natasha’s head comes up and she smiles one of her
blinding smiles again. “Adam hated them.”
“Well, okay. But you know, you can find your own way at your own
pace. My dad will be in touch with you to sort out the legal stuff but if you
aren’t happy about anything, you can say so. Don’t suffer in silence.”
Natasha’s eyes find Jasmine’s. “You are very lucky,” she says. “To
have such a wonderful family. It is a precious thing.” Having always been
predisposed to think her own family rather intrusive and fairly
objectionable, the words make Jasmine pause. Natasha looks across at Sean
and Lou. “And you are a truly good person. Your friends are also lucky to
have someone like you in their life.”
Jasmine squirms in her seat, uncomfortable with the praise. She is
only doing what is right. It shouldn’t be such a remarkable thing.
 They sit in silence for a few moments and Jasmine’s stress ratchets
up. The clock is ticking. The Leader is due. And Jasmine out of options for
keeping the little family safe. Natasha stands and crosses the room to where
Lou is playing pat-a-cake with the little boy. She sits down and pulls her
son onto her lap.
“Would you like to go to see some moo cows and baa-baa sheep and
some woof-woof dogs?” she asks. The little boy looks up at his mother and
nods enthusiastically. She looks at Jasmine. “Then yes, please. We will go.”
“Okay!” Sean claps his hands. “Let’s do it!”
Sean leads the way. Lou holds the baby, Natasha carries the toddler
and Jasmine brings up the rear. As they exit the building, Agnes gets out of
her car, carrying two car seats. She is pulled up behind Sean, both of them
ignoring the police cones preventing parking in front of the campaign
headquarters.
“I need them back tomorrow,” she tells Sean as she helps him strap
them in. The children are loaded, Sean takes his place behind the driving
wheel and Natasha is riding shotgun. With a cheery wave of his hand, he
pulls out into the traffic and then they are gone, swallowed up by the
morning rush hour.
Jasmine feels exultant. Mission accomplished. She stands at the
roadside, Lou beside her, and takes a moment to wish the family well.
“What lovely little boys!” Lou says. She casts a glance at the office
behind them. “I wouldn’t mind a couple just like them myself someday.”
Her words send a thrill of fear through Jasmine. She had been too
busy to pay attention to Lou and her love life. She had thought Ben too
heavily scheduled lately to leave him free to continue to conduct his love
affair. But obviously Lou is far fonder of Ben than Jasmine realised, if she
is contemplating children. The elation she just felt evaporates.
 “No time to stand around dreaming of the future,” she says with a
joviality she does not feel. “We’ve got a Leader to host.”
No sooner does she say those words than she spots a blue flashing
light in the distance. She might feel like she has already done a day’s work
this morning but in truth, the chaos has only just begun. She opens the door
to alert Ben to the imminent arrival of the Party Leader.
 A Realisation

With only a few days left until election day, there is no let up and no time to
relax or recover from the frantic pace of the Leader’s visit. They have
momentum now and they have to keep building on it.
Jasmine is infinitely grateful to Sean, who seems to have
rediscovered some love for politics. He has taken a week off work and
dragooned his aunt into having his mother to stay for a week. Ostensibly,
the visit is to prevent his mother suffering the trauma of seeing her husband
replaced but it gives Sean a much needed break too.
Together with Ben and Lou, she and Sean are using some of his
inside knowledge of Hayburn in working out where are the most valuable
areas to deploy their teams of canvassers in the last push. Ben is convinced
getting the traditional Labour vote out is key, while Sean is favouring a
more aggressive approach and targeting slightly more affluent areas who
are feeling the pinch of mortgage rates. Lou is silent, waiting for a decision
and Jasmine thinks it is even money which comes first, a decision or
fisticuffs.
Jasmine would have welcomed Pamela’s input who is Hayburn born
and bred, like Sean. She has a wealth of experience absorbed from working
with Richard Exmore from the very start. But Pamela had an un-
reschedulable medical appointment this morning. As if thinking of Pamela
summons her, Jasmine’s phone vibrates with a text. Pamela. She opens the
screen to see the whole message.
Sorry I won’t be in today. I know this is the worst possible time but
I’ve just been diagnosed with breast cancer.
The shock of the message drains the blood from Jasmine’s face. She
stares at the phone in her hand.
“Jasmine?” Ben asks. “Are you okay? You’ve gone as white as a
sheet.”
“Uh, yes. I’m fine.” Jasmine’s normally acute mind has gone adrift.
“It’s Pamela. She won’t be in. She’s got breast cancer. I’m guessing she’ll
be out for the rest of the campaign.”
“Oh my God!” squeals Lou. “That’s terrible! But I was only talking
to her yesterday. She was right as rain.” She lets out a sigh of breath, akin to
a sob, evidently quite shaken.
Ben leans across his desk, his hand on her lower arm. “Don’t worry,
Lou. I’m sure she’ll be fine. Pamela’s a fighter.”
His words set fire to Jasmine. “Really, Ben?” Jasmine’s challenge
rings out. “And those who don’t survive, what are they?” Ben and Lou turn
to her, their mouths agape. “Are they losers? Do they deserve their deaths
because they just didn’t fight hard enough?”
Her voice wobbles. She stands. “Lou,” she addresses the young
woman. “Pamela will probably be fine because there is a ninety per cent
remission rate for breast cancer. But until she tells us otherwise, I don’t
think we should mention it outside of this room. Now, if you will excuse
me, I need to phone my friend.” She turns and stalks out.

***
 For a second, no one dares to speak. Then Ben says, “What the
hell?”
“Seriously?” Sean is incredulous. “Do you really not understand?
Have you really forgotten?”
At Ben’s blank look, Sean offers, “Petey, you prick!” He’s about to
follow Jasmine but Ben’s hand stops him.
“What about Petey?”
Sean rolls his eyes. “Well, he died, didn’t he?”
“Petey died?” Ben sounds surprised. “When?”
“Years ago. But you knew this. She told you what was wrong with
him.”
“Humour me. When exactly?”
Sean takes a deep breath. His hand comes up to his head and drops
away. “It was a few weeks after our finals. That’s why her results were so
bad. I wasn’t there so I don’t know all the details but I think, in the end, it
was respiratory failure.” He looks down at Ben’s hand. “Can I go now?
This,” he waves his finger around the office, “will be a trigger for her.”
Ben releases Sean’s hand. “Yeah. We might as well end the meeting.
Nothing’s going to get decided now.”
He watches the others leave and then he sits in his chair with his
head in his hands.

***

Sean finds Jasmine perched on a low garden wall a hundred metres

down from the headquarters. The traffic speeds along the main road beside
them. It is noisy and grimy, not exactly pleasant surroundings, but he
ignores that as he takes a seat next to her.
 “Did you get hold of Pamela?” He nods to the dark phone screen in
her hand.
“No. Voicemail,” she says. “Do you know, when Petey was going
for treatment, he envied all the women with breast cancer? Isn’t it a horrible
thing? To envy someone’s cancer because it is more survivable than yours.”
Sean puts his arm around her and draws her close. After a moment,
Jasmine says, “I lost it in there, didn’t I?”
“Big time,” Sean agrees and chuckles. “You should have seen their
faces.”
“Well, they’re probably sniggering together now. Jasmine the Loon.
You know there’s something going on between the two of them, don’t you?
I caught them kissing a while ago.”
She’s wondered if the romance was cooling as she hadn’t seen them
together as much since the morning she had taken Ben to task. But first
there was Lou’s comment about wanting children and now Ben’s obvious
concern for her. She realises they have just been more discreet. Out of all
the people in that meeting, Lou knew Pamela the least. Sean had been in
and out of the constituency office all his life. He had even helped out during
his summer holidays, earning a bit of money manning the phone lines to
cover other staff leave. Pamela was like a second mother to him.
Jasmine’s acquaintance with Pamela was more recent but they had
been colleagues, albeit in different locations, for five years. They had an
easy familiarity with each other, despite their age difference. When Jasmine
had been a clueless graduate, Pamela had been kind to the new kid, had
answered every question with patience, no matter how trivial or stupid.
Jasmine has a deep loyalty to Pamela, which was why she had insisted on
Ben’s promise of a future job. But that Ben had chosen to comfort Lou, not
Sean or Jasmine, spoke volumes as to where his affections lie.
 Sean squeezes her shoulder. “Well, you know me. Not Ben’s biggest
fan. But Lou’s on a coffee run, so I don’t think they are. One weird thing,
Ben didn’t seem to know Petey had died.”
“I guess he wouldn’t. They didn’t know each other and it’s not
something I splashed over social media … It hurt too much. His mum and
his friends put stuff up but there’s no reason Ben would have seen it.”
“No, more than that.” Sean tries to explain his feeling. “Like he had
no concept Petey would likely be dead. No expectation.”
“Oh, that!” Jasmine blows out a sigh and looks at her feet. “He had
this bizarre idea Petey had made it all up just to get me back. His mum is an
activist for domestic violence survivors. He said it happened all the time.
That the controlling partner would say anything to get the survivor back.”
“He’d obviously never met Petey if he thought he was a controlling
partner. As easy as the day was long.”
Jasmine smiles, remembering her friend. She has had many years to
contemplate her decision and each time she comes to the same conclusion.
Even with all the knowledge she has now, in hindsight, she would not have
made a different choice. In fact, her mind is firmer. At the time she had
been forced to choose, she’d only had the obligation of her long friendship
with Petey. She’d had no understanding of the overwhelming exhaustion of
radiotherapy and chemotherapy, the struggle to get food past lips with no
appetite, the distress of watching the person you care for die in slow
degrees. She is glad she helped Petey on this hardest path. In hindsight, she
has no regrets.
“Come on, Loony Girl,” Sean teases. “I’ll buy you lunch from the
chippie. I can’t sit on this wall much longer. I think there’s a thistle up my
bum.”
 “I’m a woman, not a girl,” Jasmine corrects automatically. Then she
nods. A packet of greasy fries smothered in ketchup might be exactly what
she needs before she has to face Ben again.

***

It is just as well Jasmine’s lunch is fortifying, because Ben is

waiting for her as she and Sean shoulder through the shop door.
“Jasmine, may I see you quickly?” His words are innocuous, an
everyday request that alerts none of the volunteers working, although Lou’s
head comes up.
He closes his office door behind him. At least this will be quick, she
thinks. She knows his schedule and he needs to leave soon to get to his next
meeting on time.
“Did you get through to Pamela?” he asks, all concern.
She shakes her head. “I’ve left a message. I doubt we’re her main
worry. Her family will be. But this changes nothing. You’ll keep your
promise if you win? She’ll head up your constituency office?”
“Fighting for your lost lambs, again?”
“Pamela’s hardly a lamb. And those of us who can fight should
always defend those who can’t fight for themselves.”
“I wasn’t picking a fight, Jasmine. Or belittling Pamela. If she wants
it, the job is still hers.” He stops. “Sit down, Jasmine. Please, sit.”
Jasmine pulls out the cheap metal and plastic stacking chair she had
been using earlier. Ben obviously has something to say to her and it is
unsettling enough to want her seated. Instead of rounding the desk and
taking his place in his office chair, he perches on the desk. Jasmine’s brow
furrows. It puts him closer to her, within reach, but looking down, an odd
dynamic.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
Now Jasmine is even more confused. “What for?”
Ben is silent a moment. “For not listening to you five years ago.”
Tears prickle her eyes. She takes a calming breath. “Let’s not go
there?” She puts her fingers to the bridge of her nose and massages along
her eyebrows. It’s been an emotional day so far. She doesn’t think she can
take much more. What is wrong with a good old boring stiff upper lip?
“What’s done is done. It played out how it did. We were only kids,
thinking we understood the world.” She laughs bitterly. “How little I knew
then.”
“We were kids,” Ben says. “And I loved you like one, with my
whole heart. I didn’t want to share you.”
“Don’t!” Jasmine blows out her breath, praying he stops. She neither
wants nor needs an explanation. “It’s gone, past. We are neither of us
innocent kids anymore.”
“But haven’t you ever thought of me in the intervening years?”
He’s really going to do this. He’s going to make her admit all her
impossible dreams and foolish feelings and hopes. He’s going to leave her
without one shred of pride to hide behind. She drops her head. “I didn’t love
you any less, than you loved me. Of course I’ve thought of you.” She has
only ever loved two people and one of those is dead. Every guy who asked
her out, every date she ever accepted, not one was ever the slightest bit as
good as Ben. And yet, the love she’d had for Ben had not been enough.
“And after Petey died, if I had contacted you, would you have given
me a second chance?”
This is the moment. Her heart laid bare.
 “Yes,” she whispers. Then she stands, confession over. Her voice
strengthens. “But you’re with Lou now and we have an election to win. I
have work to do.” As regally as Jasmine can manage, she straightens, drops
her shoulders and walks out of his office.
 The Last Slog

Jasmine is relieved to see Pamela the following day. She had not wanted to
hassle her friend, so had left it to Pamela to call back when she was ready.
But the evening had worn on and no message had come. Jasmine takes
careful stock of the older woman but can see no obvious change.
“How are you doing?” she asks, staying away from the normal
greeting of, How are you? – which could be deemed rather crass in the
circumstances.
Pamela lifts her eyes to meet Jasmine’s. “Stunned, I think. A little
worried Martin won’t still love me without…” One hand lifts and circles
her breast.
“He took on a single mother with three boys. I doubt he’ll be phased
by this,” Jasmine gently squeezes Pamela’s arm.
“I know. But you can’t help wondering if it will change things. He
didn’t take the news well and the kids were even worse. To be honest, I’ve
come to work to get away from all of them. They do fuss so.”
“I guess they’re all a bit shocked.” Jasmine certainly was.
“Bit silly of me, really. I wasn’t expecting it, despite the call back.
Two of my friends had had call backs and in both cases it had turned out to
be cysts. It just didn’t occur to me it would be cancer. I felt so well.”
 “Not silly at all. Cysts are the most frequent outcome.” Jasmine
pauses. “Did they give you a staging?” she asks calmly. The answer to this
will tell her how much she needs to worry. Pamela has enough to deal with;
she shouldn’t have to assuage others’ distress too.
“Stage one. Thank God for routine mammograms, heh?”
Jasmine nods. “Surgery?”
“Yes. They’ve given me a date for an operation. It’s after the
election, mercifully.”
“You do know we would have managed without you?” She doesn’t
want Pamela to think she must come in, even if she feels bad.
“But not half as well.”
Jasmine chuckles and agrees. “Quite.” Neither does she want
Pamela to feel as if she is disposable. Besides, many a true word spoken in
jest. Pamela is a powerhouse of organisation, not easily replaced.
“Did you tell Ben?” Pamela asks.
Jasmine nods. “And Sean. Unfortunately, Lou was present too.”
“That girl has a remarkable ability to position herself next to our
candidate,” Pamela arches one eyebrow.
“I don’t think she’ll gossip,” Jasmine reassures. “I made it clear she
had to treat it as confidential.”
“So few days to go, now,” Pamela looks around the empty office.
“No one needs the distraction.”
As volunteers start to filter in to man the phone lines, Jasmine
repairs to Ben’s office, safe in the knowledge he has a breakfast meeting
and won’t be in until later. After yesterday’s session with him, she is happy
to postpone their next meeting as long as possible. How she wishes
sometimes that Labour had chosen someone else, somebody with whom she
had absolutely no history. She messages him to let him know Pamela is
here, but then gets on with making sure she and Ben don’t overspend their
election budget, despite the temptations.
At five o’clock, the evening canvassing teams assemble, ready for
the golden hours of canvassing from six till eight. People are home from
work; early risers have not yet gone to bed. When Jasmine sees some of
their volunteer campaigners coming through the door, she realises she has
successfully avoided being alone with Ben all day. There is no further
danger now as Ben often teams up with Lou, even though Jasmine is also
out tonight as it is all hands in the final days. The polls show the vote is
close and every person contacted might make a difference. Considering
they started at such a disadvantage, they have done well, testament to Ben’s
ability coupled with their hard work. She honestly believes that if she can
get him over the finish line and into Parliament, Hayburn will benefit.
He is young, energetic, and committed. Not that she wants to
denigrate Sean’s father, who had done so much for her, but working with
Ben these weeks has shown her how tired, cynical, and complacent Richard
had become. To be fair to him, he had served over a decade as an opposition
MP, unable to affect much of magnitude and it would dent anyone’s fervour.
Ben, on the contrary, would likely spend his next few years in government,
if he won this by-election and then retained his seat at the upcoming
General Election. He has hope to motivate him, not endless
disappointments to overcome.
Jasmine is standing close by when she hears Ben’s voice. He is
talking to Lou. “I won’t be going out with everyone tonight. I’m going to
stay behind for a bit and have a word with Pamela. I’ll catch up with
everyone later,” he says. “You’ll need another partner tonight.”
“Oh.” And Jasmine can hear the unhappiness in that one syllable.
Her mind also cannot help analysing his phrasing. I’ll catch up with
everyone later. Not you, but everyone. She doesn’t have time to ferret much
further before Dave, the rugby league player, chimes in.
“I’ll team up with you Lou,” he says. “My normal buddy isn’t here
tonight.”
Lou gives him a big beaming smile, and then everyone is piling out,
climbing into cars, headed to a new-build estate on the edges of Hayburn,
not far from the Exmore home. For one moment, Jasmine wonders what is
so urgent to talk to Pamela about that Ben could not postpone until the
morning, but then someone asks her a question and her thoughts switch
track.
Jasmine is paired with a newbie tonight, a young art student who
talks a lot but much of it nonsense. Despite the difference of only half a
decade in their ages, Jasmine feels they are on different planets. The music
she likes, the influencers she listens to, the films she watches are all strange.
She also seems to be a little spaced. Jasmine begins to worry the student
might be under the influence, as she reminds her for the fifth time to keep
her fingers clear of letterbox flaps in people’s doors. Quite a few have
viciously hard springs that will trap unwary fingers, but by far the greater
injury is from dog bites. She has no wish to spend the rest of the evening
with her charge in Accident and Emergency.
She is relieved when eight o’clock rolls around and they head for
the nearby meeting point, a local pub. Dave and Lou are already there and
she leaves her charge in their care while she goes to the bar to order drinks.
When she gets back, Ben and a half-dozen others have joined the group.
Lou is already flanked on both sides, so Ben takes a seat next to Jasmine. If
she thinks this indicates a thawing of their icy relationship, she is sadly
mistaken because he hardly says a word to her. He keeps everyone
entertained with his anecdotes and laughs at their stories in turn, but his
eyes seldom turn her way nor does he solicit any tales of adversity from her.
It is a replay of almost everyone of these post-canvassing sessions so
Jasmine cannot identify why it feels different.
When the volunteers start drifting home, Ben offers lifts to those
who need it, pointedly asking, “Jasmine?”
She nods. She does not read anything into it. He knows her car is in
London after helping Natasha Smith and she is certain they won’t be alone,
that others will be in the car with them. Sure enough, Ben has a car full as
he pulls out of the car park, including Dave and Lou. Jasmine is one of the
first he drops off with nothing more than a chorus of Goodnights from
others and a quiet See you tomorrow from him. She has no idea if he and
Lou sneak off together at the end of the night or not. But as she lies in bed
that night, reflecting on the day, she feels something has changed. If only
she could tell what exactly it was.
 Surprise, Surprise

When you can really do with extra time, it is sure to speed by. Before she
knows it, Jasmine is packing up her belongings, ready for her return to
London. Whatever happens, she won’t be staying in Hayburn. Growing up
with housekeepers picking up after her has made Jasmine a messy person.
While she appreciates a clean and orderly life, she is incapable of making it
happen herself. The kitchen is fine because she seldom uses it. She has
never mastered cooking because she has never been interested in it. The
idea of a perfectly crafted, home-made meal has no attraction over a cheap
store-bought ready meal if she has to cook it. Her London life is supported
by delivered food or pre-cooked dinners, often eaten straight from the
container. She brought the same mindset to Hayburn which, unfortunately,
has far fewer options. But all it meant was the balance shifted from mainly
restaurant-based to primarily supermarket-sourced.
But she has papers everywhere, clothes hiding under furniture, and
bits of tech strewn around the rental. By the time she has located all of her
belongings and shoved them in a suitcase, she is exhausted. She sits with
this evening’s pasta dish and thinks. The television is on but she is not
watching it, her mind pre-occupied with the next day. For tomorrow, time
runs out. The residents of Hayburn will get their say on who will represent
them in Parliament. A win for Ben now massively increases the chance he
will hold the seat at the soon-to-be-expected General Election. Richard
Exmore’s scandalous demise will have been forgotten by most and Ben will
have had many more months to make his presence felt in the constituency.
Jasmine is sure he is enough of a political animal to capitalise on every
chance of self-promotion that crops up.
But before then, a hundred jobs need to be undertaken. She runs
through in her head the people she can count on tomorrow. Much of what
they can achieve will depend on how many volunteers actually turn up.
Pamela and some of her trusted friends and ex-colleagues will be polling
agents. They will be watching over the vote and the subsequent count at
every polling station for signs of incompetence or malfeasance. Some will
also be tellers, asking those who are voting for their elector numbers or
names and addresses, so the campaign can identify those who haven’t yet
voted. Volunteers will try to contact those missing, to argue their case with
the undecideds, or to offer transport for those who want to vote for Ben. But
Jasmine is expecting many traditional Labour voters to stay away, jaded by
the stench of treachery and corruption currently surrounding Richard
Exmore.
She requires volunteers to man the phone lines and people to drive
the cars to pick up voters struggling to get to polling stations. In a poor area
like Hayburn, finding drivers who can afford business-class insurance and
the fuel racked up on all those miles is hard.
Her thoughts are interrupted by her phone ringing.
“Eleanor? Everything okay?” Jasmine asks, concerned.
“Just wanted to wish you luck for tomorrow,” Eleanor says.
“Although I’m sure you won’t need it. I can’t think of anyone better to run a
political campaign than you.”
 Jasmine glows. Praise from Eleanor is rare, but it means much more
when you get it.
“If you don’t win, then it was probably unwinnable,” Eleanor
continues. “But I think you will. What time does it all kick off?”
“Polls open at seven,” Jasmine answers. “I’ll need to be at the
campaign office about six to sort stuff. We always get people who don’t
show up or who call in sick.”
“Long old day for you. I guess you have to stay all night for the
count? On top of the early start, that’s hard. Good thing you’re young. How
do some of those old codgers manage?”
“They go home.” Jasmine is under no illusions as to how lax some
members of Parliament are. Especially those in safe seats.
“I’ll let you go to bed then. Get some sleep, perhaps.” And Eleanor
is gone. Jasmine looks at her phone for a minute after her sister hangs up
and thinks, How peculiar. But the call is there in her phone log; it wasn’t
some weird hallucination. She struggles to recall if her sister has ever rung
to wish her luck before. Not for exams or finals, not for her first day of
work with Richard all those years ago. She shrugs. It is nice to feel cared
for. Probably best not to analyse it too much.
Her phone pings. A message from Anna: On shift tomorrow, so
sending best wishes for you today.
Could there be some collusion going on? Is Eleanor whipping all the
sisters in to support her? But no more messages arrive. Nothing from Lily
or Phoebe. She should not expect otherwise, though. Her relationship with
the twins has always been difficult.
She takes Eleanor’s advice, and heads to bed for the few hours of
sleep she can get. But her mind refuses to switch off. It focuses instead on
the imminent farewell with Ben. Working with him has been like pleasure
and pain have become cross-wired in her brain. When she looks back on the
last few weeks, she realises how much she has enjoyed being around him,
working with him. At times, there have even been hints of their old
camaraderie. But every memory is tainted with the anguish of watching him
fall for someone else. When she considers the whole, she would much
rather leave than stay and watch his full-throttle pursuit of Lou after the
election is over. She can imagine them holding hands in public and kissing
on the doorstep and just the thought curdles her stomach. How hard would
it be to witness that? And it won’t be her or Pamela beside Ben at civil
functions; it will be Lou, looking sleek and happy.
She hopes Lou realises how lucky she is. Ben at university had been
full of unwarranted self-assurance verging on arrogance. Ben now is
justifiably confident. She has seen him grow even in the matter of the last
few weeks. Each test passed has given him new strength and new
knowledge. She has no doubt he will continue to mature and deepen as he
takes his place in Parliament and starts to work for the people who need that
strength. And she will be left behind. Her only comfort will be knowing she
has had some small part in the making of the whole man.
The following morning, Sean picks Jasmine up from her rented
apartment for the short journey to the campaign office. She would normally
walk but today every second will count – every parcel of energy needs to be
reserved for later. She has her head down, checking her email on her phone,
when she hears him say, “What the hell is going on here?”
A trio of black SUVs is parked outside of the office. It looks like the
FBI have come to play, except Britain doesn’t have an FBI. For one
moment, she wonders if the Labour Leader is back for one last impromptu
push but then she recalls yesterday’s news story where he was overseas. She
realises how silly the thought is. Leaders don’t do anything unannounced.
The goal is always maximum press coverage, and it takes planning and
organisation. She dearly hopes a local drug dealer has not set up shop
outside of their headquarters.
Sean pulls up behind the cars and Jasmine clambers out, searching
in her bag for the office keys. It is early enough the light is not good and she
edges towards the streetlight. Car doors slam and Jasmine looks up.
“Mummy?” she says. Then she turns. “Eleanor?” As more bodies appear,
she says, “Lily, Phoebe, Jacob, Daddy? What’s going on? Why are you all
here?”
Her father answers in his booming posh voice. “Surprise, surprise!”
he shouts with his arms thrown wide, and Jasmine hopes he doesn’t wake
the sleeping neighbours. “We’ve come to help.”
He crushes her into a bear hug. Jasmine struggles to resist at first
and then realises this is futile. As soon as her father feels her relax, he
loosens his arms and lets her step back.
“But you all don’t support the Labour Party.”
“No,” he agrees. “But we support you. Behold, three drivers, two
volunteers, and Phoebe who will ride shotgun with Lily.”
“Have you driven up today?” Jasmine dearly needs drivers, but not
if they are already exhausted.
“We came up yesterday and stayed in a hotel locally,” her father
answers. Jasmine looks at Eleanor. Her sister must have already been in
Hayburn when she called last night. But Eleanor smiles broadly and shrugs
in return.
Sean has made it to Jasmine’s side. He holds out his hand. “Lord
Larkford, I presume. I’m Sean Exmore.”
Lord Larkford ignores Sean’s hand and envelopes him in a manly
hug. “I’m sorry for your loss, son. I’m immensely grateful to you and your
father for helping my daughter all these years.” Jasmine spots the twinkle in
her father’s eye and the use of the epithet son, and wonders if Sean realises
he should flee now, before her Machiavellian father undertakes to run
Sean’s life for him.
Another vehicle pulls up. Jasmine recognises Ben’s car. She is
dismayed to see Lou climb out. Her heart plummets but regains some
normality when Lou is followed by Dave and Hattie. They haven’t seen
Hattie for a while. Jasmine had assumed she was lost to the cause, but it
seems Lou has pulled her back in. As everyone piles into the office,
Jasmine finds Eleanor beside her.
“Your candidate looks remarkably like the boy you dated at
university. You know, the one you stayed with at Christmas? What was his
name again?” Eleanor says, combining innocent and sly in one sentence.
Jasmine stares at Eleanor, wondering how much her sister knows and how
much she has managed to put together from social media. She could have
sworn her family were oblivious to her daily life but when Eleanor winks at
her, she promises herself never to underestimate them again.
 Election Day

Although the office is large enough to accommodate several volunteers and

their desks, somehow it seems too cramped to fit her family. The ceiling is
too low and the walls too close to contain their volume – dozens of people
talking all at once in loud, posh voices. Jasmine is still trying to extricate
herself from her mother’s embrace when she hears Ben’s voice over the rest
call, “What is going on here?”
She turns quickly but not quick enough. Sean is there before her,
mischief in his words as he says, “Ben, let me introduce you to Lord
Larkford, Jasmine’s father.”
“Oh.” Ben looks discomfited.
“And Lady Larkford.” Sean twists to where Jasmine is standing still
beside her beautiful and immaculate mother. “And her sisters – Eleanor,
Lily, and Phoebe.” Sean indicates Eleanor but waves his hand generally
between the twins.
“And her brother-in-law, Jake.” Jasmine pleads he won’t go further
with that introduction. Sean knows Jake was Petey’s sister’s ex and how he
ended up married to Eleanor but Ben knows none of it. They had split up
before Jake became anything other than an extra in her life.
But, for the first time here in Hayburn, it feels like her tribe
outweighs Ben’s and the fact is not lost on Sean.
 Her father’s head drops to one side as he watches the dynamic. She
is sure he misses nothing. “We’ve come to offer our aid to Jasmine today,”
he says with the slightest emphasis on Jasmine. “I must say the role of
chauffeur rather than chauffeured is new to me, but I’m hoping it will be
enlightening.”
Jasmine catches a look pass between Jacob and Eleanor, followed by
a smile on both faces, but she is more focused on making sure her father
behaves.
“Volunteers are always welcome,” Ben says with a politician’s
smile. “Today of all days, doubly so.”
“By the way, Gillian sends her love.” Lord Larkford fixes his eyes
on Jasmine. “That package you sent her has proved very useful. I believe it
has all fitted together rather well.”
Jasmine, who has received a regular stream of messages and photos
from Gillian keeping her updated on Natasha and her boys, knows this is
not for her benefit. She cannot say how the nuanced messages might have
progressed as the little tableau is interrupted by her phone ringing.
Pamela is calling. “One of my tellers is stuck home with a sick
child. She was meant to be covering the polling station at the Westfield
Scout hut.”
“Okay. Leave it with me.” Jasmine surveys her little team. She sees
Lou and Hattie gazing at her father with stars in their eyes and catches a
whisper between them: “Doesn’t he look like the Earl of Grantham?” She
debates sending one of them but doubts they have the staying power.
They’ll be on their phones or gossiping with the youngsters. Her eyes alight
on Eleanor. There is something forceful about her sister. Few people will
brush past her when she asks for their details. Perfect.
 Within minutes, Jacob is ferrying his wife to the Scout hut and
Jasmine has shifted into organiser mode. Her father, Jake, and Lily all have
a list of names and addresses of people who had pre-registered for help with
transport to the polling station. She makes a mental note to send Lily, who
has Phoebe riding with her, to any last-minute requests which come in from
people with reduced mobility, whether it’s a broken leg or a flare-up of a
more chronic condition.
As volunteers arrive, they are either sent back out again to canvass
or they take their places at one of the desks to start making phone calls.
Jasmine’s organisational machine is humming smoothly. The one person
she struggles to use is her mother. Lady Larkford is not a political animal
nor a Labour supporter. Phones and canvassing are out. She would put her
mother on supplying teas and coffees to the team, except Lady Larkford’s
coffee is more bitter than an anti-malarial and anyone requiring oat milk is
likely to find themselves served dairy.
For now, her mother seems content to sit quietly in the corner,
watching everyone. Mid-morning, Jasmine finds her mother her first job.
She dispatches her mother to the bakery down the road to fetch sticky buns
and pastries. Lady Larkford waves away any suggestion of Jasmine paying
and returns with two paper carrier bags full and one arm curled around a
pile of boxes. Jasmine goes into the little kitchen for paper towel but by the
time she comes out, the boxes are decimated and there is not much left. She
sees Ben take a custard Danish and wordlessly passes him a torn-off towel.
He takes it, pops his pastry down on it, and licks his fingers. Jasmine’s
stomach flutters and she glares at him. He retreats to his office. He will be
leaving soon, going to press flesh in a shopping centre, hoping to scare up
some last-minute votes.
 Her mother materialises at her elbow. “What is going on between
you and the candidate?” she whispers.
“Nothing.”
“Are you sure?” Her mother cocks her head. “He looks at you a lot.
And just now, I saw how you reacted.”
“There is nothing going on between us,” Jasmine says more firmly.
“And he’s dating one of the volunteers.”
“More fool him,” her mother replies. She starts collecting the empty
packaging and carries it to the kitchen. Jasmine follows.
“What do you mean?”
“Just that you are a prize, my lovely. He’s an idiot if he is chasing
someone else when he could have you.”
“First of all, I’m not lovely. And secondly, what makes you think he
could have me?”
Lady Larkford laughs. “You are lovely in your own way. Oh, I’ll
grant you that you’re not classically beautiful but your warmth shines
through. Why do you think that lad was so besotted with you? All those
years ago.” Jasmine is grateful she doesn’t mention his name. Petey had
always been something of a sensitive topic with her mother. After Jasmine
had introduced him to her family, she had badgered her mother for her
approval. Eventually, Lady Larkford had responded, “He’s fine, Jasmine.
Just remember, the person you fancy at sixteen is very rarely the person you
are with at sixty.” By which Jasmine had realised her mother did not think
Petey fine at all.
Time had proved them both wrong. Jasmine acknowledges if Petey
were alive today, they would not still be together and her mother’s
unthinking snobbery had hit reality when confronted with Eleanor’s
unshakeable love for Jacob Winter.
 “You have your father’s charisma. It’s not subtle or gentle or
charming. It’s like being run over by a steamroller, but it is addictive.” Lady
Larkford looks at Jasmine, eyes soft with love.
“I have eyes and I know my daughter,” her mother continues. “You
like him and I don’t mean platonically. He affects you like he’s one big slice
of triple chocolate fudge cake.”
It is a day of surprises. Jasmine stays silent, contemplating her
mother’s words. There are so few moments of intimacy between them,
moments when she has felt she can bask in her mother’s love, she doesn’t
want to destroy this one. But she has to ask.
“Why did you never stop them? The twins? When they were having
a go at me?”
Lady Larkford looks at her for a moment, then reaches out and takes
her hand. “From when you were a little babe, your elder sisters would fight
all your battles for you. But it was clear, from early on, you were never one
to compromise to anyone. You needed to learn resilience, but Eleanor and
Anna wouldn’t let you. Perhaps I should have reined in Phoebe, for her
sake, more than yours. I fear she is a little too wild for her own good.”
Jasmine considers the reply. She cannot help but think she would
not do the same with her own children, but it made a difference to find out
there was a reason. It was not just sheer indifference to her awkward middle
child. It is never too late to find out your mother loves you. She closes her
eyes and finds a knot inside of her, that she has carried for years, has
loosened, unravelled, and slipped away.
Her mother’s hand moves to Jasmine’s head, smoothing back her
curls. “I am so proud of what you have done here. You have built something
from ruins. That is phenomenal. When Ben gets elected, he will owe it all to
you.”
 “If he gets elected.” Jasmine has stood on doorsteps and heard the
strength of feeling from the voters’ mouths – the conviction that all
politicians are dishonest and corrupt. Many of their traditional voters will
stay at home.
“When,” her mother says firmly. “Now, don’t mind me. You go and
do your job, and I’ll clear up here. I’ve ordered some sandwiches for lunch
and I’ll pick them up later. I figured we’ll phone for pizza at dinnertime.
I’ve got it all covered. You go do your thing.”
Jasmine walks out of the kitchen feeling younger than when she
went in. She sees Ben emerge from his office, off to his first canvassing
roadshow in the main shopping area. By evening, he will switch to
swinging by the local pubs. She will not see him again until they meet at the
count. Her job is to stay here and co-ordinate their last push. Ben raises his
hand in a gesture of farewell as he weaves through the volunteers. With her
mother’s proud words in her mind, Jasmine gives him a broad smile in
return and is surprised to see his eyes light up. A quick nod and he is gone,
and Jasmine is left wondering if her mother might be more perceptive than
Jasmine gives her credit. The moment is fleeting. Her natural cynicism
takes hold again. Men like pretty, sweet, and pliable. Ben had once
appreciated her version of unaffected, forthright and resolute, but he has
long since made his current preference clear. He is not hers, not now, not
ever. She shakes her head. She has work to do.
 And the Winner Is

Jake drops Jasmine at the Hayburn Sports Centre before he heads off to
wait for his wife at the Westfield Scout Hut. When the polling stations close
at ten, he and Eleanor will head home. Jasmine stands in the carpark and
gazes across at the uninspiring building, which looks remarkably like
someone has plopped a floppy chef’s hat on a concrete bunker. Its grimy
plastic roof, illuminated by the streetlights, is stark against the night sky.
Built in the last century when a stray pot of money had accidentally landed
in the town, it is long past its best. It should have been replaced a decade
ago but as long as it doesn’t actually fall down, it will continue to serve
because funds for replacement are non-existent.
Jasmine sincerely hopes the Centre doesn’t collapse tonight as it is
the only venue in the locality suitable to hold the count, an unintended
function it has performed since construction. She checks the time and
crosses the tarmac. People are dribbling in from all directions – officials,
candidates, agents, observers and guests. She looks for Ben, but cannot see
him. The entrance is currently blocked as an official patiently explains to a
Conservative observer she cannot wear heels into the count because it will
damage the floor.
Someone didn’t read the email. Jasmine feels smug. Personally, she
cannot think of anything worse than standing all night on high heels and
bounces happily on her ballet flats. There is an energetic bustle; everyone is
eager to enter before the postal votes are verified. It is easy to pick out
affiliations. Officials are in white or beige tops and dark bottoms,
mainstream candidates and their supporters in party colours or wearing
garish rosettes and the perennial oddities who crop up in every election are
in foil, fairy outfits, or other fancy dress.
She is enveloped by the scent of sweat, damp, and chlorine – the
eternal smell of a sports centre with an ailing ventilation system. She is not
herself a fan of organised exercise, preferring walking and carrying
shopping to a treadmill and weights, so she has seldom been in the building.
But the smell hasn’t changed since she was here for the last count, not long
into her employment with Richard Exmore, when he held on to his seat in
the great Red Wall defection of Labour voters.
Pamela is not here tonight as she was then. A discussion between
the two of them on the wisdom of a woman with cancer staying up all night
had led to Pamela’s capitulation. It will be the first count she has missed
since working in the constituency office. Jasmine knows what a
disappointment it is, but believes Pamela’s family is probably profoundly
grateful. From the little Pamela has said, they are not happy about her
continuing to work, and this might have pushed their opposition to the limit.
Jasmine knows Pamela loves her work. It gives added meaning to
her life beyond being someone’s wife and someone’s mother. For some
women, her own mother included, that is sufficient. For others, a sense of
place in the world is more important. Pamela’s views may change post-op
but Jasmine doubts it. She remembers one late night conversation where
Pamela had admitted what she feared most about old age was becoming
irrelevant. If Ben wins tonight, Pamela’s future is assured, thanks to Ben’s
promise. If he doesn’t, the family may well get their wish for her early
retirement.
Jasmine shakes herself and enters the small hall where the
verification of the postal votes will take place. All the ballot boxes from the
hundred odd polling stations will be brought here and checked before the
votes are hand-counted in the large hall. She finally locates Ben and moves
to his side. He is talking to an official and she waits patiently until they are
finished, taking time to look around. Pamela has hand-picked the Labour
Party observers from people she trusts and they are already here and
waiting. Lou and Dave are with them, not as observers but as guests. Ben
had maintained it should be a reward for their hardworking efforts on his
behalf, but Jasmine’s stomach soured when she was given the two names.
She doesn’t doubt their efforts, but she wonders if it was the true motivation
for including Lou and whether Dave is just camouflage. Still, she had
vetoed Ben’s mother being a guest – she believes it is crucial Ben is seen as
his own man from the start and this would have been hard if his mother had
been present. The press would have focused on her, not him. And that veto
of one guest had to be balanced by her acceptance of another, Lou.
Ben finishes and turns to her.
“What are the tellers saying?” he asks quietly.
“Close. But they think you might just have it. At the very least, no
one is reporting major swings to the minor parties.”
Ben closes his eyes. They both know the dangers of extrapolating
from those willing to give information on exit to the entire cohort of voters,
but it is a good sign. When Ben opens his eyes again, they are shining and
his grin is infectious. Jasmine smiles too. She cannot help herself. It had
always been this way. Naturally serious and occasionally dour, Ben’s energy
and zest had always lifted her spirits.
 “Turnout?”
“Down. Seriously down.” She grimaces. Again, they both know, all
it takes to lose is for your voters to stay at home and the opposing
candidate’s voters to go to the polling station.
“Jasmine,” he starts, a soft tinge to his voice, a greater warmth than
she has heard in years. But his words are lost as a reporter barges between
them and blocks her out. A by-election gets more press coverage than a
normal election and the story can end up being an entire segment on the
evening news. Or it can be a fifteen-second mention at the end depending
on the vagaries of world events and celebrity love lives.
She stands to one side reluctantly. What had Ben been about to say?
She agonises for a moment and then gives herself a mental kick for her
foolishness. At best he wanted to thank her. At worst, he would try to
persuade her to stay on as his researcher, sacrificing her own career for his.
What else might he say? A declaration of love? An apology for the wasted
years? The last two were just another fantasy from the depths of her mind,
impossible with his girlfriend standing in the corner watching the two of
them.
Except Lou’s back is turned as she talks to Dave. Her body is
shaking, like she is laughing at a joke. He does have a dry wit. Jasmine has
often found herself nodding blankly and only belatedly twigging his
humour. He must think her simple.
Then the Returning Officer enters and the count begins.
As soon as the postal votes are verified, she and Ben, together with
the other candidates and their agents and guests, move to the large hall. The
count assistants are lined along tables, ready to start unfolding the voting
slips as they are unloaded from ballot boxes. They will then sort them into
bundles of votes for the candidates marking the bundles up with their totals,
binding them into a hundred each. Observers are already stationed at points,
eyes open for any irregularities. Chairs are available for the candidates and
their guests, and Jasmine makes a beeline for a seat. It will be a long and
fairly tedious night. The count will probably take six excruciating hours.
Six hours with only the low murmur of the count assistants exchanging
queries, the rustle of voting slips being collated and the rattle of rain on the
roof. Jasmine had a strong coffee before she left their campaign
headquarters but already she feels the late hour and the background hum
making her sleepy.
Lou and Dave come over. Dave takes one of the seats next to
Jasmine and Lou settles on his other side.
“What happens now?” Dave asks.
“We wait.” Jasmine wonders if Dave still thinks coming to the count
is a reward or if he is secretly wishing he had gone to the pub with his
mates. She watches two police officers mooching in the corner. No one
expects trouble here and their slumped shoulders and generally bored
demeanour indicate they would prefer to be elsewhere. Jasmine finds it
ironic that an event with so much potential to alter the course of both her
life and Ben’s can be quite so mundane. Ben shakes off another reporter and
takes the seat beside her, but immediately begins to chat with the person on
his other side.
As the evening progresses, it is clear it is a two-horse race. Two
roughly equal bundles are being collated on desks all over. Even after the
tellers’ reports, the fear Jasmine had of the green vote undermining Ben’s
support is finally laid to rest by the physical evidence of her own eyes.
“It’s between us and the Tories,” she notes to Ben when he finally
sits back.
 “Looks like it,” he says. Their bodies are not touching but she can
feel the tension in him. She is more relaxed. If there is one thing Petey’s
death has taught her, it is that sometimes there is absolutely nothing which
can be done. And if that is the case, you are better off saving your energy
for later. You will probably need it. She ventures to put her hand on his
forearm and feels him jerk as he twists to stare at her hand in shock.
“Relax,” she orders and shakes his arm gently. “It will be a long
night. You will burn out too quickly if you keep this up. Perhaps you should
mentally practise your victory speech.”
“That might be a bit pre-emptive.”
“Perhaps.” She shrugs. “But if you do win, you don’t want your first
speech as Member of Parliament to make you look like a numpty. You want
to look and sound like their trust in you is well-placed.”
“Good point,” he says and reaches into his jacket to unfold a piece
of paper.
Jasmine leaves him to it. Sometime around midnight, she gets up
and wanders around, stopping for a quick word with the Labour observers.
She doesn’t want to distract them, so she keeps it brief and moves off
quickly. She nods to any council officers running the count that she
recognises but soon returns to her seat. Ben has loosened his tie but is
otherwise unchanged. She sits down and tries to keep her eyes open. She is
exhausted from nights spent fretting or planning and the early start to this
never ending day.
She and Ben are together in a lecture theatre. The lecturer is
droning on but she is paying no attention. She is revelling in the feel of
Ben’s lips, warm on her temple, his body hard against hers. She is in love
and she is loved and all is right with the world. Everything is golden.
 It is only when she feels his hand on her head, she realises it is a
dream, not a memory.
“Jasmine!” His whisper is urgent.
She lifts her head. A small dark stain at the top of the sleeve of his
jacket testifies to her drooling, her head resting against his shoulder as she
slept. She is mortified.
“We’ve got to go.”
She looks around. Most of the count assistants are sitting with their
hands folded, their tables empty. A group of people are standing around one
table across the room and an official with a lanyard is standing beside Ben.
“Go where?”
“The Returning Officer wants to see us.”
Jasmine is on her feet in an instant but her automatic assumption
they have won is dashed when she sees Rosalyn Carter, the Conservative
candidate and her agent, standing next to the Returning Officer, the other
candidates also arriving. The official leads her and Ben across to join them.
The Returning Officer clears her throat. Her voice is low and
Jasmine has to lean in to hear.
“All the ballot boxes are in and all the votes have been tallied
including the postal votes. As we stand, Ben Khan has the lead by four
hundred and eighty-three votes.”
Jasmine sucks in her breath. They have done it!
“I want a recount,” Rosalyn’s sharp tones intervene.
If Ben had lost by fewer than five hundred votes, Jasmine would be
asking for a recount too. She is not surprised but she doesn’t think the
occasional error is likely to overturn the margin of votes.
The Returning Officer sighs. She is tired – they are all tired – but it
is important they get this right. “Perhaps we can do a bundle flick first?”
she asks.
Rosalyn looks uncertain but nods her head. Personally, Jasmine
doesn’t believe it will make much difference. If it had been her, she would
still insist on a full recount.
The first bundles are brought. She holds her breath as an official
starts to flick through them. All the voting slips are the same size and the
voting options in the same order. Flicking through the bundles gives a quick
visual check everything in the bundle is consistent.
The first bundle passes. But not the second. Nor the third. Jasmine
sucks in another breath. Two out of three bundles incorrect could unseat
Ben.
“That’s enough. Let’s not waste any more time. You need to
recount,” the Conservative agent tells the Returning Officer. She nods.
Jasmine and Ben return to their seats. Lou and Dave wait with
questions in their eyes. Jasmine answers, “It’s a recount.”
She and Ben sit but neither reclines in their seat nor chats. Both of
them are bolt upright watching the Returning Officer cross the hall. In one
corner, a group of white boards is emblazoned with the Hayburn Council
logo. In front of it is a clear plastic podium and a couple of microphones.
The television cameras and press are set up here. The Returning Office
steps up to the podium and the journalists pocket their phones and pay
attention. She gives a short announcement of the recount and steps away
again.
Jasmine turns her attention back to the count tables. Each bundle of
a hundred will be separated into its constituent bundles of twenty-five
votes. Those will be checked for correctness and consistency before being
reassembled. The count assistants appear alert, as if energised by the
pressure as all eyes in the room are on them.
 The recount is faster than the count. Jasmine watches as most of the
bundles appear to be reassembled without changes and she hopes this is a
good sign. The minutes tick into hours and still she and Ben sit with eyes
fixed on the count tables. One by one, the count assistants clear their desks
and sit back. This time, when an official comes to fetch them, Ben and
Jasmine intercept him halfway.
The Returning Officer is looking grim. She waits until they are
joined by Rosalyn Carter and her agent and then gives them the new result.
Ben Khan leads by four hundred and ninety votes.
Jasmine rejoices. The recount increased his vote. She misses the
Returning Officer’s next words but everyone else is looking at Rosalyn,
who is looking at her agent. The agent gives a defeated shrug.
“I’ll accept the result of the recount,” Rosalyn says.
Hidden from view, Ben grabs Jasmine’s hand and squeezes hard
before he releases it. She doesn’t have time to wonder further as the
Returning Officer is striding towards the podium to call for all the
candidates.
Ben and Rosalyn follow, their agents joining the stream of people
moving to the front of the podium area. Jasmine finds herself joined by Lou
and Dave. She has no time to respond to their queries before the Returning
Officer clears her throat.
“Good morning, all,” she begins briskly, “as returning officer I
hereby give notice the number of votes recorded in the election for Member
of Parliament for the Hayburn constituency is as follows.”
She reads out each candidate’s name and their vote tally in
alphabetical order. Rosalyn comes first and there is a cheer in the crowd as
her vote tally is announced. But everyone is waiting as the Returning
Officer reads through a slew of joke candidates and minor parties. Until
Ben Khan’s name is announced. As his vote count is announced, Jasmine is
deafened by Dave’s euphoric bellow beside her. Lou throws herself into his
arms, wraps her long legs around his waist, and kisses him hard upon the
lips. Jasmine’s jaw drops. She stares in shocked disbelief as Dave responds
most enthusiastically. Her eyes flick to Ben and she sees him watching, but
he is grinning, clearly delighted. Has the stress of the night overset his
mind? His gIrlfriend is kissing another man in front of him! His eyes lock
with hers and for a second, she could swear they smoulder.
Then the Returning Officer steps away from the podium, and Ben
steps up, the new Member of Parliament for Hayburn.
 All’s Well that Ends Well

Jasmine’s phone vibrates with a tsunami of texts.

Flora: Go Jas! Yay! You did it 
Daddy: That’s my girl!
Mother: I told you so.
Eleanor: Always knew you would change the world. Next stop No.
10.
Jake: Hey there, superstar. And to think I knew you when you were
in nappies!
Anna: XOXO
Sean: Dad would’ve been so proud of you.
Agnes: See what you can do with good hair?
Gillian: It’s like watching one of my own. Well done!
Lily: Think I just saw you on TV. We’re all watching. So excited. 
Phoebe: Lil and I think it was the people we drove that made the
difference.
DoC: My office in Westminster, Monday 10am.
A job, a future. She is staring at the last message, exhaling in relief,
when Dave thumps her on the back, hard enough she has to take a step
forward.
 “And because she wasn’t paying attention, I’ll have to say it again.
My especial thanks to the two people who ran my campaign, Jasmine
Mortimer and Pamela Taylor.” Ben winks at her and then turns back to the
microphone to continue with his list of thanks. Councillors, party grandees
and donors, the local party chairman all need their egos assuaging. Ben
remembers them all. And then he says, “Also thank you to Sean Exmore,
who, despite this harrowing time for his family, was there for this campaign
time and time again.”
Jasmine blinks. It is an olive branch to Sean, entirely unexpected.
The two men have cordially disliked each other throughout the campaign,
but Ben is publicly burying the hatchet on their private vendetta. It makes
her a little misty-eyed. She blinks again furiously. It would not do her
professional image any good to be seen weeping, if any camera should be
on her.
Her phone buzzes. Sean. Big of him. He’s evolving. Glad I voted for
him now.
She smiles. Sean has accepted the peace offer. One day, they might
even become friends, here, in Hayburn. She doesn’t send a reply because
Ben is still speaking.
“I promise to serve the people of Hayburn with honesty, with
integrity and with compassion. They have granted me this incredible honour
and I will fight on their behalf to make their lives better in every way I can.
We live in challenging times, a time of economic uncertainty, of climate
uncertainty, of social change. That scares some people. But if we stand fast,
if we act with sense and compassion, we will prevail. I offered to stand with
the people of Hayburn and tonight the people of Hayburn have held they
will stand with me.”
 A roar erupts. Dave has his fists above his head, leading the cheer.
Jasmine notes even some of the joke candidates are applauding Ben’s
speech. Her palms burn with the strength of her applause. She adds her
voice to Dave’s and Lou’s.
Ben’s eyes are shining as he steps back from the microphone and
Jasmine feels a tug on her sleeve. One of the journos is standing beside her.
He leans in.
“Can we get a few minutes with your lad?” he asks.
“You mean the newly elected MP for Hayburn?” Jasmine replies
with enough frost to freeze a mammoth.
“Yeah, Him. Ben Khan,” he replies, offhandedly, a veteran reporter
unfazed by bristling toffs.
Jasmine squints at the badge dangling from his lanyard. The Times?
Maybe she can overlook his derogatory “your lad”. “Of course,” she says.
“Give me a minute.”
As soon as Ben descends from the podium, he is besieged. Jasmine
fights her way to his side. She needs to prioritise his attention. The
television channels, especially the BBC, are highest on her list. Even a ten-
second segment will reach more of Ben’s constituents than months of
campaigning. Next in usefulness will be the local press. As wonderful as
this night’s victory is, there is a General Election looming and Ben will
have to fight his seat once again. He has a few months to make a difference,
to make everyone forget the scandalous circumstances of Richard Exmore’s
death, to persuade the traditional Labour vote to trust him. And the local
press will be far more crucial to that process than all the national reporters.
Ben seems energised by the win. Jasmine is less so. She is tired to
her very bones. Fantasies of sleep keep surfacing in her mind. Even the
hard, plastic chairs are looking inviting. By sheer force of will, she pulls
coherent sentences from her tattered brain.
Strictly speaking, her work is done. She has a meeting with the
Director of Communications about her new job after the weekend. She
could leave Ben to it, call a cab and go back to her rental to sleep. She so
very much wants to do it. But the awful, oppressive sense of what is right
won’t let her leave. But is it duty or is it hope?
Whichever, she will stay to the bitter end, ensuring he talks to the
most useful people, getting the maximum from his few minutes of fame.
Then she will let him give her a lift home and say her final goodbye.
She looks back on how far they have come, the level of trust
between them unimaginable just a few weeks ago. She knows whatever
happens now, whether Ben wants her or not, she will love him for the rest
of her life. It infuriates her, that she should love someone who doesn’t love
her back. How can she be so weak? But weakness must be in her character
because no matter how many times she catalogues his faults, no matter how
many times she reminds herself of his cruel words, still she loves him. And
because she loves him, she wants him to be happy. Even if his happiness
does not involve her.
Standing beside Ben, she handles the media requests, thanks the
volunteers and count staff and fends off unwanted attention. Lou and Dave
pop up to let her know they are leaving and to wish Ben well. She reminds
them to stay in touch ready for the upcoming General Election campaign.
The two of them have been invaluable. When they leave, arm-in-arm, she
watches Ben carefully but he doesn’t appear to notice. He is already
engaged in conversation with another person.
Finally, the crowd thins. Local papers have the promise of in-depth
articles for later editions. The televisions stations have long since packed up
and the national press have each had a short statement. Ben extricates
himself from the last few stragglers. The count staff have removed the
ballots and sports centre staff are collapsing the temporary tables and
stacking chairs.
“Ready?” Ben is glowing.
Jasmine merely nods. She is way past drooping.
He pulls out his keys and they head through the doors into the
brilliant sunshine. Jasmine’s tired eyes hurt and she blinks furiously, tears
forming at the corners. The storm has passed, and it is a bright, new day in
so many ways.
They cross the carpark. Ben blips his car open and Jasmine climbs
into the passenger seat. Neither of them talks. It is a short drive to her place.
Ben pulls into the carpark and cuts the engine. They sit.
“I guess this is goodbye,” Jasmine finally says.
“It doesn’t have to be.” Ben’s words are low.
She shakes her head. “I won’t stay here. I’ve been offered a job,
probably London. You don’t need me anymore. Pamela knows what to do
and you have a fabulous team of volunteers.” Besides, it would hurt too
much to stay.
“I’m not asking you to stay for a job. I’m asking you to give me a
second chance.” Ben looks directly at her. She can see the emotion in his
eyes, the courage it has taken to ask, the spark of hope, the fear of rejection.
Jasmine’s breath catches. Her pride would like her to crush him, but
all her hopes explode, leaving her helpless, speechless.
“I’ve made so many mistakes. I’m truly, deeply sorry,” he continues,
dropping his head but lifting his hands to hold one of hers. The warmth of
his palm as it touches hers, the strength of his fingers, the sheer familiarity
of his touch once again overwhelms her.
 She struggles to speak. But she has to ask. She croaks out, “Lou?”
He takes a deep breath and expels it suddenly. “I was an idiot. I told
myself I was showing you I had moved on, but really, I wanted to make you
jealous of her the way I was jealous of Petey.”
“Petey’s been gone for years.” But even as she says the words, her
voice cracks. The sheer tragedy of it, the unfairness of it, still gets her even
now.
“But I didn’t know it. For all I knew, the two of you just hadn’t
worked out. And that made it worse. That you had sacrificed us for
something that was so meaningless. I was beyond stupid for not trusting
you then. But I know better now.”
He draws another breath, releasing it slowly this time. “When you
challenged me about Lou, you made me realise how cruel I was being.
Exploiting a young girl’s feelings to get back at you. And I knew I was in
trouble. She’s a lovely person but I didn’t love her, couldn’t love her,
especially with you standing there. I started backing off but it wasn’t until
tonight I knew for certain she was over me.” The dark circles under his eyes
appear starker as his lids shut. His head tips up slightly and his lips press
together. When he opens his eyes again, he fixes his gaze once more on
Jasmine.
“So now I’m here, asking, pleading, really. Please give me another
chance?”
“You should know, I never loved Petey the way I loved you.” She
looks away. At the deepest blue of the sky. At the red brick of the apartment
building. At the harsh grey of the tarmac. It is impossible to look at him.
Not while she wrestles her feelings into containment.
“I am exhausted. We both need sleep.” She gathers her things into
her hand – coat, phone, keys. Ben seems to deflate. The glow disappears
and he looks like an old man. This is not what she intended.
Jasmine lifts her hand. She touches a lock of his hair. It’s fallen
forward, hiding one eye. She pushes it back. She holds her hand still,
fingertips on his temple.
“I’m not very good at this,” she says. She leans across and turns his
head gently to face her. She brings her lips almost to his. He doesn’t need
any other encouragement. His breath feathers across her face and then soft,
firm pressure engulfs her. Her body responds like it was yesterday they last
kissed, not years past. His tongue probes, tentative, and she opens to him.
Longing pours through her, an uncontrollable torrent. Every barrier she had
nailed in place, every binding she had used to cap the well of love she
carries inside her, is swept away. She had thought her heart shrivelled but
she finds it all there. Beating hard, beating fast, beating for him. All the
pure rapture intact, merely dammed, not destroyed.
She feels Ben smile against her lips. “Au contraire. I think you are
excellent at this,” he whispers.
She pulls back. “So, are you coming with me?” she asks. She hopes
he understands she is offering more than a bed. She is offering a lifetime.
Tonight, they are too exhausted to do anything but simply fall into bed and
sleep. But they will wake in each other’s arms and step into the future
together.
“Always,” Ben breathes. “Jasmine, there may never be another day
in my life as joyful as this one. And that will be perfectly okay.”

Love the Mortimers? If you want to know more about the

Mortimer family, get the bonus prequel When Perry met Sarah, an
enemies-to-lovers story.
CLICK HERE FOR YOUR FREE BONUS PREQUEL
 If you enjoyed meeting Jasmine and Ben, the next book in the
Sisters of Larkford Hall series is Anna’s story, North Hangar Avenue.
On a flight to Los Angeles, Anna is seated next to the Sexiest Man
Alive. Find out if sparks fly!
PRE-ORDER HERE!
 Dear Reader

I hope you love this book. I was crying on my keyboard writing parts of it
but got to the happy ever after in the end.
I do have a favour to ask. If you did like it, please, please, prettiest
please leave a review on Amazon. If you cannot manage that, then a rating
would be great. Independent authors like me don’t have massive marketing
engines behind us and the reviews of our readers make all the difference.
Don’t forget to get the free bonus prequel When Perry Met Sarah, the
story of how Jasmine’s father and mother went from enemies to lovers.
Available from my website:
Freebies | Hazel Hatman
There are loads more stories to come. Make sure you hear about them first
by signing up to my newsletter on my website.
www.hazelhatman.com
 Acknowledgements

This book was written during a difficult year. Throughout that time, the
Devon Novellists were reviewing, encouraging and honing my work. So
particular thanks to Jane, Jonathan and Mags. Also, many thanks to Dr
Anthony Michalski for his advice and corrections.

Next on the list is the invaluable Claire Strombeck, my editor, who

combines criticism and praise most effectively.
The wonderful cover is courtesy of Mari Thomas Cover Designs.
And finally, I need to express my eternal appreciation for my
magnificent and long-suffering husband who has always been there,
especially for the hardest parts of my road.
ALSO BY HAZEL HATMAN

THE SISTERS OF LARKFORD HALL SERIES

Five strong women fighting for their place in the world and the men who
match them.
The Darcy Dilemma
Hindsight
North Hangar Avenue (Available for Pre-Order)

STANDALONE
Love, Squirrels and Other Diversions (Available for Pre-Order)
An awkwardly smart heroine, loads of laugh-out-loud moments, and some
steamy embraces. You’ll adore this romantic comedy.