properly.’
‘Be nice and let me down gently.’ I whisked into the kitchen where I peeled garlic and crushed it into butter and spread it over a couple of steaks.
‘Fanny, you might like to know you have a broad bean inside you,’ Will called.
The look of the steaks encouraged my stomach to perform a tribal dance. ‘For a broad bean it’s very uppity.’
Will stood in the doorway and waved the book at me. ‘Wait until it’s the size of an ammonite.’
‘I can’t wait.’
‘Nor can I.’ Will chucked aside the manual, switched off the grill and dragged me to the bed. There, with the heightened sensual pleasure of a changing body, I felt my nerve endings double, triple.
Afterwards we lay and talked over the future in lazy, luxurious detail. We would have to find a house quickly, the birth would be in London – or should it be in the constituency? – possible names.
I had saved one piece of information until now. ‘Will, I won’t be going to Australia after all. The doctor says that if I pick up a bug on the aircraft, or something, I can’t have anything to help. It’s best not to risk it. Dad says he can cope on his own.’
I was lying on his arm. Slowly, his hand curved round my shoulder and rested there. ‘OK.’ His voice was purged of any triumph. ‘OK.’
The Christmas party at the House of Commons was held in the terrace room overlooking the river. It was full, noisy and hot. We threaded through the crowd, and although I was quite at home in my world this was different. My stomach rippled with pregnancy, nerves and… shyness.
Amy Greene came to my rescue. ‘There you are. Come along.’ She put a hand at the small of my back and pushed me towards the huge window that overlooked the river. ‘This is Elaine Miller. Husband belongs to the Other Party, but we like her.’ A tall, thin redhead extended her hand. ‘And this,’ said Amy, ‘is Betsey Thwaite. Her husband is One of Us and on the fast track. Like yours.’
Betsey Thwaite was a small blonde whose smile did not extend to her eyes. ‘David has just been made a junior whip.’
‘So,’ said Elaine, ‘by being nosy and an official bully you get to be a junior minister.’ Betsey looked poisonous. ‘What a darling blouse,’ Elaine went on. ‘Where did you get it?’
To my surprise, they knew I was pregnant. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Elaine. ‘The jungle tom-toms beat night and day in this world. They even know the wives’ bra sizes. Where are you going to have it?’
I grabbed an orange juice from the waiter. ‘At the local hospital.’
Elaine looked thoughtful. ‘Just as long as you don’t have it when there’s a vote going on.’
‘
Amy gave a short, bitter laugh.
Elaine turned to me. ‘Betsey’s such a trouper, but you mustn’t be bullied, Fanny, like so many of us.’
‘Come on, Elaine,’ said Betsey. ‘You’re a trouper too. Don’t deny it.’
Elaine softened. ‘When I married Neil, I disagreed with everything he believed in. But what the hell? I loved him and I fell in behind. So I suppose Betsey’s right. I am a trouper.’
Elaine had three children – ‘I might as well be a single parent,’ she confessed – and was planning to start up a knitwear business. ‘But the goalposts keep moving. Still, with a bit of luck, Neil’s party will stay out of power for years.’ She gave me an honest smile. ‘Welcome to the club, Fanny.’
When I was ready to go home, I went on the hunt for Will and ran him to earth talking to a group of men of about his age, surrounded by a larger ring of admiring women. I touched his arm. For a second or two, it was clear that he had not registered who I was. Then it clicked. ‘Darling.’ He was elated and his eyes were sparkling. ‘You must be exhausted. Look, why don’t I get you a taxi? I’ve got to sort out a few things with Neil over a spot of dinner.’
There were many such evenings.
If Will got back late, he crept in beside me. He offered to sleep on the sofa, but I wouldn’t have it. ‘You belong with me,’ I said, and I didn’t mind if he woke me up with his blundering about in the dark.
Word was spreading about Will that, of his intake, he was a man to watch. ‘The Honourable Member for Stanwinton,’ wrote one political commentator ‘has a whiff of the razzle-dazzle about him.’
After she had read the piece, Elaine rang me: ‘I can hear the knives sharpening. Be warned. Grow a tough skin.’
I cut the article out of the paper and stuck it on to the mirror by the front door. When Will came home, I was in the kitchen, battling with a wave of nausea.
There was a silence. No ‘Hallo, darling.’ Curious, I poked my head round the kitchen door and caught Will staring into the mirror. Unaware of me, he patted his chin and fussed with his hair. He dug his hands into his pockets, squared his shoulders and took a step back.
‘What on earth…?’ I asked.
He swung round. ‘Just looking,’ he admitted, sheepish yet defiant.
‘Practising,’ I said.
He went bright red. ‘Catching up with myself.’
I slid my arm round his waist. ‘Own up. You were practising for the despatch box.’
Pearl Veriker had sent over the particulars of a house a couple of miles outside the town. ‘This one would do,’ she wrote, in her determined-looking hand, the ‘do’ heavily underlined. That weekend, while Will did his surgery, my father and I went to see it. We drove down a narrow lane, flanked by two big fields under plough, and turned into the driveway of a harsh red-brick house built in late Victorian Gothic style, with a couple of outhouses tacked on to the kitchen.
It was already empty. As I stepped through the front door, I sensed I was entering a place that had been denied fresh air for a long time.
‘Look at it this way,’ said my father, ‘it’s a roof over your head.’
Upstairs, the rooms were better-proportioned and the winter sun was reflected in the large windows. The main bedroom overlooked the ploughed fields in the front. The dun and grey of the soil filled my eyes. Notices had been placed around the perimeters, ‘No walkers’, and at the north end of the field a rookery clotted the branches of the beeches.
My father tugged open a window and prodded at the sill. Sharp and winter-scented, a stream of air invaded the stuffy chill. ‘Fanny…’ he said.
I sensed what was coming. I inspected my hands. They had swollen slightly. So had my waistband and my trousers felt tight around my thighs. Even my shoulders felt bigger. Pregnancy did not agree with me: my body refused to obey orders, which was both puzzling and enraging. The broad-bean-cum-ammonite was neither well behaved nor polite in its colonization of my body.
‘I know what you’re going to say. You need someone for the business who’ll be more on board. I haven’t been doing so well lately.’
‘You can come back,’ he said quickly, ‘after the baby’s born.’
I stared at the depressing fields. ‘Funny how things change, Dad.’ For the sake of a broad bean that was turning into an ammonite.
My father was observing me closely. ‘It makes sense. Having a baby isn’t like going to the dentist – half an hour’s unpleasantness and it’s all over.’
‘I will come back,’ I said. ‘I promise. It’ll be fine. I’ll cope.’ My father looked sceptical. ‘Dad, there’s no question of me giving up work permanently. Will wouldn’t expect it either.’
‘Yes,’ he said, and I read into his inflection a new precariousness, a new treachery even, in my position.
Later, that afternoon, I took Will to see the house. The twilight was kinder on it, dimming its strident colour, and the rooms downstairs were less gloomy in the electric light.
Will was delighted with the house. He pointed out the proportions of the bedrooms and the view over the fields. Downstairs required a lot of work but he was excited by the challenge. ‘I can build shelves,’ he said. ‘And lay floors. I like DIY.’
His energy and enthusiasm were infectious and it was a relief to know we could afford the house and make plans. I stood in the place where he reckoned we should put the kitchen, and looked out at the rookery in the clump
