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Chapter Text

Ollie Reeder was never meant to be a good Prime Minister. He was meant to be a joke, a brief look-at-the-sort-of-pricks-Labour-has-to-resort-to-these-days interlude before a serious politician got in. To the right, he’s a pinko socialist; to the left, a sell-out, a spineless opportunist. The joke’s on them, though, because at the end of his second year in office his approval ratings are higher than Blair’s. So he must be doing something right. He sits with his feet up on the famous desk, on a call with the President of the United States.

“I know, Jared.” says Ollie. He leans back in the chair, running a hand through his hair - alas, greying, and with a recession problem worse than the economy’s. “I know it looks bad. But the Italians must have elected him for a reason. Maybe next month we’ll discover his redeeming qualities, assuming he has any.”

There’s a pause, and then he grins. “I’m sure the story about him castrating political opponents with his bare hands is just a rumour. Although I did once have a boss like that… Well, I’m a little worried, personally, about the way the progressives are outnumbered this year. I mean, Japan’s Liberals are centrist by anyone else’s standards, France and Germany have conservatives, you’re a Republican and Barbieri’s… whatever he is. Some sort of unholy communist-Christofascist-techbro hybrid. It’ll just be me and Trudeau holding the fort again.” 

Five minutes later, after a few more pleasantries, Jared announces that he’s got to deal with “these fucking pagers” and rings off. Ollie gets on well with the President, certainly better than his predecessor did. Licks his arse, some would maintain. But it’s not really a political thing at all: they just like each other on a human level, as much as two people can when they only meet three times a year and have to be photographed shaking hands for twenty minutes whenever it happens. 

And for the first time since this morning, Ollie is alone. He’s just about to take a sip of his coffee and turn to the pile of memos in his in-tray when his PPS, a portly woman in her early sixties, pokes her head around the door, speaking in a half-condescending motherly tone that’s doubly ridiculous when he knows for a fact that she’s only eight years older than him.

“Good morning, Ollie.” says Terri, stepping into the room. “There’s lots to do today, if you’ve finished chatting with the President…”

“God, you really are unsackable, aren’t you?” says Ollie.

“Well, since you've just raised the retirement age to sixty-five, I'm afraid you're stuck with me. Besides, I’m the only buffer between you and the seventy million people who want your ear. I filter them for you.”

“You filter them by not letting any of their calls get through.” He sighs and leans back in his chair again. “All right, I’ll bite. What messages do I have?”

“Well, there’s a delegation of Swiss diplomats, a man from the CBI, your Transport Secretary wants you to call him… oh, and Ms Messinger is waiting outside. She says she needs to see you urgently.”

Ollie’s face twitches a little. Great, the last thing he wants after back-to-back briefings and an exhausting cabinet meeting is to see his ex-wife. Terri quickly picks up on this.

“I can always say you’re busy.” she suggests. Although she’s come to regard Ollie with a sort of grudging respect - he is much more mature nowadays - she’s never liked Emma, and doesn’t make a secret of it. “I’ll tell her you can’t spare the time, it’s more or less true…”

“She’ll just call me.” Ollie sighs. “Might as well get it over with. Send her in.”

He has a few moments to reflect on some wise words - life really is one damn thing after another, especially if you’re Prime Minister - before the door opens again.

“Morning, Ollie.” says Emma coolly, her heels making a dull sound on the carpet as she approaches. “Have you seen today’s Sun?”

“Good to see you too.” He looks up at her. The years have been kind to Emma, kinder than they probably have to Ollie himself. She’s got a sort of calm authority that she never had when they first dated. Like a headmistress, he thinks bitterly. There’s nothing like a messy divorce to make every line of thought you have about someone terminate in resentment. He realises that he hasn’t answered her question.

“No, I haven’t. I’ve had meetings all morning.”

She tosses the paper onto the desk as if it’s burned her. It’s got quite crumpled in her bag, and Ollie has to smooth it out to discern the headline, which eventually reveals itself in huge letters:

“I MISS YOU, DADDY” - OLLIE’S ABSENT FATHER SHAME.

“I couldn't care less if you're being ripped to shreds in the press,” says Emma, “but I'm not having Julia used as collateral.”

“You’re saying that like I wrote the headline. I didn’t know about it. And it’s not even true - I’m not an absent father. I call her every week, see her every second weekend which is about as much as I can while you still have custody -”

“Never mind that. See that quote?” She points at the headline, which is above a graphic that shows a picture of Ollie and Julia being ripped apart by unseen hands.

“What about it? I mean, I assume they made it up because it's a good headline.”

“It was “Dad”, not “Daddy”. But she very much did say it. When you called her last month.”

Ollie’s face freezes. He scans the article's small print, and finds himself running again and again into phrases he recognises. God, she’s right. He doesn't want to think about the implications.

“You mean someone recorded my call with Julia? She's twelve years old, Emma…”

“And if they could hear that,” Emma says grimly, “they can hear everything. Every time you order Chinese or flirt with that woman from Reuters, someone at the Sun knows.”

“I don’t - look, that's beside the point. This is a national security issue. I need to get my team onto it.”

“And they’ll write a strongly worded letter, will they? Release a statement expressing your disapproval of their actions? This is the Sun we’re talking about. You can't do anything without proof, they'll say you're being paranoid.”

“Well, what the hell am I meant to do, then? Avoid making any calls on my personal mobile in case someone is listening in?” He slumps forward in his chair, massaging his temples. “This is the last bloody thing I need with the G7 coming up…”

“What you need,” says Emma, crossing the room to the window, “is to be able to prove definitively that you've been hacked.”

“You're the one who's a journalist. Don't you have any contacts with the Sun?”

“Liz. She was very cagey when I spoke to her on the phone - there's definitely something up. So the question is, who works at the Sun and has a grudge against you? And doesn't care about journalistic standards?”

Ollie glances up. A sense of apprehensiveness creeps slowly over him.

“Fuck. It's Malcolm, isn't it? It's bloody Malcolm. Ever since they got him as editor they’ve hated me. I'm still the only PM in recent history to win an election without the Sun coming out in support.”

“I don't know how he managed it.” says Emma.

Ollie grins weakly. “Well, funnily enough, a two-year sentence for perjury isn't a disadvantage in some jobs. In Malcolm's case I think it might actually have helped. And he's got connections - probably blackmailed someone on the board. Sort of like the prick who came in from the cold.”

The smile quickly fades. “But seriously, I'm sick of it. Just when I think I'm doing a good job, there comes Malcolm like fucking Banquo's ghost to remind everyone about some joke I made at the party conference six years ago that didn't land. And I could live with that, but it isn't fair on Julia. She hasn't done anything to deserve all this.”

“That's what you get for being a politician.” says Emma. Even after all these years, there's a note of disbelief in her voice - a politician? You? Sometimes he can't believe it either.

Ollie’s rise was swift and meteoric. He’d pissed about as Head of Communications for a few years, then - at about the same time that everyone began to realise that Dan Miller might not actually be the election-winning silver bullet that they’d thought - started looking for a way to transition to the public-facing side of things. Partially it was frustration. He’d certainly seen enough stupid MPs to know that he could do better. But there was something else too, something he’s barely articulated to anyone. Ollie does actually have a conscience, located in a deep and isolated part of himself that he never used to glance at very often. After he’d stepped into those famously bloody shoes, it had begun to nag at him; Malcolm’s last speech, the swansong of a man whose political death wasn’t far away, hovering at the back of his mind. This is a fucking husk, I am a fucking host for this fucking job… Trying to be me will fucking kill you. The position Ollie had spent years striving for was a Pyrrhic victory, a poisoned chalice that would rot him from the inside out. Which was fine when he was thirty-five and unattached - but now he had a kid to think about. So when three years had passed and it became clear that the job was turning him into something he didn’t like, when he found himself shouting at interns and giving himself ulcers, he dropped it like a hot potato and fled north to the town where he grew up, which just happened to be a safe Labour seat looking for a younger and more dynamic MP.

Then there was a series of Shadow Cabinet positions. Trade and Industry, Health, the Home Office. He had, he discovered, a knack of not only surviving when the various leaders decided to pull a Night Of The Long Knives, but actually getting promoted off the back of it. A leadership contest, a snap general election - and now here he is. 

“I've got an idea,” says Emma, “but you won't like it.”

He leans back in his chair. “In my Cabinet meeting earlier, three of them seriously proposed that we scrap the regulations around building on floodplains to “increase competition”. Try me.”

“All right.” says Emma. “Suppose I called you and accused you of having an affair -”

Ollie bristles. “I'm not. And anyway, it wouldn't be an “affair” because we haven't actually been married for nine years -”

“Supposing we had an argument,” Emma insists, “and it was full of lurid but demonstrably false details. If no one was around to hear the call, and it ended up in the Sun, then that'd be fairly conclusive, wouldn't it?”

Only now does it dawn on Ollie what she's getting at.

“A fake argument?” he says.

“Bait.” Emma's eyes are gleaming. “You and I know that Malcolm won't be able to resist something like that. And then we'll know that he's behind all of this.” 

“It's a nice idea.” Ollie muses. “The problem is that it's also utterly insane. Have you lost your mind?”

“Well, if you can think of a better plan, I'd be interested to hear it.” says Emma sniffily.

“We could go to the police?”

“The Met's still useless. And besides, the Sun's never cared about morality. The only way to stop them is to beat them at their own tactics.”

“This isn't DoSAC anymore, Em. I'm only allowed to do anything if I do it through the proper channels, or I get a bucketload of shit on my head.”

There's a somewhat frustrated silence. “I'm not sure when you got so boring.” says Emma eventually.

He smiles grimly. “I don't know, maybe somewhere between the baby and the divorce. Or perhaps it was when I became the leader of the bloody country -”

“Your image would benefit substantially if you could pull something like this off.” She sinks into an armchair facing his desk, looking a little perturbed by how much lower down than him she suddenly is before continuing. “Besides, the electorate already loves you. Seventy per cent approval ratings - you could drop your trousers and take a shit in the middle of Parliament Square and they’d probably still say “He makes some good points”.”

Ollie almost laughs at this.

“It’s still a massive risk.” he says urgently. “Supposing I go through with this, it's just as likely that everyone will conclude that I'm an impulsive idiot who won't follow due process. And the rest of the Tory press will have it in for me even more.”

“Then sue them too.”

“'Sue them too’?” This time, he does laugh. Somewhat incredulously at that. “You work for the Telegraph. How would that look, PM sues ex-wife's paper…”

“All right, maybe not the Telegraph . But the Sun has it coming.” It's the first time for years that he can remember Emma looking properly excited. “You're in charge of the country, aren't you? It's about time you started acting like it.”

And maybe it's that excitement that convinces him. A sort of echo of the dimly remembered happier times. Or perhaps it's simply that, after two years, he wants a break from being statesmanlike and sensible. 

“All right.” he says slowly. “Fine. Let's do it.”

“Excellent.” She opens her bag. “Well, the first thing we need to do is make contact with Malcolm and tell him to scale back his coverage of your personal life, but without letting him know that we know about the hacking.”

“This is Malcolm Tucker we're talking about. He won't listen to us.”

“Of course he won't. But this way, we'll be able to say afterwards that we tried to negotiate with him and he refused. It gives us plausible deniability.”

A smile spreads slowly across Ollie’s face. “Very clever. Anyone would think you'd worked in politics.”

“Shut up, Ollie.”

And so, a week or so later, an unusual meeting takes place.

There are still puddles on the tarmac from last night's rain as Emma crosses the road to the café. They've selected a place in the South Bank roughly equidistant between their newspapers’ respective offices. A sort of neutral space. Malcolm’s had plenty of experience now of being in political no-man’s land, she thinks wryly. 

She pauses at the door, taking a moment to gather her thoughts, before heading in. Inside is a bustle of conversation and the whistle and harsh grinding noise of the large industrial coffee machines. She scans the tables, and soon spots her man sitting in a booth by the window, an espresso glass resting by his right hand. He's smaller than she remembers, his eyes more hollow, the suit clinging limply to his bony frame.

“Hello, Malcolm.” says Emma, dodging a waitress and sitting. “You haven't changed.”

The grey-haired man grins. “Sixty-six is the new forty. Why do you think Murdoch’s still rattling around on his Zimmer frame? At least it's better than the fucking national tragedy of our Prime Minister’s hair loss.”

“I assume - small latte, please - that that means that your opinion on Ollie hasn't changed either.”

He smiles thinly. Emma wonders if he'll ever appreciate the extent to which he was virtually a third person in the early days of her and Ollie’s relationship - part of the reason that it lasted so long. And explicitly the reason that they went on an awkward weekend break in Venice that nonetheless glued the faltering romance back together for another two years. Ollie used to both admire and fear Malcolm back then - the sort of unacknowledged tension that would make him bolt awake in the middle of the night thinking he'd heard the phone ring. He'd laugh it off, of course. Malcolm sips his coffee. 

“I still think he's a fucking spineless prick.” he says. “The difference is that ten years ago we could just ignore him. Now he's actually in office, the amount of people he can screw over has drastically increased. It's the difference between having a Christmas dinner with five people and with forty. Needless to say, in both scenarios he's fucked the turkey.”

“Your language hasn't changed either.” replies Emma dryly. “No wonder the Sun loves you.”

This seems to amuse Malcolm. “I know you didn't come here to insult me. Just get to the fucking point, why don't you. I'm a busy man.”

“All right.” She pauses, gathering her thoughts. The waitress arrives with her latte, and she smiles in acknowledgement.

“Well, I’m here on Ollie’s behalf. He’s been very disturbed by the nasty personal slant of some of the stories about him that have been appearing in the Sun recently. So I’m here to tell you to knock it off, essentially.”

Malcolm ponders this. “I see.” he says, steepling his fingers together. “And why, exactly, would I want to do that?”

“Do you really not see the problem,” asks Emma, “in implying that the Prime Minister - who probably works harder than anyone else in the country - is a bad father, on incredibly scanty evidence?”

“Statements of opinion are protected by law - as you should well know, working at the fucking Torygraph. Especially if they’re in the public interest. And I can’t be the only person in the country who suspects that he’s a bad fucking father. Ollie’s like -” He waves a skeletal hand. “ - an accountant who tells you to sink all your money into crypto. You can hardly see him changing fucking nappies, can you?”

Emma has to admit that, from her recollections of the first few years of Julia’s life, this is somewhat true. But she can’t mention the bigger problem, that she and Ollie are sure that the Sun has bugged his phone. Knowing Malcolm, he’d only laugh, heap disdain on the idea and go straight back to the office to write a scathing editorial. She adopts a different tack.

“You're only hurting yourself here, Malcolm. Ollie’s got a lot on his plate - he's got no wish to interfere with the press if they're not bothering him. I’d normally be the last person to say this,” - and the words only faintly taste like ash in her mouth - “but he really is doing his best.”

“So was Mussolini.” says Malcolm shortly. “And I'd like to see anyone try and claim that the trains run on time under fucking Paul McCuntney at Number Ten.”

Emma’s getting tired of this. It's not the language or the sentiment that bothers her. She's thought worse things about Ollie during their relationship's many rocky patches. What she objects to is the entitlement. She might hate her ex-husband, but at least she doesn't blazon it across every newsstand in the country. She's changed, too, over the years, but her dislike of pathetic man child behaviour hasn't got any weaker. This old New Labour relic is no exception.

“I’m warning you, Malcolm.” she says firmly. “If you don’t stop, there will be consequences.”

“And just why should I listen to you? How’s the Telegraph these days - still printing middle-class Home Counties wank about how Labour’s going to tax your third home that nobody ever fucking reads? You wish you had ten per cent of our fucking readership.”

“We've got a quarter of your fucking readership, actually.” Emma fires back. “And, what's more, we don't have to fabricate stories.”

“So why doesn’t he sue me? Because he’s a coward. He knows he hasn’t got a case, and he knows full well that he only got where he is by stabbing dozens of different people in the back. I’m just giving him a taste of his own fucking medicine.”

Things reach something of an impasse. Emma takes a sip of her coffee, wincing as it burns her tongue.

“Can I ask why you're doing this?” she says. “And don't just say “for the money”. Clearly there's more to it than that.”

“Because I don't owe this fucking country anything. I already knew I was somewhat lacking in the soul department, but let me tell you, there's nothing that makes you lose more trust in the fucking bloated, putrescent corpse that this country has become than a criminal conviction. I was in prison for two years - you can imagine what that did to my fucking mental state.” He leans forward and speaks quietly. “And then I was tagged like a fucking dog while some wanker in a high-vis came round every two weeks to check that I hadn't killed myself yet. And every time I turned on the telly I had to watch that Osmonds reject talking about how he's fucking fixed everything. He thinks he’s Tony Blair, and he is - but he’s Blair when he went off the rails and started trying to annex the entire fucking Middle East. So excuse me if I'm a little bitter.”

“You committed perjury.” says Emma sharply. Malcolm scoffs.

“Let she who is without fucking sin cast the first stone. Didn't you used to steal Ollie’s policy ideas?”

“That's not even remotely the same thing -”

“The first rule of politics.” interrupts Malcolm. “Cans of worms are better left unopened. Both parties were leaking like fucking colanders in the run up to the Goolding enquiry, but everyone pretended not to notice because no one wanted the hot potato of shit to land in their lap. And then we all sat there pretending we were fucking sorry that that nurse offed himself, when all we really wanted was to cover our arses.” 

He leans forward in his chair, his voice quiet but vicious. He reminds Emma of nothing so much as a guard dog, growling and straining at its chain. It's still clear what made him, once upon a time, the most feared man in politics.

“I was a fucking scapegoat.” he snarls. “I spent twenty years working for the party, and then they threw me under the bus. Including Ollie. Did he really think I was so fucking dim-witted that I wouldn't work out who told the press where I was going to hand myself in? So no, I'm not going to refrain from criticising a man who looks like if you put googly eyes on Andrew Neil's cumsock. And if he can't take a bit of criticism, he's fucking weak. I feel sorry for the country if our PM is really that thin-fucking-skinned.”

“In which case, we’re finished here, Malcolm.” says Emma. She stands up and grabs her bag. “And I hope you get the reward you deserve.”

It won’t be long now, she thinks with some satisfaction as she calls for a taxi.

Chapter Text

They've chosen lunchtime for the argument. About 12:45 PM. Number Ten is fairly empty, most of the staffers off at lunch. Ollie has instructed Terri to keep everyone away from his office, saying that he's likely to receive a sensitive call and doesn't want anyone around to hear it. And so he sits behind his desk, waiting for the phone to ring.

When it does happen, the buzzing breaking the silence as the screen lights up, he jumps. He waits about ten seconds, enough time for some hack at the Sun to glance up from their sandwich and realise that the PM's getting a call. Then he picks it up and puts it to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Ollie.” says Emma. Her voice is even colder than it was when she visited a few days before, frosty in a way that, if he didn’t know that it was completely fake, would immediately set alarm bells ringing. He can dimly hear the sound of traffic outside the phone box she’s calling from. “We need to talk.”

Ollie pictures going on holiday with her and Julia ten years ago, a nightmare weekend in the Lake District with a screaming toddler where it never stopped raining and he and Emma never stopped bickering. It works, and his voice slips into the desired tone of harassed irritation.

“Then let's talk. I’m not too bad, thank you so much for asking. I’m fifty-three, I’m going bald and everything that goes wrong in the country is my fault for some reason, but apart from that, everything’s fucking brilliant. What do you want?”

“It's Julia.” There's a pause, and he hears her blowing air out through her nose. “Why weren't you at her parents’ evening?”

Absurd. Any possible benefit of Ollie attending those cheese-and-cheap-wine jobs would be outweighed by the hassle of bringing an entire security detail, and all the press that would inevitably tag along. And besides, in the real world it isn't remotely necessary. He can read Julia's reports, he can congratulate her on her good results in a maths test or whatever. But they're currently acting out being in a different world, one where Emma is unutterably pissed at him, and so Ollie has to go with it.

“Really, Em? This again?”

“You said you’d come,” insists Emma, “and you didn’t. Not the first time that’s happened.”

“Look, I'm sorry. Something came up, you know how it is -”

“Sometimes,” says Emma, and he can hear an odd high clicking noise behind her words, wonders if someone in an office across the city has just pressed “record”, “I wonder if you actually want a daughter.”

“Well, it's a bit late now, isn't it? I'm the most important man in the country, I can't go to every school nativity and be hovering in the bloody playground every time she scrapes her leg…”

“It's not about that, Ollie. What sort of a father are you if you can't ever be around for Julia?”

“I try my best, all right? What more do you want from me?” All this is feeling a little close to home, so Ollie decides to go on the offensive. “And you think you're such a great mother, do you? Because as far as I'm concerned, Emma, you're as good a mother as you were a wife.”

There's a silence, bar the clicking noises. “What's that supposed to mean?” says Emma eventually.

“You're a journalist.” says Ollie, somewhat nastily. “Can't you guess?”

“Oh, I can, but I'd like you to tell me explicitly. You think I was a terrible wife and mother, don’t you? But I took care of Julia more than you did before you even became an MP. And I was trying to save our marriage while you were finding Labour councillors to jerk off instead.”

“Well, at least I didn’t spread my legs for anyone who could give me a story.” It’s a weak comeback and he knows it, pressing on before Emma has the chance to make any remarks about Angela Heaney. “You and that sweaty prick from the Sunday Times, don’t think I didn’t know -”

“You’re so fucking immature, Ollie. I can’t believe I actually married you. Hormones have led me to places I wouldn’t go with a gun, but still…”

“And you’re entirely perfect and none of that was your fault. You know what our marriage was, Emma? It was like when you're hungry but you can't be bothered to go to the shops, and there's nothing in the fridge except salad. You keep opening the fridge door because you think maybe, somehow, there'll miraculously be food inside. But it's just limp fucking salad. And I put up with that for years.”

“Oh, poor Ollie. That must have been such a burden. How do you think I felt? You spent three quarters of our marriage shouting at junior ministers all day and coming back too tired to talk to me or Julia. And then you started trying to become an MP, and that was even worse, because you were taking the train halfway across the fucking country every weekend. Did you ever actually give a shit about us, or was it so you'd feel better about yourself?”

It's like a horrible time-warp. He doesn't feel like he's acting anymore. When he responds his voice is quiet and furious. “You knew I was like that when you married me. And don't you dare suggest that I don't care about Julia. She's the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I -”

“You twat.”

Ollie blinks. The phrase catches him completely off guard. It was a shared joke, back when they still joked with each other, a result of the time he pointed out that Emma was much less quick to swear than he was. At work, sure - that was simply what politics did to people - but at home she'd give him a look for the merest "shit". It became almost a term of endearment - saying “You twat.” in the most belligerent, mock-furious tone possible. Now, it has the effect of jolting him out of his anger, reminding him that none of this is real. Now he just feels deflated and a little sad. But also… cleansed?

“You're the twat.” he says quietly. 

There's a pause, long enough that he wonders if Emma’s hung up. 

“And another thing.” she says. “I can't believe you think that no one will notice that you're sleeping with your secretary. That blonde tart Sandy…”

Ollie almost bursts out laughing. He doesn't have a secretary called Sandy, blonde or otherwise. But this new avenue is a genius one - there's no way Malcolm will be able to resist it. He forces his voice into an expression of outrage.

“How dare you - I can't believe that you'd accuse me of -”

“Don't you find it a bit sad that you've spent all the time since our divorce screwing progressively blonder and less intelligent versions of me? Poor Ollie, you've never got over me, have you? But I really still thought you’d be able to find someone better than some blow-dried airhead with microscopic skirts -”

Ollie sighs, pretending to be aggrieved. “I don’t know how to convince you that I’m not sleeping with Sandy. How short her skirts are has nothing to do with anything, and frankly I think it’s un-feminist of you to imply otherwise.”

The next five minutes pass fairly congenially as he and Emma argue over the ins and outs of his relationship with the non-existent secretary. It reminds Ollie of when he was at university and doing improv comedy. That fact has never been dredged up in connection with his political career - it sat uneasily with his simultaneous membership of the Oxford Union - and it's not something he wants more people to know about. But Ollie thinks that knowing that one fact probably explains several other things about him. After all, what is politics, really, if not an extended game of “Yes, And”?

“Fuck you, Ollie.” says Emma. It’s only because he’s specifically looking for it that he can hear the amusement in her tone. “You self-absorbed wanker. Fuck you.”

She rings off.

The Prime Minister leans back in his chair, a little smile on his face that anyone working at the now defunct Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship in the latter half of the 2000s would have recognised. It takes a moment for the odd clicking noises his phone is still making to die away, and then he puts an earbud into his ear and starts playing a Blondie song. It seemed appropriate.

The trap has been laid. Now all that’s left is to wait for Malcolm to take the bait. It doesn’t take long.

“You might want to see today’s Sun, Ollie.” says Terri three days later, putting the paper down on Ollie’s desk with barely disguised disapproval.

And sure enough, there it is. REEDER EAGER FOR BEAVER, the headline screeches. PM’S EX-WIFE ACCUSES HIM OF AFFAIR WITH SECRETARY IN ANGRY PHONE CALL.

“Shall I -”

“No, don’t.” says Ollie. There’s a little smile on his face. “We won’t do damage control. Given the… ahem, serious nature of these allegations, I think I’d better hold a press conference to address them. Tomorrow morning. Invite every journalist you can get. And I’ll write my own speech - there’s some very specific things I want to say.”

He turns in his chair. “Oh, and Terri?”

“Yes?”

“Have my mobile looked at. I think someone’s been tampering with it.”

“Will do, Prime Minister.”

The press conference that follows will later be remembered as one of the most extraordinary of Ollie’s career. 

“Morning, everyone.” says Ollie, standing behind a podium in front of five rows of journalists with notebooks and tape recorders, the air luminescent with camera flashes. “Glad you could all make it here at such short notice.” 

He looks out over the crowded room. Some of the hacks there are more familiar to him than others. A few he remembers pressing the flesh with as director of communications ten years ago. On the other hand, there's several new faces - and a few that, to him, look barely out of university. When the hell did he get so old?

And there's the Sun's man at the front, a man with the last name Tull whom everyone consequently calls Jethro, with phenomenally greasy hair and a checked suit a little too small for him. They had to send someone, of course, as the rumours have been circulating since yesterday afternoon that Ollie will be addressing the phone call story. Just wait until they see what he has up his sleeve.

“I'd like to say something about privacy.” he says. “As Prime Minister, I don't expect much of it. That's the deal I signed when I took the job. And there have been benefits. It’s quite nice to open the paper on a slow news day and see several column inches about your old student band. We’ve got to five thousand streams now, which is at least four thousand nine hundred more than we deserve, so thank you all for that. And it’s undeniably important that politicians have their actions scrutinised. We probably get more self-serving grifters in this job than almost anywhere else - but then, you're journalists, you'd know about that.” There's an awkward ripple of laughter.

“But I'll tell you when it isn't all right.” says Ollie after the amusement dies away. Watching their footage back afterwards, this is the moment where the press pack will be able to discern a flicker in his face, a slight hardness creeping into his tone. “When people harass my family - my teenage daughter - in the hope of a story. And when personal conversations that were never meant to be public are splashed to an audience of millions.”

Someone coughs. Ollie likes to think that some of the journos might be feeling a few pangs of remorse at this point, but he knows that it's unlikely. He's dated two and worked with countless more. He knows better.

“Four days ago my ex-wife Emma called me on my personal mobile. You all know what we talked about, as the Sun helpfully ran it on the front page. She accused me of being a bad father, and of having a relationship with my secretary Sandy.” There’s a pause, and some of the journalists closer to the podium wonder why the Prime Minister appears to be fighting back a laugh.

“Fine. Except none of it was actually true. I don't know if I'm a bad father or not - you'd have to ask Julia about that - but Emma and I have never come to blows over it. And I don’t have a secretary called Sandy. I've never had one. Emma and I made her up entirely, and you can ask my Chief of Staff if you don’t believe me.”

Silence. Well, not quite, there's a susurration of shocked whispering as the journalists turn to each other. He quells that with a look.

“So you might well ask,” Ollie continues, “why Emma and I would fake an argument. And the answer is that we'd become convinced that someone had bugged my phone. And, well -” He pauses and makes a gesture, his eyes lingering on poor Jethro who, he notes with some satisfaction, is almost sinking into his chair with embarrassment. 

“Now we know that I was right. There was someone from the papers listening into my private conversations. And for the record: I meant what I said two years ago about running a clean administration. Spin is one thing, but I have never lied to the electorate, and I really don't appreciate being treated as if I'm hiding something. You'll all be familiar with the expression “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear”. Joseph Goebbels never actually said that, but the fact that it's so often attributed to him should tell you something. And I'd advise all of you here today - at least those of you who are completely morally bankrupt, which is roughly seventy-five per cent - to try and learn why that argument is a complete fallacy. And no more phone hacking - or you will all feel the force of the reformed and well funded police. Thank you.”

There’s a moment of shocked silence, and then all the reporters start yelling questions at once.

“Are you going to sue the Sun, Prime Minister?”

“So there’s no truth to the allegations of conflict with your ex-wife?”

“Do you know who’s behind this?”

Ollie stops at the threshold. “I’ll just say this.”

He looks into the television camera that someone has very usefully shoved into his face. 

He’s calm. He’s in control. And the hours might be long, the work thankless, the criticism relentless - but the consolation is that you can say something and have everyone in the country listen. Ollie doesn’t think he’s ever felt more powerful.

“Malcolm Tucker, if you’re watching…” He pauses. “I know it was you. And you’re about to be sued to within an inch of your life.”

He grins. 

“No further questions.”

The Prime Minister’s desk is a hulking dark wood thing. Many famous elbows have rested themselves on that green leather top - including Thatcher's, which Ollie tries not to think too hard about. Today, however, the files that would normally cover it have been discreetly placed on the side. Emma perches on the edge of the desk as the Prime Minister pours a drink for them both.

“So there we go.” he says, handing her a glass. “Reeder vs. The Sun. They don’t really have a case, of course.”

“I'll quote you on that, shall I?” says Emma with a little smile.

“Please don't. But the fact that I had a conversation that no one in Number Ten was around to overhear and it made it onto the front page of the Sun three days later was fairly damning. As was the fact that my phone turned out to be riddled with spyware.” 

“You didn't find it odd how fast the battery was going down?”

“I just assumed I needed a new one.” He pauses. “Perhaps I should be flattered. You know, “Love me or hate me, I'm on your mind”...”

“Well, I hope they get the shit sued out of them.” says Emma decisively. "John's got form in this area - he's the one who prosecuted that oil company a few years ago - so we should be looking at a substantial payout. Perhaps you could put some of it towards changing this wallpaper.”

“I'll have you know that the terracotta walls are an important part of this building's historical fabric. They're authentic 1990s.”

“They remind me of the corridors at boarding school.” says Emma. “Except somehow even dingier. You've just increased inheritance tax by three per cent, can't you afford interior designers?”

“Oh, you're still bitter about that, are you?” he teases. “Well, I'm sorry, but Daddy can afford to pass some of his millions on to the British state when the years of cigars and sexually energetic young girlfriends finally catch up with him. You and Affers will be too busy fighting over the house to care.”

“Point of principle, is it? Redistribution of wealth?”

“Not really. We just need the money, and it's easier than raising productivity. But the press coverage has been fairly positive, which is a nice change. I remember some of the ministers I worked for back in the day were walking scandals. I’d come into work every morning thinking, “What shit will I have to clear up today?”, and it’d always be a different thing.”

“Hugh Abbot and Nicola Murray. God. Whatever happened to her, anyway?”

“She works in Geneva these days. Hasn't been back to Britain since I was elected.” He grins ruefully. “She told me that it's like being a retired teacher and the most annoying kid in the class who was always making fart noises becomes Prime Minister. Really she’s just bitter that I’m a better politician than she was - not that it’s particularly hard. I send her a Downing Street Christmas card every year just to rub it in.”

“Yes, whatever your faults,” agrees Emma, “at least you aren’t Nicola Murray. Or Malcolm Tucker. I used to think he was training you to be his shitty stand-in.”

Ollie smiles ruefully. So did he, for a while. Unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty… But Malcolm had been right - Ollie could never have been Malcolm Tucker. He’d tried, and his body and mind had rejected it like a diseased organ. And he’s glad, because the idea that he’d even attempted it is, in retrospect, fucking terrifying. 

“If we were meeting for the first time now…” he says slowly. “Do you think things would be different?” 

Emma shrugs quietly, swirling the drink in her glass. “Probably. We're not the same people we were twenty years ago.”

“No. I think “Hello, nice to meet you, I'm the Prime Minister.” has more calibre than “I do the exact same job as you in the party you hate”, personally.” He mutters under his breath. “That's the main problem. I can't believe I ever married a Tory.”

She laughs in delight, and he grins too. He'd forgotten how much he likes making her laugh. Why didn't he do it more when they were together, he thinks. 

“All right, different question.” He takes a sip of his drink. “Why do you think I married you?”

“We've gone over this, haven't we? I must have told hundreds of different people at dinner parties. We bumped into each other during the inquiry, you swore you'd changed, and you were forty-one and I was thirty-five and neither of us were getting any younger…”

“That's not what I meant.” His head is swirling a bit. “I hated you sometimes. Told myself I was only staying with you for political reasons. But that didn't stop me - you know. Missing you when you weren't around. Wanting to hear your voice. Things were so boring when you weren't there. I suppose what I'm trying to say is -” 

He breaks off, feeling Emma’s hand on his arm. 

“I know.” she says quietly. 

Ollie ploughs on. “I think you might be the only person who's ever properly understood me, Em. You can read me like a book, you always have done.”

“That's because you're a terrible liar, Ollie. That you managed to become PM in spite of it is really quite impressive.” 

“That sounded almost like a compliment.” he says with a little smile.

“It wasn’t.”

They both smirk into their drinks. 

There's a long silence, then a longer one. Ollie runs his hand through his hair. Barely curly at all anymore, except a few bits at the front. Through the years of gelling it down, he missed the point where that happened. He woke up one morning and it had simply… straightened out. But that was what he wanted, wasn't it?

“Look, Em.” he says. “This isn't going to be some fucking scene in a film where we both forgive each other and then snog against the desk. Life doesn't work like that. I'm sorry for how things turned out, I really am, but I try not to make the same mistake more than once. I can't afford to have weaknesses. I can barely afford even to have emotions…”

But his fingers curl silently around hers regardless.

In the ante-room nearby, the nerve centre of Number Ten, Terri can't help noticing that Ollie's meeting with Emma is running a little over time. And when she peeps into the office and sees the Prime Minister and his ex-wife holding hands - and then doing considerably more than that - she purses her lips in irritation. But even she knows enough to close the door quietly again and leave them to it. Discretion is essential in politics, after all.