“What?” she snapped her head back in shock. “Did you say someth…?”
Davey quivered a brave little smile. His tongue touched his top teeth and his breath blew a second time… slow and deliberate. The husky breathy sound was “love”, she was sure of it.
She watched as his mouth formed an “O” and he exhaled again.
“Oo”? No, she decided, it was “you”. It had to be.
“Love you.”
Her bottom lip bled as she threw her arms around him.
“ED! Ed! Davey spoke to me…”
“Wha…? Tell me.”
“He’ll tell you himself,” she said, crying with joy, and handed the phone to Davey.
Davey took it and held it, gazing into the handset. Finally, he put it to his head but made no motion to speak.
“Go on,” Isabel encouraged him, wiping a tear from her eye.
“Davey,” said Ed. “Isabel said you spoke… That’s wonderf…”
Davey pulled the phone away from his face and stared into it again. He lifted his eyes to meet Isabel’s and after a second, he passed it back to her and shook his head. He slid off her knee and, as she watched, he walked slowly to his room.
49
THE NEW FIRST Lady, Marilyn Foster, wriggled into the white silk pillows and surveyed the bedroom with a serenity she’d not felt for months. The Inauguration over, it was their first official night in the White House. She watched over her husband and toyed with his boyish front curl but stopped when she saw he was rousing. His blue eyes opened and fluttered a look around the hand-painted birds that dotted the walls.
“They match your eyes,” she spoke softly. “Michelle was a clairvoyant.” Michelle Obama had overseen the last major decoration of this room.
Bobby Foster stretched an arm over and caressed his wife’s cheek. “Can you believe this, Marilyn? You and me… us… here?”
“We almost weren’t,” she whispered. “Hey, Mr President,” she said with a lilt, “d’you think they video this room?”
“I checked. No way.”
“Perfect.” She slid down and billowed the sheet over the two of them.
50
ELIA CACOZ RUGGED up for her trip to La Paz but hadn’t bargained for this. She’d skied when she was younger, so whistling mountain winds weren’t new, but cheek-burn took on a new meaning at over 13,000 feet above sea level.
It was Elia’s first visit to Bolivia and apart from the cold she’d prepared for it well. Her experience with Close-up had taught her to keep a lid on leaks and her new boss at FOX, Mr Devine, had approved of her precautions.
He was Mr Devine to everyone, though maybe not to Mr Murdoch himself. She was still pinching herself, though not from the cold. When she’d initially proposed her project—deep, deep research on Isabel’s past—Mr Devine wasn’t keen since Isabel was out of the race, old news. But Elia was positive she had a new angle and worked it up in her spare time. Six weeks later, on the day of the Inauguration, and with four other stories under her belt, good stories, she braved a knock on Mr Devine’s door.
His head was bowed over some copy, his shiny liver spots flashing like idea bulbs as Elia swayed from side to side hoping her movement would attract his eye. The customary cigarette—in breach of office rules—drooped from the corner of his mouth. Still he didn’t acknowledge her. She gripped the back of the lonely visitor’s chair and held her breath as the smoke curled up and fingered through his salt-and-pepper comb-over.
Finally, she blurted it out.
Devine swung his head up at her, the sudden action seeming to drain the purple out of the alcohol veins on his nose. Heaving himself out of his seat, he waddled past her to shove the door closed. On his journey back to his chair, he plucked at the cigarette and stubbed it out in his famous water glass; it looked like water but there were rumours.
“Who else knows about this?” he wheezed, sprawling his vast bulk over the mottled green sweat towel draped over his chair.
“Just my researcher in La Paz,” she said.
“Perfect. Better than perfect, missy,” he said and, with the leaden point of a freshly sharpened pencil, scraped out a flake of tobacco, or maybe it was peanuts, from between his stained teeth.
Elia didn’t like being called missy, or lovey, or sweetie, or any of the other endearments her old-school boss bestowed on every young woman who toiled for him, but she was new and they were only words, and since no one else who worked there had the guts or the boorishness to fuss about it, she wasn’t about to rock the boat; especially not now; now she was better than perfect.