The perpetual dusk of Cent ral Lobby – its octagon reverberating with self-important shoes. Passes swinging from lapels or hung about necks on ribbons. Miriam sits on a black leather button-back chair while Ian stands nearby, reading the plate at the base of one of the alabaster statues.
Their invitation for Rog and Patty to come to Church Row had been politely declined and she and Ian know why. Ostensibly, it was because of the oafs who had returned to the doorstep – back with a vengeance since the Crimewatch appeal was broadcast two nights ago. Miriam could hear them from the bedroom, chatting and laughing, stubbing out their cigarettes on her flagstone step. They hung their cameras on her wrought iron railings as if they owned the place. Their shutters went mad every time Rosa put out the rubbish. Periodically, Ian became incensed and put in a call to someone or other and they retreated to the end of the street, chivvied by some local bobby, but they soon drifted back or lurked in the churchyard close to the house. Ian said the Press Complaints Commission was drafting a letter to editors, asking them to ‘respect’ the Hind family’s privacy at this distressing time’, but she’d like to see what good it would do. Everyone knew the PCC was a toothless watchdog.
Anyway, Patty had said, ‘We don’t want to give them more fodder by rolling up in a government car.’ So here she and Ian are, obedient ‘strangers’, herded through the metal detectors at St Stephen’s Gate and waiting now to be fetched.
As they dressed this morning – Miriam rolling up a pair of 10 denier tights as she sat on the edge of the bed, Ian throwing the long tongue of his tie over itself – she said to him, ‘Do you think it’s because of Edith – because of what they’ve said about her? Do you think that’s why they refused— Damn!’ The ladder in her tights felt like an injury. She hated the slippery feel of them, and now she had to try another pair.
‘That’d be rich, coming from him,’ Ian said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No, come on, Ian, you can’t drop a thing like that …’
‘There was a lot of it at school, that’s all.’
If she’s honest, she assumed as much, at a school like that. Dropped off at seven years old, no one to cuddle when they fell and scraped their knees, and homesickness considered a disobedience. The school churned out leaders and princes, but they were men forged in the furnace of repression. God help you if you were less than robust; if you missed your mother desperately. When she’d seen pictures of Ian as a boy, she knew that he was one of those sensitive ones: twiggy-legged, with full lips that probably quivered with his tears. He hadn’t even raised the notion of Rollo following in his footsteps (apart from some mild comments about the school’s excellent facilities for sport). He seemed to know how ferociously Miriam would guard Rollo to keep him safely at home.
Anyway, she thinks now, these things are not so clear-cut as everyone might think. Boys experiment, girls too, evidently; their feelings sway one way and another. All part of feeling the way towards adulthood.
Ian told her she was paranoid, but with Rog and Patty she has the sense of rope being let out, as if she and Ian are a boat being allowed to drift. A similar feeling with the Palace, which has remained silent. It seems to Miriam that they have become tainted – the stain of life going wrong, rather like the taint of illness or disability, weight gain, depression, financial difficulty. It has the whiff of not succeeding – not staying sufficiently in control.
‘Hello, you,’ says Patty, and Miriam stands, allowing Patty to clutch her arms and kiss her twice. ‘Rog is waiting in his office. Shall I lead the way?’
She clacks ahead of them, saying hello to various suits, down tiled corridors and then up into the realm of endless wood panelling.
Rog is out from behind his desk, crossing the acreage of carpet to where they have entered. ‘I thought it’d be more private here than Marsham Street,’ he says, reaching out his hand to Ian. ‘How are you holding up, both of you?’
Miriam is comforted by Roger’s corpulent bonhomie. She thinks of him as a cricketer, the white cable-knit tight over the drum of his belly, jogging towards the batsman, and lobbing the ball over-arm. All Englishness and fair play.
‘Not so well, actually,’ she says. ‘Turns out losing a child is a living torture. They don’t tell you that before you have them, do they?’
Ian frowns at her while Roger coughs fulsomely into a fist. Patty has her head cocked like a therapist or an empathising actress.
‘Come in anyway,’ says Roger. ‘It must be ghastly, all of it. Drink?’
Ian and Miriam say, ‘Thank you’ and ‘Please’ over each other.
They have been here before, shortly after they won – well, formed the coalition – back in May. The boast tour, Roger called it, laughing. He’d certainly been pleased with himself, and why not.