Papaya 28, Passionfruit 19 [Heroes of the Revolution]
Title: Whatever is true, whatever is right
Author: lost_spook
Story: Heroes of the Revolution
Flavor(s): Papaya #28 (did I do that?), Passionfruit #19 (Deep roots are not reached by the frost)
Toppings/Extras: Cookie Crumbs (Alternate POV for (No) More Than Love & Prime Minister’s Question Time)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2792
Notes: 1986-1992, Marian Dalton/Charles Terrell, Anna Miller. (Warning for mentions of institutional ablism, death of a child.) Marian's story which I can also post at last now. \o/
Summary: She tries to do what is right, what is practical - but never only what is useful at any cost. That’s their philosophy, not hers.
***
Marian pulled on her coat and went out for a walk, closing the door firmly and carefully behind her. It was damp and chilly, the sort of weather that clung unhealthily to the lungs, but she’d had enough of the house, and she’d already tidied and cleaned nearly everything she could think of as she turned one particular question over again in her mind.
She had to do it, she told herself. It wasn’t a question any more. It had to be done and delaying the inevitable would only make it harder when the time came and it would allow a greater likelihood of something going wrong before they got that far.
She drew her coat in closer and walked on along the drab terraced street, the green of her coat one vivid stripe of colour in this grey world, like the rebel she was.
She had to go through with this and get in touch with Anna, tell her that while she could of course do tonight, after that Anna had better find someone else to act as a contact for Charles Terrell. Marian had been asked to run a safe house up in the north anyway, now that the divorce had come through. Anna must already be arranging for a replacement, so sooner rather than later shouldn’t be too much trouble for her.
Marian turned a corner, her mind straying to Charles. He was one of Whittaker’s people, and she passed on messages between him and Arran’s group. Which was all very well, but the charade they were engaging in was turning into reality, and that wasn’t practical or safe. Marian gave a half-smile as she thought of it, imagining Anna’s reaction. Since they’d done nothing more than exchange a few chaste kisses on the cheek, Anna would think her ridiculous or quaint for worrying about it. As relationships went, it not only didn’t have a future, it didn’t even have a present. Charles had no idea Marian Dalton existed. To him, she was only Alice.
If that were all, she wouldn’t say anything, but Marian felt sure she wasn’t alone in her feelings. About a month back, they’d met for a walk - an occasion that wasn’t official - under the excuse that if they went any slower at this pretend courtship, they’d stretch credulity. That might be true, but she knew it was an excuse on her part and she’d felt guilty throughout. The business they were engaged in was a matter of life and death and you couldn’t play games with that. He’d been unusually quiet, too, and never repeated the suggestion. She couldn’t be sure that it was for the same reason, but she believed it was. She hoped it was, maybe.
She felt a flicker of anger. After Peter, after Harry, all these years of running errands for the resistance, didn’t she deserve something? And if she lightened Charles’s existence for half an hour or so every other week, if she made him smile, wasn’t it better for the both of them to hang on till the last minute?
“No,” she said, her breath showing white in the air as she spoke aloud. “No.” Whatever either of them thought or felt or thought the other felt, it was a fantasy, wasn’t it? It was an escape for both of them. These days she found that not being Marian Dalton was almost as great a relief as ceasing to be Marian Scott had been, but she wasn’t Alice; she was someone else entirely, with work of her own to do.
Besides, no matter what she may think, she didn’t know what Charles thought about her. He was a politician, after all, even if only a minor one. He might not be exactly the smooth, suave type by any means, but no doubt he lied as well as the rest of them. He had an odd, quiet charm of his own, too; she’d felt that on their first meeting, and she mistrusted charm on principle.
Marian turned into a lane, cutting through behind the housing estate, and making her way to number thirty on the next road, where she put a note through the door. She didn’t know who lived there, but they’d send the message to Anna, and tomorrow she’d find her waiting outside the school, where they could talk.
With that done, all that was left was for Marian to be the one to play a part and to lie, as tonight she had her last meeting with Charles. She’d had practice, after all. She’d had to grow used to hiding her feelings and her beliefs from Harry. Her husband had become more and more enamoured of the utilitarian ideals and he’d become a party member. If she’d given him reason to suspect her activities, or just cause to spite her, which was more likely, she could easily have been sent away herself.
She’d been free of him for some years, but the memory of that time was etched into her soul. She wasn’t cut out for deceptions and a double life, even if she found she could learn to play that game. Once Peter had died, she had told Harry that she was leaving, calmly but with finality. He hadn’t argued. Since he blamed her for Peter in the first place, she suspected it was in the end a relief to both of them to be rid of the other.
She still burned with anger when she thought of it. She would have liked to have the chance to tell Harry Scott just once, that she knew, she knew what he was: a coward and a murderer. She couldn’t understand how he could have done that, how anyone could do it - to believe in all their talk so hard, to fear them so much, that he couldn’t ever see Peter as anything other than a hindrance. He simply couldn’t see Peter, she thought.
She shut that thought away and told herself instead that she worked for the resistance; she may have failed to save Peter, but she tried to make sure that other people didn’t have to die.
The weather hadn’t improved much by the evening. She said goodbye to Charles at the corner of the street in the lamplight and frost, and walked away. To her surprise, he ran after her, suddenly failing to keep to the rules of their charade. It startled her and made it harder to say it again, but she did: she walked away down the pavement without looking back. And he’d proved her right in her decision. She breathed out again in relief now that it was done. This game of let’s pretend wasn’t doing either of them any favours. Best to end it now.
But it was funny the mix of emotions one person could hold at once: she felt relief and surety that she’d done the right thing, but they shared space in her heart with the pain of severance.
She saw Charles again, of course, even if he didn’t see her. He wasn’t a cabinet member but he was a junior minister and sometimes they mentioned him in passing in the official newspapers (there were no others, not any more). Usually, it was only a list of names, with Charles Terrell somewhere in the middle, but occasionally there was something more.
Once Arran - or Colonel Seaton, as he really was - came to power, Marian saw Charles all the time in the media as it gradually reappeared. He was even on the television when they made occasional broadcasts and frequently on the radio. Everybody knew who he was now: Charles Terrell, Prime Minister.
He hadn’t been the obvious choice. Many members of the former resistance had been dismayed by his appointment, none more so than Marian. After all, now that they’d won (for the moment), she could have written to Charles, but she couldn’t possibly write to the Prime Minister, not over a passing, anonymous affair of five or six years ago. That would be silly - the last thing that he’d want with the business of running a ruined country to worry about. She didn’t envy him, and only hoped hard that he could do something, that the government would last. She might not have seen him for long enough and put him out of her mind until now, but she couldn’t bear the idea of the government falling, after all they’d fought for, and the fact that now if it did, they’d kill Charles just as they had Hallam.
Victory brought with it the chance to talk freely about many things. It was strange and frightening at first after so long a time of silence, lies, and evasions. It was so hard to overcome the fear that someone would report her if she said too much, but it was liberating when she tried. Marian had learned to do her share of lying and hiding, but it had never come easily.
Harry’s sister Ellen came to see her, for the first time in years. She told Marian that Harry was dead, killed in fighting at the end. Marian wouldn’t have thought he’d had it in him, but then all sorts of people had been caught in the crossfire. She didn’t mean to be unkind, but she couldn’t help feeling glad. It was a release for her - she didn’t have to hate any living person as much as she had hated Harry, not any more.
“Don’t worry,” Ellen Scott said, catching her expression. “I don’t expect you to do much crying over him. He had something to do with - well, with Peter, didn’t he?”
Marian nodded, her mouth tightening into a line. “He had everything to do with it. He never had any time for Peter - barely even acknowledged he was there as a rule. Then, when the orders went out, he followed party lines and reported him to the nearest detention centre.” It was the first time she’d ever said it aloud to anyone. Anna had known of it, she was sure, but it had only ever been referred to indirectly. She caught her breath in her throat over the next words. “And that - that was that.”
“I’d like to be surprised,” said Ellen, “but Harry was always one for following the rules to the letter. Just the sort to fall for all their propaganda - all of us neatly packed up and put into the right boxes. Life was always too untidy for him.”
Marian nodded.
“I couldn’t say before,” Ellen added. “It wasn’t safe, was it? But - I am sorry.”
Marian concentrated closely on drinking her cup of not-exactly-tea. “It’s not your fault,” she said. She thought again about the news, about Harry being shot like that, and tried to feel something else, a passing sadness for older, better times, but all she could think of was that last moment she’d seen him, coloured forever by her revulsion and contained fury. She could try to let go of that now, couldn’t she? She could do that and not hold that hate any more.
“So am I,” Marian said, raising her head again.
It was nearly a year after Colonel Seaton had come to power that Marian, at a local party meeting, heard that the Prime Minister was due to visit Newcastle. She wondered what to make of that, or whether to make anything of it at all. She’d go, of course. She didn’t have to speak to Charles; she could stand in the corner and watch, and make up her mind. After all, it had been a long while and maybe power had changed him. He wouldn’t be looking for her. He didn’t know her name, where she was, or even if she was still alive. He could only know if Anna had told him, and since he’d never bothered to get in touch before, Marian preferred to believe he didn’t know.
“Marian,” said Robert Aysthorpe, the chairman, catching her nearly at the door afterwards. “A word, if you will?”
She laughed. “Yes?”
“Mr Terrell wants to see one or two people particularly - I think in relation to their resistance work. You were one of the names listed, so if you can make sure you’re there on the evening -”
Marian smiled. “I was already planning to come. I’d hardly want to miss it, would I? Silly man.”
“I’m sorry,” Robert said, surprised affront in his tone.
She patted his arm. “Oh, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you.”
Marian stepped out of the door into another frosty evening, much like the one on which she’d last seen Charles Terrell and wondered what she felt. She might, she thought wryly, only be about to be disabused of some rather foolish and sentimental old illusions and she had too few of those left as it was.
“Look,” said Charles, once the first moments of the reunion were over. “It’s an odd situation; let’s not pretend otherwise. But I’d like to take you out to lunch before I leave tomorrow. About time we could do that as ourselves, I’d say.”
She smiled at him, more relieved than she had expected, as if she’d finally let out a breath she’d been holding in for a very long while. “Is that allowed?”
Charles leant sideways against the wall and grinned. He slowly started to laugh. “Well, I don’t think there’s anything against it in the constitition, you know. Don’t think most of my predecessors worried about that, and you can’t possibly imagine I’m worse than Lloyd George.”
“Don’t you laugh at me,” she said, but she was laughing herself. “I was only wondering about your security people.”
He peeled himself off the wall again. “It’s on the schedule, don’t worry. To be confirmed, but there. Is that a yes?”
She nodded. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
They didn’t have to lie anymore, but they couldn’t be private even in a quiet café. Charles was treading very carefully, too, being particularly awkward at the start and at the end, though once they got talking, it didn’t feel so different to the way it used to be.
“It’s about time I found out something about you,” he said. “You know all about me, but you, you’re just the mysterious Alice.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Hardly mysterious. I wasn’t putting on an act, and there was never that much to tell. At the time I was glad to pretend none of it existed. And getting to do something for the Resistance helped.”
“I checked the records,” he said, shifting slightly in his seat. “After Anna told me your name - to make sure you were alive. So I saw - your son -”
Marian cut him off. “Yes,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
She drew back from the table. “Yes. Everybody is now, I suppose. Oh, I didn’t mean you, Charles. And I suppose, knowing now how many years of Hallam we had left, maybe I could say better sooner than later - there wouldn’t have been much support would there? But I can’t. That’s their philosophy, isn’t it? It’s not mine.”
“Yes,” he said. “Not yours.”
Marian gave a short smile. “How would you know?”
“Silly question,” said Charles. “The one thing I do know about you is that you’ve been helping other people out of the country at the risk of your own life. It’s more than I ever did.”
“Self-pity’s never very attractive,” she said, trying not to smile. “Especially not in a politician.”
On the way out, when he was starting to say his farewells, and to apologetically suggest that they might be able to meet again, if she wanted, she caught hold of his arm.
“Charles,” she said, and thought again about the feeling of having lived so much of her life holding her breath. She stretched up and kissed him on the cheek. “Sensible is all very well, but sometimes it only goes so far. I don’t know how anything will work out, either, but I would like to see you again. There’s someone I can stay with in London. I’ll come down, and we’ll talk properly.”
“Are you sure?” he said, watching her closely.
She had to laugh again. “No, of course I’m not. But soon, Charles, please. I imagine you have a secretary I should talk to about an appointment?”
She was, she realised with amused pride, when they walked out together, the sort of abandoned woman who could brazenly ask the prime minister out. Whoever would have thought it?
“Yes,” said Charles, “and don’t let him fob you off. He’s a menace.”
“I’ll promise you that much,” Marian said, and smiled.
***
Author: lost_spook
Story: Heroes of the Revolution
Flavor(s): Papaya #28 (did I do that?), Passionfruit #19 (Deep roots are not reached by the frost)
Toppings/Extras: Cookie Crumbs (Alternate POV for (No) More Than Love & Prime Minister’s Question Time)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2792
Notes: 1986-1992, Marian Dalton/Charles Terrell, Anna Miller. (Warning for mentions of institutional ablism, death of a child.) Marian's story which I can also post at last now. \o/
Summary: She tries to do what is right, what is practical - but never only what is useful at any cost. That’s their philosophy, not hers.
***
Marian pulled on her coat and went out for a walk, closing the door firmly and carefully behind her. It was damp and chilly, the sort of weather that clung unhealthily to the lungs, but she’d had enough of the house, and she’d already tidied and cleaned nearly everything she could think of as she turned one particular question over again in her mind.
She had to do it, she told herself. It wasn’t a question any more. It had to be done and delaying the inevitable would only make it harder when the time came and it would allow a greater likelihood of something going wrong before they got that far.
She drew her coat in closer and walked on along the drab terraced street, the green of her coat one vivid stripe of colour in this grey world, like the rebel she was.
She had to go through with this and get in touch with Anna, tell her that while she could of course do tonight, after that Anna had better find someone else to act as a contact for Charles Terrell. Marian had been asked to run a safe house up in the north anyway, now that the divorce had come through. Anna must already be arranging for a replacement, so sooner rather than later shouldn’t be too much trouble for her.
Marian turned a corner, her mind straying to Charles. He was one of Whittaker’s people, and she passed on messages between him and Arran’s group. Which was all very well, but the charade they were engaging in was turning into reality, and that wasn’t practical or safe. Marian gave a half-smile as she thought of it, imagining Anna’s reaction. Since they’d done nothing more than exchange a few chaste kisses on the cheek, Anna would think her ridiculous or quaint for worrying about it. As relationships went, it not only didn’t have a future, it didn’t even have a present. Charles had no idea Marian Dalton existed. To him, she was only Alice.
If that were all, she wouldn’t say anything, but Marian felt sure she wasn’t alone in her feelings. About a month back, they’d met for a walk - an occasion that wasn’t official - under the excuse that if they went any slower at this pretend courtship, they’d stretch credulity. That might be true, but she knew it was an excuse on her part and she’d felt guilty throughout. The business they were engaged in was a matter of life and death and you couldn’t play games with that. He’d been unusually quiet, too, and never repeated the suggestion. She couldn’t be sure that it was for the same reason, but she believed it was. She hoped it was, maybe.
She felt a flicker of anger. After Peter, after Harry, all these years of running errands for the resistance, didn’t she deserve something? And if she lightened Charles’s existence for half an hour or so every other week, if she made him smile, wasn’t it better for the both of them to hang on till the last minute?
“No,” she said, her breath showing white in the air as she spoke aloud. “No.” Whatever either of them thought or felt or thought the other felt, it was a fantasy, wasn’t it? It was an escape for both of them. These days she found that not being Marian Dalton was almost as great a relief as ceasing to be Marian Scott had been, but she wasn’t Alice; she was someone else entirely, with work of her own to do.
Besides, no matter what she may think, she didn’t know what Charles thought about her. He was a politician, after all, even if only a minor one. He might not be exactly the smooth, suave type by any means, but no doubt he lied as well as the rest of them. He had an odd, quiet charm of his own, too; she’d felt that on their first meeting, and she mistrusted charm on principle.
Marian turned into a lane, cutting through behind the housing estate, and making her way to number thirty on the next road, where she put a note through the door. She didn’t know who lived there, but they’d send the message to Anna, and tomorrow she’d find her waiting outside the school, where they could talk.
With that done, all that was left was for Marian to be the one to play a part and to lie, as tonight she had her last meeting with Charles. She’d had practice, after all. She’d had to grow used to hiding her feelings and her beliefs from Harry. Her husband had become more and more enamoured of the utilitarian ideals and he’d become a party member. If she’d given him reason to suspect her activities, or just cause to spite her, which was more likely, she could easily have been sent away herself.
She’d been free of him for some years, but the memory of that time was etched into her soul. She wasn’t cut out for deceptions and a double life, even if she found she could learn to play that game. Once Peter had died, she had told Harry that she was leaving, calmly but with finality. He hadn’t argued. Since he blamed her for Peter in the first place, she suspected it was in the end a relief to both of them to be rid of the other.
She still burned with anger when she thought of it. She would have liked to have the chance to tell Harry Scott just once, that she knew, she knew what he was: a coward and a murderer. She couldn’t understand how he could have done that, how anyone could do it - to believe in all their talk so hard, to fear them so much, that he couldn’t ever see Peter as anything other than a hindrance. He simply couldn’t see Peter, she thought.
She shut that thought away and told herself instead that she worked for the resistance; she may have failed to save Peter, but she tried to make sure that other people didn’t have to die.
The weather hadn’t improved much by the evening. She said goodbye to Charles at the corner of the street in the lamplight and frost, and walked away. To her surprise, he ran after her, suddenly failing to keep to the rules of their charade. It startled her and made it harder to say it again, but she did: she walked away down the pavement without looking back. And he’d proved her right in her decision. She breathed out again in relief now that it was done. This game of let’s pretend wasn’t doing either of them any favours. Best to end it now.
But it was funny the mix of emotions one person could hold at once: she felt relief and surety that she’d done the right thing, but they shared space in her heart with the pain of severance.
She saw Charles again, of course, even if he didn’t see her. He wasn’t a cabinet member but he was a junior minister and sometimes they mentioned him in passing in the official newspapers (there were no others, not any more). Usually, it was only a list of names, with Charles Terrell somewhere in the middle, but occasionally there was something more.
Once Arran - or Colonel Seaton, as he really was - came to power, Marian saw Charles all the time in the media as it gradually reappeared. He was even on the television when they made occasional broadcasts and frequently on the radio. Everybody knew who he was now: Charles Terrell, Prime Minister.
He hadn’t been the obvious choice. Many members of the former resistance had been dismayed by his appointment, none more so than Marian. After all, now that they’d won (for the moment), she could have written to Charles, but she couldn’t possibly write to the Prime Minister, not over a passing, anonymous affair of five or six years ago. That would be silly - the last thing that he’d want with the business of running a ruined country to worry about. She didn’t envy him, and only hoped hard that he could do something, that the government would last. She might not have seen him for long enough and put him out of her mind until now, but she couldn’t bear the idea of the government falling, after all they’d fought for, and the fact that now if it did, they’d kill Charles just as they had Hallam.
Victory brought with it the chance to talk freely about many things. It was strange and frightening at first after so long a time of silence, lies, and evasions. It was so hard to overcome the fear that someone would report her if she said too much, but it was liberating when she tried. Marian had learned to do her share of lying and hiding, but it had never come easily.
Harry’s sister Ellen came to see her, for the first time in years. She told Marian that Harry was dead, killed in fighting at the end. Marian wouldn’t have thought he’d had it in him, but then all sorts of people had been caught in the crossfire. She didn’t mean to be unkind, but she couldn’t help feeling glad. It was a release for her - she didn’t have to hate any living person as much as she had hated Harry, not any more.
“Don’t worry,” Ellen Scott said, catching her expression. “I don’t expect you to do much crying over him. He had something to do with - well, with Peter, didn’t he?”
Marian nodded, her mouth tightening into a line. “He had everything to do with it. He never had any time for Peter - barely even acknowledged he was there as a rule. Then, when the orders went out, he followed party lines and reported him to the nearest detention centre.” It was the first time she’d ever said it aloud to anyone. Anna had known of it, she was sure, but it had only ever been referred to indirectly. She caught her breath in her throat over the next words. “And that - that was that.”
“I’d like to be surprised,” said Ellen, “but Harry was always one for following the rules to the letter. Just the sort to fall for all their propaganda - all of us neatly packed up and put into the right boxes. Life was always too untidy for him.”
Marian nodded.
“I couldn’t say before,” Ellen added. “It wasn’t safe, was it? But - I am sorry.”
Marian concentrated closely on drinking her cup of not-exactly-tea. “It’s not your fault,” she said. She thought again about the news, about Harry being shot like that, and tried to feel something else, a passing sadness for older, better times, but all she could think of was that last moment she’d seen him, coloured forever by her revulsion and contained fury. She could try to let go of that now, couldn’t she? She could do that and not hold that hate any more.
“So am I,” Marian said, raising her head again.
It was nearly a year after Colonel Seaton had come to power that Marian, at a local party meeting, heard that the Prime Minister was due to visit Newcastle. She wondered what to make of that, or whether to make anything of it at all. She’d go, of course. She didn’t have to speak to Charles; she could stand in the corner and watch, and make up her mind. After all, it had been a long while and maybe power had changed him. He wouldn’t be looking for her. He didn’t know her name, where she was, or even if she was still alive. He could only know if Anna had told him, and since he’d never bothered to get in touch before, Marian preferred to believe he didn’t know.
“Marian,” said Robert Aysthorpe, the chairman, catching her nearly at the door afterwards. “A word, if you will?”
She laughed. “Yes?”
“Mr Terrell wants to see one or two people particularly - I think in relation to their resistance work. You were one of the names listed, so if you can make sure you’re there on the evening -”
Marian smiled. “I was already planning to come. I’d hardly want to miss it, would I? Silly man.”
“I’m sorry,” Robert said, surprised affront in his tone.
She patted his arm. “Oh, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you.”
Marian stepped out of the door into another frosty evening, much like the one on which she’d last seen Charles Terrell and wondered what she felt. She might, she thought wryly, only be about to be disabused of some rather foolish and sentimental old illusions and she had too few of those left as it was.
“Look,” said Charles, once the first moments of the reunion were over. “It’s an odd situation; let’s not pretend otherwise. But I’d like to take you out to lunch before I leave tomorrow. About time we could do that as ourselves, I’d say.”
She smiled at him, more relieved than she had expected, as if she’d finally let out a breath she’d been holding in for a very long while. “Is that allowed?”
Charles leant sideways against the wall and grinned. He slowly started to laugh. “Well, I don’t think there’s anything against it in the constitition, you know. Don’t think most of my predecessors worried about that, and you can’t possibly imagine I’m worse than Lloyd George.”
“Don’t you laugh at me,” she said, but she was laughing herself. “I was only wondering about your security people.”
He peeled himself off the wall again. “It’s on the schedule, don’t worry. To be confirmed, but there. Is that a yes?”
She nodded. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
They didn’t have to lie anymore, but they couldn’t be private even in a quiet café. Charles was treading very carefully, too, being particularly awkward at the start and at the end, though once they got talking, it didn’t feel so different to the way it used to be.
“It’s about time I found out something about you,” he said. “You know all about me, but you, you’re just the mysterious Alice.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Hardly mysterious. I wasn’t putting on an act, and there was never that much to tell. At the time I was glad to pretend none of it existed. And getting to do something for the Resistance helped.”
“I checked the records,” he said, shifting slightly in his seat. “After Anna told me your name - to make sure you were alive. So I saw - your son -”
Marian cut him off. “Yes,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
She drew back from the table. “Yes. Everybody is now, I suppose. Oh, I didn’t mean you, Charles. And I suppose, knowing now how many years of Hallam we had left, maybe I could say better sooner than later - there wouldn’t have been much support would there? But I can’t. That’s their philosophy, isn’t it? It’s not mine.”
“Yes,” he said. “Not yours.”
Marian gave a short smile. “How would you know?”
“Silly question,” said Charles. “The one thing I do know about you is that you’ve been helping other people out of the country at the risk of your own life. It’s more than I ever did.”
“Self-pity’s never very attractive,” she said, trying not to smile. “Especially not in a politician.”
On the way out, when he was starting to say his farewells, and to apologetically suggest that they might be able to meet again, if she wanted, she caught hold of his arm.
“Charles,” she said, and thought again about the feeling of having lived so much of her life holding her breath. She stretched up and kissed him on the cheek. “Sensible is all very well, but sometimes it only goes so far. I don’t know how anything will work out, either, but I would like to see you again. There’s someone I can stay with in London. I’ll come down, and we’ll talk properly.”
“Are you sure?” he said, watching her closely.
She had to laugh again. “No, of course I’m not. But soon, Charles, please. I imagine you have a secretary I should talk to about an appointment?”
She was, she realised with amused pride, when they walked out together, the sort of abandoned woman who could brazenly ask the prime minister out. Whoever would have thought it?
“Yes,” said Charles, “and don’t let him fob you off. He’s a menace.”
“I’ll promise you that much,” Marian said, and smiled.
***