The House: Chapter Two
A free extract from the political thriller I wrote with Imogen Robertson, The House. Described by Sarah Vaughan as 'A prescient page-turner about secrets, lies, ruthless ambition and betrayal'
To celebrate the book’s second birthday, I’m sharing a few free chapters from The House with readers of my Substack newsletter. If you’re new here, you’ll find a link to Chapter One at the end of this post.
The House: Chapter Two
Owen McKenna watches as the students swarm round Philip. When Owen arrived here, first walked the corridors in the glory days at the turn of the century running messages between parliament and party headquarters in Millbank, the older Labour MPs had taken it in turn to share a worn-out shibboleth with him: ‘Remember, son, the opposition is in front of you – your enemy is behind you in your own party.’ Maybe. As a rule. But Philip Bickford is an exception. He is Owen’s enemy and that meltdown in the Chamber was bloody delicious.
Phil is listening to one of the students now, a lanky kid with a sod-you look about him, like the goths and playground anarchists Owen grew up with. Philip hadn’t needed to grow up. He’d been born on a rough Essex estate with the mind of a forty-year-old Tory junior minister. He’d fooled Owen for a while, but then finally the scales had fallen from Owen’s eyes and he’d recognised Phil as the arrogant, narrow-minded self-hating, traitorous …
Pam, his researcher, is waiting for an answer. ‘Sorry, Pam. That all sounds good.’ She has been briefing him about the social media grid for the week. She is good at it. A digital native, and a smart strategic thinker. Witty, too. He won’t be able to hang on to her for long.
Are you going back to Portcullis House now?’ she asks. ‘There are a few constituency emails which need your attention.’
There are always ‘a few’ constituency emails. Owen looks at his watch. Better to launch into the inbox when he’s had a chance to shake himself out of this bitter mood. God knows, you always had to make sure you were feeling emotionally robust before diving into the constituency work, but now? With half his people up to their necks in debt and scared with it? Walk fast. Breathe the air. Get back to the desk with the fizz and pop of oxygen in the blood.
‘Quick walk first,’ he says. ‘Did you remember to have lunch?’
He sounds like a dad.
He heads down St Stephen’s Hall and his phone rings. Christine.
‘Hey, Chris.’
‘Where are you?’ Christine has a good telephone voice. Low pitched, but clear. Those elocution lessons her mama made her take. Sounded good in the Chamber too. Not for the first time, Owen silently curses the voters of Newcastle South West for kicking his ex-fiancée out of office. She should be on the front bench by now. So should he.
‘St Stephen’s Hall, being looked down on by those weird statues.’
She laughs. ‘I like them. I found it very inspiring to tell every one of them to sod off on my way into the Chamber. Look, Owen, any word on the written question to the health department yet?’
Damn. He’d meant to ask Pam to chase that up, but enjoying watching Philip get shredded in the Chamber had distracted him.
‘No. I’ll get Pam on it.’
‘What about getting the Select Committee to report on data security?’
Another reason the emails kept piling up. Owen was glad to be part of the Select Committee which shadowed the work of the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport, but its remit was mind-shatteringly wide.
‘I’ve raised it, Christine. But we’ve got other fish to fry and the chair would rather punt the data issues over to the health department.’
‘Of course he would.’
Christine sighs, and Owen stops, moves to the side to let another tour group pass. He finds himself staring up at one of the mosaics. Not his sort of thing. The artwork in his flat is mostly classic band posters and street art. Framed now, rather than stuck up with Blu Tack, because you have to start acting like a grown-up sometime. These weird Edwardian murals have always left him cold. He knows about them, though. He gave the tour a hundred times when he was working in Labour headquarters in his pre-MP days. This one shows Richard the Lionheart heading off on a crusade. A culture war. What sort of message is that? A man heading off on a fatal fool’s errand and leaving his country to shift for itself. Not Owen’s sort of hero. Maybe when they get round to rebuilding this gothic palace they should replace the murals with protest signs. BLACK LIVES MATTER, TAKE BACK CONTROL, bring a bit of the chaos and battle of Parliament Square into the bubble.
‘Owen, don’t you think it’s strange?’
For a moment he thinks she means the mural. He turns away from it, rubs the side of his nose, pushing up his glasses as he thinks. Six weeks since the Select Committee had poured cold water on the idea of an inquiry. Four weeks since he’d filled in the form and pressed submit. Most answers to parliamentary written questions come back in a fortnight. Sometimes you get a message saying the answer will be delayed because they need to collate complex data. But this time … silence.
Owen keeps thinking. The minister gets the question and his civil servants draw up an answer, then if the minister approves of the answer he or she puts their name to it and back it comes. But if the minister doesn’t like the answer the civil servants have suggested, if it reveals something sensitive or politically damaging, back it goes for redrafting. The more dangerous the question, the longer the pause.
‘Could be.’
Her voice snaps. ‘Could be? Oh, give me a break! It’s been weeks. I’m telling you, Owen, there is something going on. They promised a formal consultation on the loosening of the data protection laws months ago. And now they aren’t even answering a simple question about when it might be?’
Data laws. Even the opposition members on the committee had shuddered at the idea. Important, of course, but people need to be fed and housed, the economy propped up before it collapses entirely. Not for the first time he finds himself about to ask if it is really important? Why does it matter?
‘I’ll chase it up, Chris.’
‘Fine. Don’t over-exert yourself.’
‘I’m doing it now.’ He taps out a WhatsApp message to Pam and it swooshes away.
‘Done.’
‘Thank you. Let’s see if anything happens before I see you tomorrow.’
That catches him out. ‘Tomorrow?’
‘We’re having lunch. It’s in your diary. How about the Strangers’ Dining Room?’
‘So a public affair, is it? What are you doing, Chris?’
‘What the idiot who replaced me in parliament should be doing – and you!’
Owen glances at his watch. His window to stretch his legs is closing.
‘Fine. Tomorrow. How are Rob and the kids?’
‘Fine. Phil is trending on Twitter, by the way.’
‘Yeah, he fucked up good and proper in the Chamber,’ Owen says with a certain relish.
‘No, not that. Something he said to a bunch of students in the lobby.’ She goes quiet and Owen can hear her listening to Phil’s voice. Weird. He was standing two yards away when it happened. Now Phil has ghosted his way into Christine’s home office in the Newcastle suburbs and Owen can hear the trace of him over her phone. ‘Hmm.’
It’s the noise she makes when someone has managed to impress her. Owen feels a wave of jealousy, then a backwash of guilt. She married someone else. She has a family. You had your chance, McKenna.
‘What’s the arsehole saying, then?’
She sighs. Owen hears a tap at the other end, imagines her with her afternoon tea in her hand, setting the mug onto the table top. Would he recognise the mug? Do you ditch all your old mugs when you break up? What’s the shelf life of a mug? Is twelve years unreasonable?
‘A spirited defence of British democracy. Twitter is lapping it up. See you tomorrow.’
She cuts the connection. Owen puts the phone away, feeling weirdly rejected, and he’s back in St Stephen’s Hall staring up at the bearded knights in chain mail off to right imagined wrongs in the Holy Land. Walk. He nods to another backbencher in the doorway to Westminster Hall and one of the Leader’s Office political advisors cruises by him without a flicker of recognition. Owen is pretty sure he helped get that arse hired. Now he’s got a decent tie and a serious expression and he thinks he’s saving the country. We’re all trying, fella.
He walks down the shallow stone steps to the landing overlooking Westminster Hall. A change of mood. Hits him every time. The Victorian gothic fantasy is replaced with the austere grandeur of the oldest part of the parliamentary estate. A vast space the length of a football field, its hammerbeam roof a masterpiece of fourteenth-century engineering. Guy Fawkes and Charles I were both sentenced to death here. It’s been a shopping arcade, a courtroom, a church, a concert hall, a feasting chamber. It is full of ghosts.
Owen sees one.
He stops in his tracks, rocks back slightly to let another group pass by him. He’s older, a little frail perhaps, but it is him. Sabal Dewan. Owen feels the years disappear, leaving him cold and afraid, suffering those first punches of guilt and horror.
Sabal looks up and sees him. Owen tries to smile, but Sabal just looks away. Should Owen go and speak to him? It’s been what, thirteen years? He can’t cower here behind a bunch of schoolkids. He wonders who the woman with the braids is, standing at Sabal’s side. She is wearing a claret sheath dress, high heels, dark raincoat. Go and ask if you’re interested, he says to himself. He takes a deep breath, rehearsing the questions in his head, then Sabal turns away; his narrow face is transformed by a wide smile, a warm smile. It triggers another memory, another punch in the stomach. A day in the shared house when Sabal came to have lunch with them in the garden. To meet Jay’s friends. Summer of 2008 when even the banking crisis was just a shadow on the horizon and all they could talk about was Obama’s nomination. Happy days. Sabal holds out his hands, palms up ready to embrace … who? No. No way.
Sabal is greeting Georgina Hyde like she’s a long-lost daughter. They’ve kept in contact? Georgina opens her arms and then bows, all smiles, and leads them both away, staying close to Sabal.
‘Owen? Got a sec? As you’re just standing there.’
The voice is coming from behind him. He takes a second to put some sort of professional smile on his face.
‘Charlotte! How are you? I was just contemplating the future of democracy.’
Charlotte Cook. Lobby journalist for one of the many papers who loathe Owen, his party and his leader, but Owen suspects Charlotte is not as loyal to the party in power as her bosses believe. She keeps her reports factual, calls for comment before she runs something. Also a very careful gossip. She is wearing TV make-up, which makes her look a decade younger than she is under TV lights, but disconcertingly ‘done’ in the greyish natural light of the hall.
‘Yeah, like you care. And don’t try that democracy nonsense, either. One – we both know it’s empty cant, and two – Philip Bickford is our knight in pound-shop armour today.’
They are in danger of causing an obstruction. Charlotte sighs noisily at a middle-aged couple who brush her shoulder.
‘Off for one of your walks? I’ll keep you company to the edge of the estate.’
‘Fine.’
They walk down the steps together and the ceiling rises above them. Owen notices she’s wearing trainers. A lot of women in parliament do this, switching into heels for any time the cameras are nearby, keeping their Converse and Nikes handy for the rest of the time when they are wandering the endless corridors, chasing division bells, bills, stories.
‘And why would a lowly backbencher like me deserve such an honour?’
‘I must have started drinking earlier than usual today,’ she replies. Owen’s never seen her drink anything stronger than mineral water.
‘I’m giving you a heads-up. And you’ll owe me one. The Labour Party leadership are launching an anti-bullying investigation.’
‘OK.’
She shoots him a side-eye. ‘The word is a slightly skeezy freelancer called Edward Barns has whipped the editors of the Chronicle into a frenzy with the prospect of a damning exposé. Your leadership wants to get out in front of the story.’
Owen feels a tight knot of anger in his stomach. A government with unprecedented powers, a country reeling and wounded by the social and economic shock of the century and all his party can do is disappear mournfully up its own arse. Whatever it is, publish and be damned. Trust the people to work out what matters.
They go out through the doors and into the spring air, damp and chill. Three steps out onto the tarmac, she puts a hand on his arm.
‘2009, Owen,’ Charlotte says, looking up at him with her heavily mascaraed eyes. ‘It’s Jay Dewan’s case they are investigating.’
That hits him like a punch in the gut. He should have known. So that’s why Jay’s father is in the building.
‘Why? After all this time?’
Damn. He normally has a good poker face but Charlotte is watching him, sees the shock. He wonders what she remembers about those times.
‘It’s a good story, Owen. The former housemates. Jay makes a great tragic hero, and now you and Georgina are on one side of the house, eager to govern, and Phil is on the other, rising through the ranks. Human interest and a whiff of dark deeds. Of course the Chronicle is eager.’
‘There were no dark deeds,’ Owen says, as firmly as he can.
She watches him, professional cynic, but then so is he. ‘You might need a better line than that, Owen.’
Now they are on the tarmac forecourt, the echoing space of the ancient hall is replaced by traffic noise, the smell of the caramel-nut vendors, the chants of the protestors. The sky is overcast.
‘Thanks, Charlotte.’
‘Pick up when I call you, Owen.’
Is that a threat, or a promise she’ll tell him more when she can? Probably a bit of both, knowing journalists, and Charlotte. She releases his arm and turns back into the hall. Owen leaves through the turnstile and heads straight across Westminster Bridge. For the first time in a year he doesn’t take note of the number of tourists, tally them with the month before and pray for continued growth. He walks towards County Hall and the Southbank, head down.
2009. The Jay Dewan case.
The past is coming for him.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Tom Watson and Little, Brown Book Group Ltd 2020
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