‘No,’ Charlie replied. ‘No comment at all.’
Hand shaking, he pressed the end-call button on his phone and sat back in his chair, mind reeling. Where the hell had this come from? As if it wasn’t bad enough that Holly thought he was an unprincipled shit, now his name was going to be linked to hers and splashed all over the internet. Hands still shaking, he dialled Tom Fielding’s number.
‘Tom? Sorry, I know it’s late. Has anyone from the media been on to you?’ Briefly he outlined his conversation with the reporter. Tom’s advice was succinct and to the point. ‘OK, no, I’ll stick to the no-comment line. We’ll meet when I get home tomorrow night… No, I haven’t spoken to her… No, I don’t think she’s the one who’s spoken to them. I know she’s angry with me, but it’s not her style. She’s more concerned with getting publicity for the CF campaign and this won’t help it at all.’ He rubbed his free hand over his eyes. ‘OK. Goodnight, Tom.’
Charlie was stumped. He and Holly were two freely consenting adults. There was no abuse of trust there at all. They both knew what they were doing, and until it had all gone sour, it had been the best thing in his life. Who the hell would have the credibility and standing to leak this story and be believed?
He thought about phoning Holly, just to see if she could shed any light on where the story might have come from, but hesitated. Perhaps it was better to try to see her in person. A masochistic yearning for details then made him navigate to Twitter to see if the story had been picked up in places other than AllFeed.
Holly, also known as #GreenGoddess had a fair few results; mostly of her decked out with ribbons and waving a placard about at that afternoon’s demonstration. Slightly more worryingly, though, when he searched for his own name on the social media platform, a few, less complimentary hashtags were attached. Among the more embarrassing included #WestCountryCad and #WhatACharlie. He felt physically sick when he saw some of the comments, too. If the story was playing out the way Peter Eddington had suggested, he’d get a reputation as a calculating predator before the week was out.
Swiping the iPad’s screen angrily, he packed away his things and headed for the flat. Another sleepless night, then another uncomfortable day beckoned before he could regroup with Tom and work out the best approach to this mess. At the moment, he just didn’t know which way to jump, although throwing himself off Westminster Bridge seemed a decent prospect right now. Hurrying out of the building and heading for Farringdon on the Tube, he hoped he’d get home without being stopped.
The next morning, bleary-eyed from insomnia, Charlie virtually sleepwalked to the Tube. He’d finally put the iPad down at about 3 a.m., after reading pretty much every link on social media that might throw some light on when the story about him and Holly had broken. He was still none the wiser about who had leaked it. Swiping wearily to the AllFeed website as the Tube pulled out, there it was in all its glory in the sidebar of shame on the right-hand side of the page.
‘She just wanted to help her nephew: what he asked for in return will blow your mind!’
Below it were a couple of blurred photographs of himself and Holly during their picnic on Willowbury Hill. The angle of the photos suggested things had been a lot more intimate in that moment than they actually had been, and Charlie couldn’t help groaning when he saw them. An old lady sitting next to him shuffled away in surprise.
It was worse when he clicked the link. Several pictures, obviously snapped with a long lens at Willowfest, showed the two of them in various lovelorn poses. The copy was worse still.
Charlie Thorpe is believed to have seduced health and well-being shop owner and CF campaigner Holly Renton in return for promising her his support over the legislation of new drugs for the chronic condition, cystic fibrosis. Vulnerable Holly’s tragic thee-year-old nephew Harry is a sufferer of the condition, which may dramatically shorten his life if he does not gain access to these life-altering medications. After initially pledging his support, Thorpe has since withdrawn from the campaign, according to sources close to Ms Renton, and seeks instead to pursue promotion in other areas, leaving lovelorn Holly and tragic Harry high and dry.
It was nothing more than hearsay and tittle-tattle, but damaging enough. Furiously, Charlie wondered who the hell the source was. Who would be looking to ruin not just his reputation, but Holly’s as well? Immediately he discounted anyone who actually cared about them both, with this story painting Holly as a naive damsel in distress and himself as some self-serving predator who put pressure on women to get what he wanted. Neither could be further from the truth, and Holly would be furious if she knew she was being presented like that. A victim she most certainly was not. So, the question was, who had leaked this ridiculous story?
As he was thinking, his phone bleeped with a text. It was from Tom.
Done some digging overnight. Think I know who the source was. Get home as early as you can for crisis management planning tomorrow.
Charlie breathed out. Tom was handling it. All he had to do now was get through today and get home to Willowbury without incident. Suddenly, the day ahead seemed interminably long.
43
It had been a phenomenally shitty day, there was no getting away from it. As Charlie collapsed down into the seat on the train he’d managed to grab just outside Reading, having given up his seat for a heavily pregnant commuter at Paddington, he closed his eyes and tried to blot out the horror of the past few days. Being in London involved far more work than he could have imagined, taking him further away from constituency business than he’d ever wanted to be. Also, since the relentless hashtags on Twitter about his relationship with Holly, and the reasons she’d dumped him, had gone public, he’d had to run the gauntlet of alternate glances of sympathy, amusement and curiosity from his colleagues in the House wherever he went. Or at least, that’s how it felt.
Perhaps lack of sleep was making him paranoid. It was true that he hadn’t slept properly since his relationship with Holly had imploded so spectacularly, and the memory of her smile, her touch and her presence haunted his every waking moment. He’d failed utterly by choosing the wrong side of the argument; there was no way back. As another wave of despair washed over him, like the rain that was now lashing the windows of the carriage, he closed his eyes in utter defeat. Usually he’d try to keep his eyes open on the commute; it really wouldn’t do to be photographed snoring and dribbling and then have those photographs plastered all over social media, but tonight he was past caring. What could be worse than the coverage he’d already had, anyway?
‘All tickets from London Paddington and Reading, please!’ Just as Charlie was dropping off, Train Manager Lydia’s familiar cheery voice lurched him awake.
Fumbling around in his jacket pocket for his season ticket, Charlie felt a rising sense of panic. Surely he hadn’t taken it out of his jacket since he’d been in London? A peak ticket from London to the west was well over a hundred quid if it had to be bought there and then, and he’d already forked out a king’s ransom for the year’s ticket. Groping in his outside pockets, even unzipping his bag to check abortively for it though he knew he always kept it on him, Charlie realised it was no use. With a sinking feeling, it dawned on him; he’d turned out his pockets to find his Westminster pass that morning, and in his state of exhaustion, he must have left his season ticket on the kitchen table of his flat. In fact, he could visualise it now, waiting there for when he returned on Sunday evening, or early Monday morning if he chose to spend another lonely Sunday in Willowbury, in the hope that Holly might have a change of heart and drop in.