Rachel hugged her sister back, and, shaking her head, gave a smile. ‘I know. And I appreciate everything you and Charlie have done so far. I’m just so used to having my hopes raised and then dashed.’
‘Then you’d better sit next to me at the pub,’ Holly replied. ‘And we can celebrate together when Charlie smashes it. Or commiserate if he massively cocks it up.’
‘Sounds like a deal,’ Rachel offered a tentative smile.
Once Holly had secured Isabella for a shift, she headed over to The Travellers’ Rest just in time to grab a drink before the debate started. She felt even more nervous when the camera panned around the chamber, and she caught sight of Charlie, looking paler than usual but carefully composed, sitting close to the Speaker’s chair at the front of the hall.
‘There’s our boy,’ Mike Sullivan, jovial landlord of the pub commented, and a cheer went up from the assembled Willowbury residents who had managed to shut up shop and get away to witness the debate. ‘Looks a bit nervy, though.’
‘Wouldn’t you be?’ Holly said as she picked up the coffees she’d ordered for herself and Rachel. ‘Apart from that question at PMQs, he’s not spoken in the chamber since, and this is a big debate that he’s responsible for bringing.’
‘Absolutely,’ Mike agreed. ‘You look a bit peaky yourself,’ he murmured. ‘Have a couple of giant chocolate cookies on the house.’
‘Thanks, Mike,’ Holly smiled. ‘I’ll eat them if I can manage to uncross my fingers!’ She surmised that her nerves were telling on her face, too.
Grabbing a seat off to the left of the big screen at one of the bar tables, she passed Rachel’s coffee to her, and drummed her fingers nervously on the tabletop.
‘Calm down,’ Rachel said. ‘He’s a professional, remember? And you’ve rehearsed that speech with him so many times that he knows it backwards. Even if he only gets to use half of it in the actual debate, it’s enough.’
‘I know,’ Holly sipped her coffee, willing the bitter liquid to take the edge off her nerves but knowing it would, most likely, do the opposite. ‘I just wish I was there with him.’ She kept thinking that she should be the one reassuring Rachel, not the other way round, given that Harry was Rachel’s son, but she couldn’t help it; she was just so nervous, both for Charlie and for Harry.
‘Careful, sis,’ Rachel’s eyes twinkled. ‘That almost sounded soppy.’
‘Whatever,’ Holly muttered, but smiled a little. ‘It’s only because I don’t trust him not to cock it up.’
‘Yeah, right.’
The tones familiar to any regular watcher or listener of parliamentary debates broke into their conversation as the Speaker’s cry of ‘Order, Order!’ came over the pub’s sound system.
Holly sat up a little straighter in her chair. There was no way of knowing how long this debate would take, but she was determined to pay attention to all of it.
The camera switched focus from the Speaker to a long shot of the Commons Chamber, and Holly again caught sight of Charlie, who had sat up in his place on the green government benches and was looking attentively at the Speaker.
‘I give the floor to the Honourable Member for Willowbury and Stavenham.’ Holly’s hands started to shake, and she felt clammy all over. Would Charlie be up to the job? He’d only been in post a few months, after all. Hugo Fitzgerald had had a long career of this, although Hugo hadn’t even made a ripple in the political pond in all his years as the local MP, being content to sit in his very comfortable seat and do virtually nothing to keep it. She watched intently as the camera switched from the long shot of the whole chamber to focusing on Charlie himself, who, looking pale but composed, had risen from his seat.
‘Thank you, Mr Speaker,’ he began. ‘Today we’re here to discuss the provision of next generation drugs for the degenerative condition cystic fibrosis on the National Health Service. It gives me no pleasure to be here, leading this debate, in the knowledge that so much time has been wasted already in making arrangements with the pharmaceutical companies to allow this to happen. Mr Speaker, I am the close friend of a constituent whose three-year-old nephew Harry has this debilitating and isolating condition…’
‘Close friend!’ snorted Rachel. ‘Well, I suppose he couldn’t really say lover, sweetheart, cuddle buddy…’
‘Ssh!’ Holly chided, taking her eyes off the screen briefly to shoot Rachel a warning glance. ‘Tease me later.’
Charlie was holding his notes in one hand, so thankfully his tendency to gesticulate was curtailed by half. As he continued with his speech, Holly felt a frisson of excitement; he was an articulate and confident speaker, and although she felt as though she knew the speech backwards, having heard Charlie practising it for days, there was something electrifying about hearing him actually speak at length in this most venerable of auditoriums. She could almost smell the aromas of wood polish and leather that she remembered so well from when she’d visited the Commons for Prime Minister’s Questions.
‘He’s good,’ Rachel said as she, too, seemed glued to the screen.
The custom was for other members of the house to interject, and for the keynote speaker to ‘give way’, and, sure enough, a few minutes into his speech, Charlie did just that for others to offer their perspectives and opinions. Charlie remained on his feet during these, and Holly found herself examining his expressions closely, watching every blink and frown as colleagues from both sides of the House spoke. Sometimes it was a brief, supportive point that was made, but sometimes they were more involved and intricate, and Holly began to realise that there was a real skill in both remembering your own arguments and responding coherently to others’ points on the floor, all under the twin gazes of the television cameras and the Speaker himself, who, Holly thought, seemed like the head teacher of a particularly rowdy school, and who had to keep order among the students.
As another of his colleagues gave way, Charlie continued with his speech. Holly knew he was roughly two thirds of the way through, and she found herself muttering along with him, willing him to the finish line. Just as he was nearing the closing paragraphs, a member from the opposite bench, seated a couple of rows behind Charlie, rose to his feet.
‘Will you give way?’ the Speaker asked.
Charlie glanced behind him in the direction of the new potential speaker, and for a moment there was a look in indecision on his face. ‘I will,’ he said, eventually, after a pause.
‘I am grateful to my honourable colleague for giving way.’ The voice, obsequious in tone, rang around the chamber with just a little undertone of sarcasm. ‘I would ask, at this point, if the Honourable Member for Willowbury and Stavenham is at all concerned that the adverse publicity generated by his own actions in this case might affect the government’s willingness to push forward with negotiations with the drug companies. After all, as a result of adverse media coverage of his very close association with one of the key figures in the campaign, it was very nearly derailed. Does he not feel as though his very presence in this debate will do more harm than good?’
There was a collective intake of breath from the Willowbury pub crowd, before a boo went up from the back of the bar.