‘You’re kidding.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘And she just can’t find two doctors who will agree to say it, to say her life is in danger.’
‘Why? How difficult can—’
‘I was pleading with the principal, saying we have to do something. I went to the police. No one would listen. And Mia’s saying, “I can feel this thing growing inside me. Because of him. I can’t bear it, Miss Costello. I can’t bear it.”’
Maggie felt the dread rising. She knocked back the glass. And poured herself another. ‘Go on.’
‘I made a plan. I thought, I’m going to raise the money and put her on a plane to Canada. Or maybe Cuba or something. But I’ll get her out of here and we’ll do it. I was going to see her parents tonight, to arrange it.’
‘What happened?’
At that, her younger sister let out the most awful howl. And then there was an explosion of snot and tears. Maggie knew. But she waited for her sister to say the words.
‘This morning. She wasn’t in school.’ More sobbing. ‘And I was worried. I had this feeling, you know?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then this afternoon …’ Liz was struggling to get the words out. ‘This afternoon, after school, Mia’s sister went home. And she’s only twelve, this girl. She gets home. And she finds … she finds …’
Maggie waited in dread for the inevitable.
‘… her hanging there. Her own sister.’
And there it was. Maggie felt her gut contract. ‘Oh, Liz, I’m so sorry. That’s so terrible.’
‘I can’t believe it, Mags. It’s so cruel.’
‘It is.’
‘I mean what is wrong with this country? It’s so fucked up.’ Liz blew her nose and regrouped. ‘Because of a decision by one vote on the Supreme fucking Court, a beautiful, bright, kind girl is dead. Dead.’
Maggie knew what was coming.
‘And how did that one vote get there? Eh, Maggie? How did it get there?’
‘I know.’
‘It got there because this President put it there, didn’t he, appointing that medieval bastard to be a Supreme Court judge. That’s how.’
‘Liz—’
‘I cannot believe you work for that evil man, Maggie. I just cannot believe it.’
‘It’s not as simple—’
‘My own sister! My own, high-and-mighty, save-the-world, help-the poor, end-all-the-wars sister, Saint fucking Maggie Costello is actually working for this man. Serving this evil man.’
‘It’s not like I—’
‘I don’t want to hear it, Maggie. Mia is dead and you’re helping the man who killed her. End of.’
And with that the line went dead. Maggie, who had been standing throughout, slumped into a chair. Not for the first time she reflected that the bitterest arguments come when you know you’re wrong and your opponent’s right. And, right on cue, the hard knot of guilt tightened inside her – becoming harder than Liz could possibly have imagined.
Before it had time to break the surface, there was a buzz from downstairs. Richard.
Until Liz called, Maggie had told herself she wanted to be alone. Now, though, the idea of a diversion appealed. And, without admitting it to herself, she welcomed the opportunity to balance the scales: she knew Richard would insist that what she was doing was no crime, that there was right on her side too. She did not believe it, not really. But it would be good to hear it.
She answered the door and, to her own surprise, Maggie did not let him speak, kissing him long and deep instead. He was taller than she was, with a head of thick, dark hair, cut in a retro style that meant he could have passed for a 1940s movie star. He’d recently shaved off the beard, which Maggie regretted – she thought it made him look French and intellectual – as an act of deference to the new regime. Richard said he’d heard the President regarded men with facial hair as ‘unreliable’.
He responded to her kiss, dropping his bag to the floor. He pushed her backwards, towards the bedroom. Taking the lead, she unbuckled his belt and pulled off his clothes, enjoying the sight and touch and taste of his skin. She wanted to devour as much of him as she could take. Her need was hungry. And urgent.
They didn’t really start talking till long after nine, arranged on the sofa, both of them wearing a loose combination of underwear, sweatpants and pyjamas, with assorted cartons of Chinese takeout on the table in front of them. It was raining softly outside, the TV was on. It felt cosy.
Maggie told him about her phone call with Liz. He nodded sympathetically while she was telling the story, then held her when she reached the end. For a while they stayed like that, in silence.
After a while, they traded the odd nugget of workplace gossip. He’d heard there’d been some tantrum in the middle of the night: the speculation in the office was that the President and the First Lady had had another screaming match. She was hardly ever around; the staff called her ‘the invisible woman’. But that didn’t stop her and the President having the most vicious fight on the phone. According to Richard, last night’s had reached a whole new level. ‘It was full-on nuclear,’ he said.
Maggie listened, but her heart was not fully in it. Professional duty meant she had to hold back. She could not discuss the material she had glimpsed that day, supplied to her by Crawford McNamara’s assistant. What he had called ‘bimbo eruptions’ amounted to a pattern of behaviour by the President that would have had lesser men disciplined for sexual harassment or charged with sexual assault. A cleaner in the Residence had complained to her manager that the President had manoeuvred her into a guest bathroom and groped her between the legs. The manager had spelled out to the cleaner – no doubt at length and in detail – the seriousness of such a charge and the dire consequences if her allegation turned out to be false. Unsurprisingly, the woman had declined to take the matter any further.
Physically less intrusive, but actually more shocking, was the very discreet note that had been sent by the Dutch embassy and passed on to the White House via the State Department. It said the government of the Netherlands would not be making any formal complaint at this stage, but it wished it to be noted that the ambassador believed the President had kissed her inappropriately at a recent diplomatic reception, causing her humiliation and distress. It said that several witnesses had been present who would be willing to verify her version of events, so that it would be ‘wise to accept her complaint in good grace and to ensure nothing like it happened again’.
Maggie had been astonished by the sheer cheek of it. She could imagine the reaction of her old mentor, Stuart Goldstein. The chutzpah of the man is beyond belief, he’d have said. To do such a thing not just with a domestic servant, whose word he could brutally dismiss – such were the realities of Washington’s society – but with a foreign ambassador, and with people watching!
What made this worse was that even if this incident were to be made public, there was no guarantee it would inflict that much damage on him, still less destroy his presidency. Revelations about his conduct just as damning had emerged during the campaign. People like Maggie had made the mistake then of thinking they would be terminal to his candidacy. They had proved to be nothing of the sort. So why would this be any different? She suspected the Dutch knew as much, and that was one reason why they had kept their objection muted.
So she held back, listening to Richard’s chatter, chipping in now and then, the two of them talking about nothing, tiptoeing around both of the big subjects on Maggie’s mind.
Eventually,