One thing Charles did like about his office was the quiet. He welcomed the solitude he found in there. Outside of the office, people constantly had questions for him, urgent matters they simply had to discuss. Charles never shied away from his duties, always embracing them with dignified sincerity which made him popular amongst the people of England. But he liked that, for half an hour each morning, Faye would intercept his phone calls and he could be truly alone with only the newspapers for company.
Faye would usually highlight key pages which he should read. Whilst Charles was grateful for her zeal, he did sometimes worry that she had little semblance of a life beyond the duties of her job. He had once tried to make idle small talk about her plans for the weekend but the poor woman had appeared so uncomfortable that he chosenever to attempt it again. He would gently berate her if she worked late or emailed him on the weekends but it fell on deaf ears. Elaine would point out when he raised his concerns to her that it was not that she was working too hard, but rather that he lacked the required level of dedication.
In those moments, where Elaine would insinuate that Charles did not work hard enough, he would feel the anger rise up inside him to the point where he had to leave the room for fear of boiling over. Charles had all but forgotten who he was, so consuming was the role of Deputy Prime Minister. He barely had a moment to himself. His circle of friends had thinned to the point where it barely existed, as people tired of his lack of availability. Evenwhen he was available, his security always had to go and survey venues first and often accompany him on trips, which didn’t go down well when he was merely attending a friend’s child’s birthday party. If Charles worked any harder, he would completely fade away and he was determined not to lose himself. He clung on to the tiny shreds of his personality which remained with an intense ferocity.
Recently, things had been even more intense after there was a terrorist threat made on Downing Street. It turned out to be a hoax but now Charles was constantly monitored by his security. A part of him felt sickened to be a target. He valued his life as much as any man and felt foolish to have so openly put himself out there, to become a public figure. But this had never been his dream. His natural charisma and charm had just made him a perfect candidate and those around him who were supposed to love and nurture him had modelled him in their desire to satiate their own needs.
Sighing, Charles shook his head and tried to shake away the angry thoughts which were brewing like a storm. He took a bite from his bagel and began chewing on it as he shifted through the first of his papers. He hadn’t always felt this bitter. It was only recently that he had begun to think about things differently. He loved his job, he loved being a voice for the people, but his heart didn’t feel in it anymore. He felt numb. He was only too aware of the cause of his despondency but he refused to acknowledge it. He hoped that if he ignored the problem it would go away but each day felt a little bit harder than the one before, the lines around his eyes growing deeper, the shadow over his heart darkening.
The first paper offered nothing unexpected. There was a brief mention of the latest arguments brewing about changes to NHS funding which Faye had dutifully highlighted. Charles drank his coffee, the warm fluid as dark as his furniture giving him a welcomed increase in energy levels. Caffeine was his only vice these days. As a young man he had smoked and drank in frighteningly large quantities, but these were attributes which were not befitting a man in power and so he was forced to stamp them out to the point where it was never talked of, like some dirty illegitimate secret. He couldn’t even enjoy a whisky on a plane or at a gala event. Elaine handled his life with such military precision that he never even had the opportunity to be tempted. He remembered fondly how she had gone away for a spa weekend, and home alone he’d drank and smoked to his heart’s content, feeling like a naughty teenager which added to the excitement of it all. The day before her return Simon had helped him air his house and destroy all the evidence. Charles had really enjoyed that weekend.
The first tentative rays of morning sunlight snaked their way across the carpet lining Charles’ office. Aware that time, ever the inpatient mistress, was fading fast, he began to shift through his pile of papers with increased vigour. With his coffee cup now drained, Charles felt renewed and alert. He consumed the remainder of his bagel as he scanned the third paper in the pile before reaching down to pick up the fourth and usually final paper. To his surprise, a fifth paper was concealed beneath the last of the broadsheets, a paper he did not normally read. Bemused, Charles picked up the copy of The Shadow, a notorious tabloid which revelled in stories of smut and scandal. He wondered if perhaps Faye had accidentally placed it there; maybe it was the paper she normally read and had bought it with his own papers and merely forgotten to remove it from the pile. But that wasn’t like Faye; she rarely ever made a mistake. If she had put the paper on his desk there must be something in it she felt he should see.
Charles riffled through the pages of The Shadow but didn’t spot any articles highlighted for his attention. He furrowed his brow in both frustration and annoyance. It simply wouldn’t do for him to be seen reading a tabloid newspaper. He wondered what on earth Faye was playing at? Determined to believe that the presence of the paper was deliberate, he began reading through it once more, this time in more detail. He found himself blushing at the young woman topless on the opening pages; it was so brazen and un-ladylike. He felt that it cheapened sex when women would remove their clothes for money; Charles preferred the mystery of it all and the act of seduction itself.
The second read through still failed to offer any explanation for the paper being on Charles’ desk. Exasperated, he put it down, his hand hovering over the phone on his desk, wondering whether he should call Faye and ask her what, exactly, he was supposed to be looking at.
He cast his eyes over the page which was currently spread open across his desk and he felt his heart momentarily stop beating in his chest. There it was, small and seemingly insignificant, tucked up in the far corner. To everyone else it was barely newsworthy, but to Charles, it was everything. He re-read the same section of the paper over and over again, not quite believing the words which lay before him in stark black and white.
Tears began to gather behind his tired blue eyes and Charles felt his throat throb and ache with the exertion of suppressing a sob. He ran a shaking hand across his face in an attempt to calm himself before reading the words again; trying to absorb the information they held, trying to accept the reality of it.
22-year-old Lorna Thomas of Kent was found dead in her car in the early hours of this morning. Police have ruled that she committed suicide.
The statement was so clinical, so simple. To the world, Lorna Thomas was no-one, just another tragic young death. Her suicide was so inconsequential in the grand scheme of national news that her death didn’t even warrant the inclusion of a picture. Charles was grateful for the omission of her image. If she had been there, gazing up at him from beyond the grave, the news would have been all the harder to bear. Charles reached down and let his fingers rest over the words. They lingered there longingly, as if wishing the subject would somehow manifest herself right there in the office.
Charles closed his eyes and tried to forget where, and who he was. He tried to picture Lorna’s face, her delicate features ever the image of perfection. The thought of her gone was overwhelming, Charles began to feel as though he were drowning, like he couldn’t breathe. Desperately he pulled at the tie that hung around his neck like a noose, loosening it and alleviating some of his tension. There, in the privacy of his office he let his head fall in to his hands and released one solitary tear for the dead girl. It was all he could risk doing whilst at work, beneath the scrutiny of his staff. He needed to be alone; he needed time to think,