This Extraordinary Thing.
Author's Note: I just felt like getting inside the heads of some of the characters in the film. I'll only be dealing with some of the storylines, and I've made the David/Natalie storyline the dominant one around which the others revolve. I also will change some of the stuff that happens in the film, so my story will be a mixture of things I've made up and things that happened in the film.
"The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed."-- Jiddu Krishnamurti
Chapter 1: Foundations.
"...rainfall totals have generally been well below average for most of the year, although there have been some exceptions with May, June and July being close to average. However, August and September have been exceptionally dry and October has seen well-below-average rainfall for most of the month. November is expected to continue the trend of the rest of the year, seeing one of the driest winters in recent history."
Natalie sighed as the weather report ended on the radio. She picked up her spoon, stirring her tea for the thousandth time and eyed the chelsea bun in front of her distastefully. She was thirsty but she didn't want to drink anything. She was hungry, but she couldn't face eating. After a morning trawling the London shops, her feet were screaming for a rest but suddenly all she wanted to do was get up and pace.
The truth was, shopping was okay - when she was in the mood for it - but the purpose for today's shopping spree was failing miserably. The reason it was failing was because of the three women sharing the cafe table with her who, unaware of their companion's black mood, were cheerfully making last minute wedding plans.
The shopping spree had a four-fold purpose. Natalie's next door neighbour, and part-time friend, had just started a brand new job and decided she needed a brand new wardrobe to go with it. To Natalie, this sent alarm bells ringing. Mia and Natalie weren't close friends but they did have things in common. Years ago, they had attended the same comprehensive school; they both possessed passionate, outgoing personalities; they lived in the same street, and they were both secretaries.
There, however, the similarities ended. Natalie had learned very quickly that Mia was addicted to men. It made her a font of wisdom on the male psyche but it also made her completely untrustworthy. She had a great sense of humour and she was a very good secretary but the emotional and romantic chaos she could wreak in the lives of people around her beggared belief. Natalie didn't have personal experience of this but she had seen it happen to mutual friends. Mia wasn't just addicted to men, she was addicted to unattainable men. The more off-limits a man was, the more she desired him.
Natalie found it hard to believe the woman she knew now had been a quiet, retiring girl in school, uninterested in the opposite sex and obsessed with reading. Mia not only had been boy-shy as a teenager - she'd been the class swot.
What had changed?
Natalie didn't know the answer to that. She and Mia hadn't been close in school either and they had gone their separate ways after school and only met up years later when Mia bought the house next door to Natalie's parents. Even then, aside from over-the-garden-fence conversations when she was visiting her parents, Natalie hadn't seen much of her for she had been living in another part of London entirely, with - as she had initially believed - the greatest boyfriend on the planet. She had come to her senses a while ago but it had taken a long time to work up the courage to pack her stuff, leave and move in with her parents while she looked for a new home and a new life. In the end, she had only found the strength when her boss had told her she'd be transferring to a new department in November in what was essentially a huge promotion. Her boyfriend had taken the news badly and she had accepted once and for all, the relationship was truly unsalvageable.
She didn't regret leaving for a moment, nor did she miss him. She had quickly found a new place to live but, needing interior redecorating, she wouldn't be able to move in until after Christmas.
Mia, having been determined to spruce up her wardrobe - which invariably meant she had her eye on some poor, unsuspecting man at work - decided that Natalie needed to come with her. They could do house shopping and clothes shopping at the same time. After all, Natalie was starting a new job too.
Mia had also dragged along a new friend she had quickly made in work, another secretary. Natalie's gaze lingered on the tawny-haired American for a moment. At first glance, Sarah was one of those uninteresting women who blended into the background and would never attract a spotlight. Natalie had very quickly realised that Sarah was shy, introverted and not really a very confident person. Mia had decided Sarah should 'power up' her wardrobe and introduced her to Natalie. The two had made an immediate connection and enthused, Sarah had asked if they minded if she brought a friend along who was getting married very soon, for last minute emergency shopping. Mia and Natalie hadn't minded at all, and Juliet had proved to be, if not younger than they had expected, then certainly bubbly, enthusiastic and likeable.
So here they were, sat in a cafe in the centre of London on a dry, cold November Saturday talking mainly about weddings while drinking excessive amounts of caffeine and eating unhealthy - but deeply addictive - food as their ankles resuscitated from the gruelling punishment that had been inflicted on them.
Normally, Natalie wouldn't have minded. In fact, she loved weddings but today was different. Today she was feeling out of place and disassociated from the conversation around her. Juliet was beside herself with excitement and nervous energy and her mood had been contagious. Sarah, apparently pining for some guy at work she couldn't have but who was, apparently the hottest thing Mia had ever seen, had been infected with Juliet's excitement and cheered up immensely. Mia, always the optimist, was as perky as ever but Natalie, for some reason, had picked up the nerves instead.
Now she was sat here, watching her fingers shake slightly as she stirred her tea, her stomach churning sickeningly as she tried not to think about Monday. Her first day at work.
For some reason, the new Prime Minister hadn't gone straight to Downing Street after winning the General Election. He had held off for a week. Rumours abounded within Westminster as to why, including that he had been fighting with his new security team about living in Downing Street at all and that the outgoing Prime Minister had sought extra time because of the peculiar living arrangements his family had required during his premiership. There was even the suggestion that the new Prime Minister had experienced a death in the family and needed to address that before officially taking office. The speculation was endless.
It was all a bit of a mystery - although that went hand-and-glove with the new Prime Minister who, despite years of being a frontbench politician and therefore in the limelight for quite some time, was so fiercely territorial about his privacy that the country at large considered him an enigma. The media had dug out all the usual information for the public - place of birth, schooling, how many siblings, and career history but there was surprisingly little known about the man himself. He also had a long-standing and very close circle of friends and family who revealed absolutely nothing about him either.
True to form, what the media hadn't been able to uncover, they had instead concocted. He wasn't the first bachelor Prime Minister in British history but he was already turning into the most debated. During the Election, a member of a powerful gay rights group had observed that it wasn't just women who found him good looking: the gay community had been drooling too. While on the campaign trail, the media had ambushed the then opposition leader over this revelation, asking him what he thought about being a gay icon. The response had been a spontaneous and genuine burst of laughter and a polite 'no comment'. The media had noticed his lack of insult and suggested he might even have been flattered. Press speculation had been running rampant ever since and the country was now obsessed with the new Prime Minister's sexual orientation.
And this was the environment into which Natalie was walking. She had been a Westminster secretary for years but she had only ever worked for junior politicians, relatively unknown backbenchers who fought for their constituencies and either didn't aspire to greater things, or were unsuccessful at advancing their careers. She had never dealt with any of the frontbench politicians - she'd barely been in the same room as them. The Palace of Westminster was a mini-city. There were miles of corridors and 659 MPs in the House of Commons alone, a figure that ignored the House of Lords as being a part of the Palace that a Commons secretary like herself could not enter. The place was enormous.
Now, someone had decided she should be plucked from blissful obscurity and dropped right in the middle of the political machine itself. She had no idea what she was getting into. She had no idea if she could cope. She had no idea what the Prime Minister would be like as a boss. In short, it was obvious what was going to happen.
"I'll be fucked, that's what'll happen."
"So, Sarah said to me: 'Mia, you can't make a woman who's not allowed to see her future husband the night before the wedding show off a garter just to check it's colour co-ordinated with his tie! Hey, Natalie, you've been really quiet, what do you think will happen?' Mia quoted in amusement. "Nice answer, Natalie."
Her gaze jerked up from her tea guiltily as she realised not only had she spoken aloud but she had revealed she hadn't been listening to the conversation at all. "Sorry," she said sheepishly. "Miles away."
"We noticed. Where were you?"
"The usual." Natalie admitted darkly.
Mia glanced at Sarah and Juliet. "This means she's either dreaming about stabbing her ex over and over or she's panicking about what the new Prime Minister will think of her."
"I am not!" Natalie said indignantly, feeling her cheeks flush.
"The new Prime Minister?" Sarah asked, obviously not following the conversation.
"Oh my!" Mia stared at her, then quickly glanced at Juliet before returning her gaze to Sarah's face. "I didn't tell you?"
"Tell us what?"
"Natalie here is a high-flyer. Not like the rest of us hard-working down-to-earth secretaries. She's a Westminster secretary, and her new job's at Downing Street."
Natalie glowered at Mia. She knew where this was going. Mia continued blithely, ignoring Natalie's warning look. "Which means, of course, her boss is going to be Britain's second most eligible bachelor."
"Nice," Sarah grinned. "You can tell us if he really is as charming and good looking in person as he seems on TV."
"Don't you already know? If you've been working at Westminster for years?" Juliet asked.
"No, never met him, always worked for backbenchers." Natalie sighed. "Never done any really important political stuff. Always did the piss-easy constituency work."
"How did you get the job?"
"Don't have a fucking clue," Natalie sounded nervous. "I asked for a department transfer and went for a promotion. They were advertising all these internal vacancies, including a couple of foreign office and treasury jobs. I didn't get the foreign office one, and didn't hear anything back from the treasury one, so I gave up. Next thing I knew, the Treasury was contacting me for interviews and afterwards, this woman - Annie - told me I'd got the job but it wasn't a Treasury or even Number 11 job, it was a Number 10 job."
"Wish jobs like that fell into my lap," Sarah sighed.
"It's not as exciting as it sounds. It's a skivvy job. I'm on probation. They were worried about my lack of frontbench experience. Annie wants to see if I can work under the kind of pressure they'll have there before I get a full secretarial role."
"Yes, but even so, that's good. Congratulations." Juliet said. Then she grinned. "Is that why you keep chewing your fingernails?"
Natalie shoved her hands under the table. "I don't chew my nails!"
"Honestly, Natalie," Mia said, a little impatiently. "Your boss is male, unmarried and unattached. Open a few of those buttons, use some of that cleavage. If you ever get into trouble, that chest of yours is guaranteed to get you out of it."
Natalie stared at Mia in disbelief. " You've got to be fucking kidding me! I'm not going to start flirting with the sodding Prime Minister!"
"I would," Mia said with a catlike grin and a dreamy gaze. "Who wouldn't?"
"Me!"
"Don't believe it for a moment." Mia leaned across to Sarah. "She already fancies him."
"Oh for fucks sake. I've never even met the man!" Natalie retorted hotly as Sarah collapsed in a fit of laughter.
"His face has been plastered all over the news for the past few weeks. Are you telling me you don't think he's good looking?"
"No!"
"She's blushing," Juliet observed, grinning. "Anyone else notice that? Or is it just me?"
"Oh, leave me alone." Natalie muttered in despair, feeling her cheeks get even redder.
"It's okay Natalie," Sarah said taking sympathy on her. "It's only a bit of harmless fun. Everyone knows the new Prime Minister is gay anyway. Let's face it: he's nice, he's charming, he's good looking - and he's not married. He's gay."
"Maybe he's just a workaholic?" Juliet suggested.
"Maybe he's a gay workaholic." Sarah shot back.
"Natalie should know, she has worked in Westminster for years." Mia added.
Natalie gave her an incredulous look. "For junior politicians. I've never dealt with a frontbencher in my life!"
"Yeah, but the news is always going on about the 'Westminster corridors of gossip'," Sarah pointed out. "So you must have heard something."
"Do you know how big Westminster is? It covers miles - literally. Gossip says anything!"
"Aha! So there is gossip!" Mia leaned forward. "Come on! Spill it!"
"What! No!" Natalie gesticulated emphatically. "No fucking way! I don't even listen to the gossip. It's usually not even sodding well true!"
"There we go!" Mia leaned back and folded her arms across her chest in satisfaction. She looked conspiratorially at Sarah and Juliet. "She means Westminster thinks he gay too."
"I said nothing of the sort!"
"You didn't need to," Mia smirked. "Does the Westminster gossip say anything different to the media gossip?"
Natalie glared stubbornly at her. But she wasn't going to discourage the conversation now - they'd all taken the bite. She groaned as they exchanged speculative looks. This topic was never going to end.
"The papers claim he's gay." Sarah said.
"Not all of them," Juliet argued. "Some say he had a long-term romance that ended badly a few years ago and that he's never dated since." She paused, and then grinned slyly, unable to resist adding the next comment. "Maybe he's just got a broken heart and he's waiting for an angel from heaven to come along and mend it?"
"You can always spot the one getting married. Her head's in Fairytale Land," Mia laughed. "A lot of papers just say he's married to his job. Which sounds to me like all he really needs is a good, hard..."
"Mia!" Natalie's cheeks were flaming again.
"What! Why do you keep trying to protect him? It's not like you've even met the man!" Her eyes twinkled slyly. "Or have you and just won't admit it? Why would that be, I wonder? Natalie, are you sure you don't fancy the Prime Minister?"
Natalie glared at her in mock indignation. "Don't be so fucking ridiculous, Mia. Like I keep saying, I don't fancy men I've never met!"
"Well I do." Mia retorted. "Brad Pitt, Derren Brown, Nathaniel Parker, Jude Law, Colin Farrell... God, Johnny Depp!"
"I'll go along with Johnny Depp," Sarah murmured, dreamily comparing his dark complexion with that of a certain Brazilian co-worker. She was rudely jerked back to reality as her phone rang. "'Scuse me," she blushed, grabbing her phone from her pocket and heading away from the table to answer it.
"Well I don't!" Natalie folded her arms across her chest defiantly.
"It's alright, Natalie." Juliet said with a broad smile. "I'm going to hold out hope of Prince Charming finding you, sweeping you onto his shining white stallion and taking you home to his castle. A politician hardly fits the bill."
"You're right," Natalie agreed with a grin. "He's the Prime Minister. Imagine the sleaze!"
"Exactly!" Juliet agreed. " He probably wouldn't know what polished armour is if it jumped up and bit him in the arse."
"A noble politician. It's practically a fantasy." Mia mused.
"Like Prince Charming?"
"We can dream."
"But not about sleazy, tarnished Prime Ministers." Juliet grinned.
"Not in a million years." Natalie agreed firmly. "Not in a million years."
There was a bustle in the corridors as the new Deputy Prime Minister barrelled through them. Not that this was unusual, the Palace of Westminster was a place that never slept; there were always people doing something, somewhere, involving bills, acts, parliamentary procedure, research, evaluation, debate, lobbying - or even just more down-to-earth and tangible things like rewiring the electricity, doing gas checks or redecorating and escorting public tours. Nothing ever stood still here, there was never time to breathe.
He pushed through a heavy oak door and the minute it closed behind him, he was forced to revise that assessment. Parliament was still officially dissolved and technically, that meant the country was without a Government until the Queen accepted the recommendations for a new one and officially reopened Parliament. There was only a certain period of time from the results of an Election in which a new Government was allowed to form and establish itself and, for this new Government, time was almost up.
Of course, the reality was that whether or not Parliament was dissolved, the wheels never stopped turning. What it affected was who was sat in the Cabinet Room at Downing Street, and whether Parliament was sitting or not. Currently - it was not, which meant, despite the business in the rest of Westminster, the two Chambers sat unused, waiting for the debates of the new Parliament to begin.
Scowling slightly, Alex scanned the Commons Chamber. The room was almost empty, the silence eerie after the noisy corridor he had just departed. Many visitors, when guided to the Chamber in which their futures were decided, were often stunned by how much smaller it appeared than on television. There wasn't even room for all 659 MPs to attend at the same time. During full sittings, only 427 could find a seat at any one time, the rest would be squashed on steps, or crowded around the bar.
Currently, there was only one other person in the room, a man standing at the dispatch box of the Opposition Leader, leaning on it as any member of the Shadow Cabinet would do when addressing the House during official debates. He looked like a man trying to adapt to the view of the Chamber from a new position he would spend the next 5 years using. There was only one problem with this image.
Alex sighed and headed down join him on the floor realising his suspicions were accurate as he got closer and could see his colleague's attention was fixed - rather nervously - on the second dispatch box on the opposite side of the table.
"So, all those people who care about such things have been digging out the list of Prime Ministerial firsts," he began conversationally.
"Uh-huh," was the non-committal reply.
"Apparently, the new premier is going down in history."
"Mmm."
"Yes. As the least enthusiastic Prime Minister to ever hold office."
A pair of pale blue eyes pierced him in mild disbelief. Alex grinned. "Aha! That got your attention."
"Funny." David shifted his weight uncomfortably against the dispatch box but made no effort to leave the Opposition Bench.
"But probably true. You have been slinking through these corridors like a man who lost the Election, and people have noticed." He eyed his old friend intently. "You didn't really expect to win, did you?"
"Not really, no."
"Despite all the Polls saying we were running away with it?"
"I don't trust Polls."
"Nobody trusts Polls, David. But sometimes they're actually accurate."
"Accurate Polls? Isn't that an oxymoron?"
"Apparently not this time," Alex studied him. "What's really bothering you about this?"
"It's.. um.." He hesitated, his gaze drifting back to the dispatch box on the opposite side of the table. "It's a lot further from here to there than I thought," he said at last.
"Well, let's see. " Alex walked across to the Government Bench, then turned and casually settled against the Prime Minister's dispatch box. "No, still two sword lengths. Just the same as it was before the Election."
David's expression was icy as Alex faced him across the table. Alex looked down and caressed the dispatch box that was beside him. "You know? I think this box is actually smaller than the one you're leaning against."
"Alex, you know as well as I do that they're absolutely identical."
"You're right. So tell me again why you're so afraid of it?"
"I didn't say I was afraid of it," David's voice was a mutter.
"Uh-huh," Alex deliberately mimicked his earlier non-committal attitude.
David sighed. The truth was, he was haunted. He was haunted by something an American writer had said many years ago, something he had found rather amusing when he first encountered it but which had now spent the past few weeks tormenting him continuously: 'Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.' The minute he stepped through the door to Number 10, something was going to go wrong. Horribly wrong. He knew it with the complete certainty of a condemned man that was already standing before the gallows.
It's all Laurence J. Peter's fault, he decided savagely, cursing the demon in his mind.
Alex chuckled softly, as if reading his mind. "There are worse things in life than becoming Prime Minister."
David threw his deputy another icy stare. "The Prime Minister is in charge of the Government decisions of the fourth richest country in the world, with a commonwealth trading heritage spanning the entire globe; not to mention the fact we're stuck in a dizzying downward spiral between the rock that's the EU and the hard place that is the US. Then, of course, we've got the domestic pressure of devolved national interests vying with Westminster in Scotland and Wales, and the peace process issues in Northern Ireland; When you include in that the education, business, emergency services, public health and standards of living of this country, to create a job that, if screwed up, could impact a hundred countries and millions of other jobs would you please tell me what's worse than becoming Prime Minister?"
Alex's jaw dropped for a moment as he contemplated that pessimistic challenge. However, he was nothing if not astute, and he had been playing the political game for decades. He perked up. "And this is why the Prime Minister has an entire Cabinet of loyal, efficient and dedicated Government Ministers to split the load."
David eyed the cheeky grin for a moment. "You're right," he groaned. "Being Prime Minister is bad - being Prime Minister and working with you lot is worse." He straightened. " On the other hand," he added in a slightly more upbeat tone. "If you annoy me, I can just reshuffle the Cabinet."
Alex laughed. "You can - but just remember we can impeach you from the backbenches anytime we want to."
"Why on earth are you Deputy Prime Minister?"
"And Foreign Secretary," Alex smirked. "And as I recall it's because you invited me to be. The Cabinet, Prime Minister, is entirely your fault - and speaking of which, I'm here to tell you it's time we christened the Prime Minister's office with our first meeting." He pushed away from the dispatch box and headed out of the Chamber towards the nearby office.
"I hate you."
"A few weeks ago you liked me. That's not your first official U-turn is it?"
David eyed the departing minister's back. It's true, he thought in despair as he reluctantly followed his laughing companion. And I now have proof - I'm crap, the Cabinet's pathetic, the country's doomed.
There really was nothing on earth more frightening than becoming Prime Minister. He was sure of it.