The first time Danny sleeps with his boss is late on the Night of the Tabloids. He thinks of it that way in his head, with capital letters, as if it's the title of a cheap black-and-white horror film. He's hidden the actual tabloids, and the cruel, damning stories in them, but of course it doesn't do any good. What's been seen can't be unseen.
When midnight rolls around, Kirsty excuses herself and goes home, having finally reached the limits of her tolerance for over-sauced pasta and crap DVDs. Scott, of course, is still up north, probably doing lines in the toilet at some overpriced bar, and too far away to be any help.
That leaves Danny alone with Jo, and to be honest, he's not quite certain what to do about her.
She's curled up in the corner of his sofa, eyes glazed and red from hours of wine and crying—not noisy sobbing, that's not like Jo, but a slow trickle of tears that she had tried to hide and he and Kirsty had tried to ignore. Her hair's a mess. He wants to wrap her in blankets and tell her everything will be okay, but he doesn't know if it really will be.
He sits down at the opposite end of the sofa to her.
"Jo?"
"Mmm?"
"It's getting late."
She turns to look at him, slowly, as if her head weighs too much for her neck. "Is it?"
"It is, and you need some rest. Come on. You can have my room."
The sheets on his bed aren't the cleanest, but Jo doesn't seem to notice. He's given her one of his T-shirts to wear, a frayed old thing that he got at a festival years ago, and it stops at mid-thigh on her, revealing a lot of slender, lovely leg that he really ought not to be seeing. He tucks the duvet round her, pats her awkwardly on the shoulder and leans over her to switch off the bedside lamp, and that's when she looks up at him and says, "Don't go, Danny."
Much later, he'll console himself with the knowledge that he tried to talk her out of it. He tells her now that she's upset, she's had too much to drink, she'll wish they hadn't. It isn't that he doesn't fancy her—he does, always has, even in the deepest depths of his infatuation with Kirsty—but he also knows her well enough to know that she's ashamed of her weak moments and makes up for them later with brittle anger. He doesn't want to be punished for doing the wrong thing while trying to do the right one. But even in this state, Jo is still a force to be reckoned with, and eventually his desire to please her wins out over his fear of making a mistake. He thinks of Kirsty again, briefly, but decides this has nothing to do with her. This is about him and Jo. And it isn't as if Kirsty has ever passed up sex with someone else on his account, is it? Definitely not.
Next thing he knows, he's in the bed too, and his brain is coming apart because his tongue is in MP Jo Porter's mouth and his hands are on her breasts, and she's not killing him, which is the outcome he would have expected under any other circumstances. She's kissing him back, and it feels like one of those thrilling, forbidden teenage wet dreams that always featured some completely inappropriate person—his maths teacher, or his best mate's sister, or the lady who ran the corner shop. Any minute, he thinks, he'll wake up in his old bedroom at home. Any minute...any minute...
Just as things are reaching a critical point, Jo blurts out, all in a rush, that it's the first time since she had the baby and she's sure it will be fine, but please can he be careful just in case? She offers an embarrassed little smile and Danny says of course, but on the inside he's thinking shit shit SHIT. He doesn't want to hurt her, but he also doesn't want to have to worry about hurting her. It's another layer of complication in a situation that's already so complicated he needs a map and compass to navigate it, and for a moment he considers just calling the whole thing off. But she looks so vulnerable, and she is so clearly trusting him with this information—which reveals, he thinks, a lot about what's been going on between her and Iain—that he can't bring himself to.
So he's as careful as he knows how to be, and it's not bad. In fact, it's pretty good, although considering he's gone without for even longer than she has, he's none too certain of his own judgment on the topic. Jo seems to enjoy it, and that's what really matters. Or so he tells himself after she's fallen asleep, one of her hands clasping one of his, as if she wants to make sure he won't leave when she's not looking.
He suspects that in the morning they won't talk about it, and they don't. Jo is drawn and shaky with hangover, and she spends a long time in the bathroom while he makes tea and toast in the empty kitchen. Danny deliberately leaves the television and radio switched off while they eat, wanting to protect her from the news for as long as possible. It's a futile effort, but it's all he can do.
Rain speckles the windows, and Jo says she had better get to her mum's house. She'll see him in the office later. Thanks for everything, she says, and leaves without ceremony.
It's not what he wants, but he thinks it's probably what he deserves.