Chapter 7
I want to hurry home to you
The next morning, one of Nicola's staff does as he's asked and has a chat to a grieving family about how they might feel if the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland came for a visit. They agree, and after a long conversation with Chris, who made the phone call, Gilly is assured that they actually are alright with Nicola visiting. Malcolm offers to join her on the nearly three hour car ride to North Hykeham, but she declines, saying this is something she needs to do alone. Malcolm, knowing his wife, doubts that's the real reason but leaves her to it. He pecks her lips, tells her he loves her, and smoothes a hand over her arse as she peels away from him into her official car. She is clad in jeans today, attempting not to cause undue formality at a time of grief. Her three hundred pound Joseph jumper and neat black Burberry trench coat might tip the whole equation in a 'posher than usually seen in North Hykeham' direction, but Malcolm does not comment on this. Nor does he comment on the excessively large box of pastries she's had one of her staff collect from Dominique Ansel - not the patisserie, but the chef's own home.
Malcolm potters back into the kitchen. Katie is chewing thoughtfully on a piece of toast, her back to the solid marble counter and dependable looking navy joinery.
"She okay?" Katie asks.
"Doubt it." Malcolm responds, filling the kettle.
"Dad called." She says with no intonation from which an inference could be drawn.
"Yeah?" Seems to be the most neutral response Malcolm can muster.
"Asked how she is."
"What'd yeh say?" The Scot is focussed on making tea - too focussed.
"Said she's fine. Basically. Little banged up."
"Good." There is a long pause. Malcolm knows Katie wants to say something, is hesitating. He's not in the mood to prompt her to talk about her total fucking Tory nuisance of a father.
"He didn't really sound worried." She says after a long silence. "Like, he was trying to, but I could tell he wasn't really. I get that they've been divorced for ages, but she's still the mother of his fucking children, isn't she?" Malcolm looks at her levelly, assessing the amount of damage this revelation has caused his step-daughter. The Scot reaches over and squeezes her shoulder.
"Sometimes people are shit, KitKat."
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's all it is." She pushes off the bench and leaves Malcolm to his thoughts. He has always been surgically attached to his phone, but today he is even more so, worrying the little device between his fingers in case Nicola calls in a panic. He is fully expecting her to, and is surprised that she doesn't until after she has met with the Pattersons.
"How'd yeh go, pet?" His tone is gentle. Malcolm has exceeded his quota of gentility for the year in the last three days. He's worried his vocal chords will seize up from the unfamiliarity of it.
"They've asked me to speak at Erica's funeral." She says, and she sounds held together, Prime Ministerial. Malcolm, correctly, reads this as Nicola being right on the verge of sobbing. Which she proceeds to do for the next five minutes. Malcolm, cold as ice and more lethal than every James Bond combined is always rendered incapable of functioning when he hears her crying. Not being able hold her - being three hours away from her - is an unfair kind of torture.
"I'm okay. I'm okay." Nicola says, more a directive than a true statement.
"I know yeh are, darlin'." Malcolm soothes, feeling utterly powerless being so far away from her when she needs him.
"I'm not, though, am I?"
"You are fucking absolutely not." He agrees. "And tha's pretty fucking understandable, actually." The Scot with the poison tongue wishes he could take her in his arms and let her cry against him, let her work it through her system. He is tempted to jump in his own car and meet her half way. It's still an hour and a half of separation, but it's less, and less is all he can ask for right now. He dismisses this idea. It's illogical, and Malcolm prides himself on being able to maintain his logic, even at moments like this. So he continues to patiently listen to his other half relaying the conversations she's had with the Pattersons, the success of the cakes, the awards Erica won at school. Malcolm listens quietly as Nicola talks through the encounter - accepting that she is more talking herself through it than him. He finds himself, as he almost inevitably does, in the kitchen, staring into the pantry. Malcolm needs something to occupy himself while she is travelling back. He doubts she'll stay on the phone to him the entire trip, and even Malcolm can't decide whether it would make him feel better or worse to have her wittering incessantly in his ear for three hours, too far away for him to stop her mouth with his own.
"Anyway, what are you doing? Tell me something that isn't about people I got killed." Malcolm winces at the desolation in her tone, and wishes there were something he could say to her. He wants to tell her that this outcome was something Erica Patterson, highly trained SO1 officer of the Metropolitan Police, would have been prepared for even if Nicola herself was not. But he doesn't, because hearing it won't make this any better for her. It will make her fractious with him, and he knows that right now she needs him, needs him to be on her side. Nicola has never had to make one of those enormous scary calls that most of her predecessors have. She's never sent people to war, or authorised bombings, or brought home troops despite ongoing local instability. She's fundamentally unsuited to being the arbiter of life and death. Malcolm doesn't tell her any of this. Instead he says casually, "Well, darlin', righ' now I'm wandering abou' the kitchen trying to think of something t'cook."
"Ah." Nicola says, and she sounds suitably distracted, and he is glad.
"Any requests?"
"Whatever you're in the mood to cook." She says softly, and he thinks he can hear a level of comprehension in her voice - she knows he wants something time consuming and fiddly - or something that he can make time consuming and fiddly. He wants to lose himself to cooking the way she wants to lose herself to sleep, but won't be able to in the car. She can hear him pushing jars of spices about the pantry, hear the fridge opening and closing. She closes her eyes, content to listen to him potter for a moment, conjuring the image of him in the kitchen.
"Malcolm?" She says at barely more than a whisper.
"Yeah, pet?"
"I love you."
Malcolm stills. "I love you, too."
"Even though I'm a hopeless, frumpy waste of skin and oxygen?" She says, about eighty percent teasing.
Malcolm smiles. "Especially because you're a hopeless frumpy waste of skin. And just for the rec'rd, I don't think I've ever said waste of oxygen." Nicola laughs through her nose. "Oxygen thief, maybe."
"Arsehole." Nicola mumbles. Malcolm can hear the smile on her lips, and the note of normal Nicola that is creeping back into her, slowly returning her to a Technicolor version of his wife rather than the black and white one he's been met with for the last two days. "Alright," she says with newfound resolve. "I'm going to start on the Cabinet papers so fucking Dan doesn't spend all of Tuesday drowning me in his fucking patronising faux sympathy." Malcolm smiles to himself at the irritation, the grit in his wife's voice.
"That's mah girl." He smiles wickedly.
"Get off the phone and make me dinner."
"Said the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland." Malcolm quips.
"...Yes, actually." Nicola says, bemused.
"Read yer fucking Cabinet papers. Lizzie's probably already finished them and she's basically a fossil."
A snort of laughter bursts from Nicola's nose, and she shakes her head. "Bye, darling."
"See you soon, pet."
Malcolm has settled on his menu and is about to set out for the SimplyFresh in St James's Park when Ben wanders into the kitchen in search of a drink.
"Ey, mate." Malcolm says, doing a quick calculation. "How'd yeh feel about coming for a walk to the shops with me?" Ben, correctly, senses that the only answer he is able to give is "Okay."
They walk the half mile to SimplyFresh, dodging the household staff's offers to pick anything up Mr Tucker might need. Malcolm demurs each one, saying he needs to stretch his legs anyway, and drags Nicola's hulking man-child along in his wake.
They chat about rugby on the walk, Malcolm trying to relax Ben more than anything, trying to make sure he doesn't double back before they get to the supermarket.
"D'you want anythin', Ben?" Malcolm asks as he makes a beeline for the meat.
Ben shrugs, then peels off and returns with a can of Irn Bru. Malcolm almost comments on him drinking the second national drink of Scotland, but leaves it be. His relationship with Nicola's elder son is so tissue thin that the comment would probably make Ben swap it for a Pepsi. Additionally, the fridge is stocked with Fanta. Malcolm doesn't know why that isn't sufficient sugary sustenance for Nicola's second youngest. But now that he has Ben trapped by a can of soft drink, he makes the intention of Ben's presence on the supermarket trip known.
He does not look at the teenager while he talks, concentrating on which packet of mince looks best. "Listen, Ben, I know you prefer yer dad t'yer mum - and tha's fine, righ'? But go easy on yer mum for a bit, alrigh'? She's been through a fuckin' ordeal and you know wha' she's like - a normal ordeal is a five minute presser." He turns to Ben now. The teenager has been staring at the back of the Scot's head intently. "Alrigh'?"
Ben shrugs. "Fine."
"Good lad." Malcolm says, moving off in search of onions and potatoes.
Ben trails him to the veg section. "I never really got you guys." He says, offhand, without judgement.
"Honestly, mate, neither have I." He puts a selection of potatoes in his basket. "Sometimes it's better not to question things, yeh know what I mean?"
"Not really."
"If somethin' works sometimes yer best just to leave it be."
Ben drops it, bored of the topic, still not a hundred percent sure what didn't work about his parents' relationship and why things between his mother and Malcolm are materially different in any way. They don't talk any further for the duration of the expedition, but Malcolm feels he's achieved all he set out to.
Back at Number 10, Malcolm walks into the kitchen and finds the other children already assembled around the kitchen table, the TV on.
"Hey, Malc." Ella says, standing and kissing his cheek. It's the first time he's seen her all day. He squeezes her, remembering when he almost ruined her education to avoid some bad publicity and feeling a familiar stab of guilt for it.
"Anyone want t'help with dinner?"
"Yeah, what do you need?" Katie says, raking her hand through her hair in a way that is so strikingly her mother Malcolm almost freezes.
"Josh, what d'yeh reckon's simple enough for yer sister not t'fuck up?" Josh laughs and Katie glares.
"Oi! I'm on your side, you prick!" She exclaims and throws a dirty tea towel at him. It's still damp with whatever the children have mopped up. Malcolm's eyes flash wickedly and he and Katie share the kind of smile reserved for long-time co-conspirators.
"Okay, Josh, can you supervise Katie makin' the brownies?" He asks, and the teenager grins at the chance to boss around his eldest sister.
"Is there anything I can do?" Ella asks. Ella is excellent in the kitchen, having spent hours at Malcolm's heels from the age of sixteen, and Josh has acquired an almost equivalent level of skill. Malcolm trusts Josh to keep dessert under control.
"Could you sort out the pastry for me, pet?"
"Sure." She agrees, and heads to the walk-in pantry for flour. She makes it from memory, and even though she isn't, and he knows she isn't, Malcolm feels like she's his own daughter.
After a few minutes, Malcolm is surprised by Ben asking "There anything I can do, Malcolm?" He thinks he might be imagining it.
"Um, yeah. Course." Malcolm sets him to chopping the veggies, and realises he has almost outsourced all of the cooking. Maybe they could open a cafe...
When Nicola walks in she looks exhausted, but has painted a smile onto her lips for the children's sake. Her eyes widen when she finds everyone assembled in the kitchen.
"Hi, darlings." She says, kissing heads and cheeks of her respective children, before all but flopping into Malcolm's chest. He hooks his arms behind her and rests his head on top of hers, kissing her hair.
"You righ'?" He mumbles, below the hearing volume of Nicola's chattering offspring. She nods against him, but he can tell the answer is a resounding 'no'. She pulls back from him and drapes her coat over the back of one of the empty chairs at the kitchen table.
"What's for dinner?" Nicola asks, hoisting herself into her normal spot - the counter to the left of the stove. In their pre-Premiership residence, it was the right-hand side of the stove. She has never given much thought to what prompted the change. Probably nothing more sinister than the placement of canisters on the bench.
"Surprise." Malcolm says, leaning up for her lips. She obliges, settling her hands around his face.
Malcolm doesn't ask her about the day with the children there. She doesn't usually talk about work with them, sometimes with one of them at a time, but never with the whole group, and now isn't the time to start. So he leaves it, and attends to dinner.
Malcolm presents her with too much food, roast vegetables, mashed potato, and Bridie pies. She eats it all, irrationally starving. For dessert they have ice cream with brownies that are still warm from the oven. Nicola is immensely glad that this time around she married a man who can cook, and makes a mental note to ask him how he got her children to assist in the endeavour. Lord knows she never had any luck on the few occasions she attempted to involve the children in the cooking while they were young.
The evening is, overall, entirely pleasant, even though the day has been enormously taxing on Nicola. Malcolm takes her warm participation in the family dinner as a sign that she's alright. Seeing this, Malcolm begins to relax into the idea that she is home, he did not lose her, even though he came far, far too close.