By contrast with Karen and Beth's warmly glowing world of sexual and emotional satisfaction, Neil Haughton found himself once again alone at his office desk within the hallowed walls of the Home Office with his head in his hands. Everything was turning to dust in his hands, including his political career which was as doomed as was the government with nothing meaningful to counterbalance it.
After making a tidy pile in advertising, it seemed only natural to drift into politics as a related activity to enhance his career and to make some useful contacts. The party that he joined was as good as any other and was tipped to overthrow the existing government so it was good timing that an elderly MP of the cloth cap persuasion had conveniently died. His friendly overtures attracted attention from the behind the scenes movers and shakers and they had appreciated his zealous belief in the product he was accustomed to promote. His previous employment related at one move to his industrial speciality so he was a natural to become Minister of Trade and Industry after serving his apprenticeship as MP and duly demonstrating his party loyalty
By this time, he'd divined the cross-cutting pattern of shifting loyalties, ambitions and rivalries within the Houses of Parliament and his primary need was to back the right horse, politically speaking. It was for this reason that he formed useful friendships with the Prime Minister and with his hated rival, the Chancellor of the Exchequer with the kind of moral flexibility that outdid even the world of advertising. It enabled him to land the plum job as Home Office minister where his natural authoritarianism was given full play as par for the course.
Along the way, he acquired a necessary consort, the naturally aristocratic Georgia Channing, daughter of a Court of Appeal judge and naturally thrusting advocate in her own right in highly lucrative civil partnership cases. She also naturally fell into the related role as the government's hired legal gun.
"The PM thinks we make a great partnership George," he said one evening a long time ago in heartily congratulating tones as he watched himself in the mirror knotting his tie ready to go out to a cocktail do. George had smiled her enigmatic smile and kissed him on his cheek but when he offered similar compliments, she remained strangely silent which he assumed to be her tacit agreement with his point of view. It was only at a later date that George underwent a peculiar change of heart in her views. She finally blew up at him when he announced his perfectly sensible idea to curtail the irresponsible power of judges and unreasonably took the side of that infernal lesbian cop killer who'd fluked her way out of jail. The crowning humiliation was when she upped and left him and he gave way to an explosion of anger at the world in general. What was worse was when it came to his ears that she'd taken up with another woman, a social worker for God's sake.
After that, he attempted to expunge any consciousness of his ex-partner as if he'd put an offending file back into its closed steel cabinet. She only popped into his consciousness at a distance when she threw in her lot with Deed and Jo Mills as a most unlikely campaigner for wretched do-gooder causes. It was only natural that he withdrew colder and tighter into his work which consumed more of his waking hours than ever before. He needed to keep the lid on unruly disruptive forces seeking to overthrow the system. These ranged from criminals, Muslim terrorists and professional agitators of all shapes and descriptions, the last being the most intractable of all his enemies.
As he wiped the metaphorical sweat from his brow and poured himself a glass of mineral water, he had drawn satisfaction from his steady progress in getting a succession of security provisions onto the statute book. On the other hand, the judges had remained bonded together to make vexatious judgments that were in danger of encroaching on his progress. It was all too easy for trouble makers to cry foul with a Court of Appeal judgment and obstruct the process of government. His overriding drive was to keep everything buttoned down and zipped up so nothing could get out of control. What helped him most of all was that the tabloids and most of the quality press were keeping the country regularly on message about law and order so that the liberal press was a shadow of its former self.
All this had changed in a day as his sightless eyes gazed upon the neatly typed statutory instrument on the table that was now consigned to the wastebin of history. Its title as the ninety days bill was a positive genius as it allowed for those accused of terrorist crimes to be held without charge up to one day short of three months before a charge should be brought. It should have been a natural judging from the way the press had shaped public opinion. What he hadn't expected was opportunistic right wing libertarian opposition which was joined by the usual suspects in his own party so that the bill was ignominiously sunk in the division chambers. He had stalked out of the chamber under the accusing eye of the new prime minister, feeling sick at heart because he wouldn't recover from this irretrievable blunder. After all, he'd seen other ministers being ruthlessly dumped during the twelve years his party had been in power while he'd paid no attention to the rapidly disappearing non persons.
Added to his own personal disaster, he saw that the government was heading inexorably towards a slow motion car crash. The squabbling and intriguing amongst ministers had reached a new vicious level of intensity and the new prime minister hadn't got the grip his predecessor had had so that government was unravelling just when a financial crisis was starting to build momentum. In the depths of his worries that night, he saw that his days were numbered as a government minister, of the ministerial limousine and the civil servants might not be any longer his to command. The thoughts gave him the cold shivers and he tried to fight them off with positive actions and block off his emotions. It was, after all what he did best.
Finally, he threw all the papers into his briefcase and headed for the door. He'd earned his money today. It was late and he was tired as he drove in the busy traffic heading for his apartment.
A few cars further down the line, an anonymous man drove a red London double-decker on his last loop of his shift. He'd done nothing more than another working shift and he was thankful that he wasn't on the late shift when all the drunks and rowdies came out. He disliked them as they acted as if the bus ran on rails and wasn't carefully negotiated through the bumper to bumper traffic. His last pay increase was miserably inadequate and didn't match the steady increase in the cost of living. He heard the bell ring for the next stop ahead so he indicated to the line of traffic behind him. As he slowed, two cars nipped past him while the oncoming traffic was temporarily clear as well it might be with the rush hour traffic. Finally, a flashy black Mercedes zoomed past him and, having only just spotted the oncoming lorry, it cut in on him. The man jammed on the breaks suppressing curses just when he was due to pull up for the next stop. Standing passengers grabbed for the rails to stop falling over and were similarly complaining. Typical tosser driving that Merc, he thought indignantly to himself.
Neil Haughton was in a hurry to get home so he was already irritated by the bus lumbering along a couple of cars ahead of him. When it flashed its indicators to pull in at the bus stop, he cursed under his breath. His path was being impeded so that a load of plebs could meander round the countryside not knowing that people had places to go to and fast. He put his foot on the throttle, tooted his horn and just about cut through the narrow space left by a lorry coming straight at him upon which he was off and away clear of the rush hour traffic. He was all right, he thought to himself with a sense of slightly reviving satisfaction that at least a minor aspect of his life went well.
It was now spitting down with rain under grey and murky skies when Neil Haughton was driving through the suburb before his home. At was at this point when he couldn't help noticing a number of women walking along the pavement through not that he went out of his way to study such matters. His eye glanced casually past mothers manoeuvring push chairs along the pavements and he lingered disinterestedly on single women sashaying in their high heeled shoes and tight skirts. More to his age was a woman he studied whose trim body was shaped by a knee length skirt, long slim legs and an elfin haircut. This observation was helped by slow moving traffic moving along the one-way street past scattered parked cars. Ahead of him, a smart white Ford was parked in a lay by and out from the driver's seat stepped another attractive woman with long blonde hair. Her face lit up but to his regret this expression of pleasure was not destined for him. Neil Haughton was totally unprepared for the blonde to embrace the shorter haired woman and openly kiss her. He cursed and jabbed at his brake as his temporary loss of attention took him dangerously close to the car in front. Another two lesbians had paraded themselves before his eyes only to dash his hopes to the ground. He screeched past the white car and headed off for home in a thoroughly bad mood.
*****
"Thanks so much darling," said a slightly windswept and rain spattered Jo Mills to her lover, Jane Lancaster, with whom she'd been living for the last seven years. "The AA roadside recovery have only just set off to take my car into the garage. I've got a fair idea of how much it'll cost me but it won't break the bank."
"I'm glad to be around," came the nonchalant reply as Jane manoeuvred the car to head off in the other direction for home in the gathering darkness. Car breakdowns weren't welcome news and she was glad that Jo Mills was being calm about the whole deal.
"I'm so grateful you turned up when you did as I wasn't too happy being stranded this time in the evening. I could hardly hang a sign around me saying L for lesbian," Jo Mills responded in more animated tones.
Jane Lancaster laughed at her partner's droll witticism but couldn't work out how to cap that remark so she stuck to business.
"It took me ages to fix up cover for me to pick you up but I'm so glad I made it. It means that I won't be finishing late so the evening is all ours," she ended on a tender note.
Jo Mills was tired out from a day finishing the battle on her latest court case, having dumped her papers at her office before the annoyance at her car breakdown so she smiled sleepily and leant her head on Jane's shoulder. The long haired blonde smile affectionately back at the sight of her lover's curled up form with her neat blue suit jacket, trim skirt and neat black shoes. She looked so much in peace and Jane fondly remembered the way they had slipped into their life together. She'd got over her very first female love out of her system even after she'd come back to haunt her. Jo had miraculously shifted her base, discarded aspects of her personality that had penned her in and had been born to become Jane's lover. They were now here for the long haul. These sentimental feelings were ideal company as she steered the car through the darkness. Street lights flashed past kept up hypnotic visual repetition while the windscreen washers slapped out a lazy rhythm against the spatters of rain.
"We're home at last love," sang out Jane as she swung her car into the drive. Jo Mills murmured in satisfaction at the thought of being cared for and driven home. It reached into her deepest needs that had never been nurtured, certainly not her late husband nor John Deed's erratic presence nor awkward dates with other men in between.
"Where- where are we?" Jo muzzily murmured as she sensed the car come to a halt.
"We're back home. I'd carry you over the threshold but I'm knackered from a day at work," Jane answered tenderly as she kissed the other woman's cheek. This was what Jo wanted to hear in her warmed up soul and she stretched herself, realised that she had no need of her briefcase. She followed Jane through the front door of their elegant bungalow they'd bought a number of years ago to make a fresh start for them both. Jo gave way to automatic habit in worrying what to cook for them both as it was getting late when Jane intervened.
"Just relax darling. Let's phone through for a takeaway meal or else we'll be cooking and washing up afterwards all night. Let's take the weight off our legs and I'll pour us a drink," she said lightly. The way she slipped her arm round Jo's waist did the trick in overcoming her residual housewife guilt and made way for another more attractive suggestion.
"It's Friday night in a couple of nights time. It's enough time to recover and go to Chix?" Jo Mills answered, grinning at the thought of the burden being lifted from their shoulders.
"Of course. I love us going there and shaking it out on the dance floor together," Jane said, visibly savouring the prospect in advance.
"In that case, let me change into something drier and more comfortable first," Jo answered in a smirking tone of voice. She was staring boldly at her lover who was wearing a pair of tight black jeans and a loose fitting top which also showed off the best of her curves.
"Only if I help you," came Jane's irresistible reply. Following the older woman into their boudoir, Jane came up close to her lover and her hand started to softly caress all the delightful curves of her behind. Jo Mills sighed in satisfaction at the feel of their slowly rising desires. No other lover had thought to touch her like that but she knew that Jane loved that particular part of her body amongst others. Jane slowly started to unzip her skirt at the side and both women started to wonder what would come first, some spontaneous sex or the drink they'd been promising themselves or would both happen in no particular order, especially as the long haired woman's fingers started moving in underneath the skirt and touch her more intimately. Living with Jane had accustomed her to taking a relaxed attitude to life and being all the better for it.
*****
"You're weird. You're weird. You're weird." That was the pronouncement the two girls had thrown in Rose's face, starting from her double-barrelled name, her deliberate obscurity about her father and her strange opinions she held about everything that didn't fit in with this area of London. For all her attempts to camouflage herself, she didn't talk the way the other girls talked and it disturbed them. Weird, weird, weird, the word echoed round in Rose's mind from out-front insults to muttered asides. One evening, Rose settled herself down in her bed in the soft pink glow of the sidelights, next to her favourite fluffy toys. When she began to think about it, she rather liked the texture of the word, something she had gleaned from both her parents without them being aware of their specific influence. It made her feel special, set apart, different, slightly mad in a reassuring and intriguing fashion. She began to ask herself what was wrong with weird? It made her sound interesting and different- like Mummy and Nikki. They couldn't help being like they were and she knew that she couldn't help but follow in their footsteps. In her mind, she started to separate out the way others might see her and the way herself. She hadn't really thought this way before and this revelation really cheered her up. She resolved there and then to stick to who she was. She belonged. Nothing could take away her home and who she was. It was that easy. She never forgot that revelation.
In any case, her friend with whom she shared jumping cracks on flagstones also enjoyed her fancies as well. She hugged her fluffy toy and settled down for the night just as mummy turned the light off and said 'night night' in that lovely comforting voice or was it Nikki's turn tonight. She knew that she was all right and Mummy and Nikki's female friends who came round to visit them from time to time smiled down warmly and approvingly at the bright little girl. She knew where she was headed and if others didn't see that, it was their misfortune, not hers.