Manifesto - chapter 12/?
First off, I'm sorry it's taking me so long to update stuff. I'm super busy with work and now getting over a severe bout of Covid, so I'm pretty wiped out
Last time, Belle had been working with Sutherland on a consultation and trying to ignore her massive crush on him. Here's what happened next
[Ao3 link]
-
Sutherland tapped his pen on the papers in front of him, staring ahead and seeing nothing. His day had started well. A call with the US President had secured bilateral talks, a visit to Washington in October, and the chance of a trade deal. He and the Business Secretary, Sir Frederick Knight, had met with a delegation from India just before lunch to discuss a deal on vehicle manufacturing, and there had been a particularly rousing session of Prime Minister’s Questions, where he had scored some important points against the Opposition. He had been looking forward to a relatively quiet Wednesday evening in Downing Street, a time to take a breath and think about the upcoming election campaign. And now this.
“Do the press know?” he asked.
Anna was seated on the couch to the left of his desk, legs crossed and a folder of papers on her lap.
“Not yet,” she said. “But it’s only a matter of time. This kind of scandal - difficult to keep a lid on it, no matter how hard the firm may try. Especially if they go into liquidation, as we expect. It’ll get out in the next couple of days, one way or another.”
Sutherland nodded irritably, pen tapping faster until he lost his grip. It whirled out of his hand, spinning across the desk before dropping to the rug with a soft thump. He leaned forward with a sigh, putting his elbows on the desk and running his hands over his face.
“So let me get this straight,” he said, through his fingers. “Emerald Holdings plc, one of the biggest fucking group of companies in this country, is about to head right down the toilet and take all its subsidiaries, thousands of employees and innumerable suppliers with it?”
“Yes,” said Anna. “Although it’s more like tens of thousands of employees. Most here, some in distribution centres abroad. There were a lot of subsidiaries.”
“And the rumour is that its pension fund has been looted by a person or persons unknown but likely to be one or more of its fucking board and it can’t even pay its staff the redundancy they’re owed, never mind their pensions?”
“You were listening to me, then. I thought you’d zoned out.”
“Fuck it all!” Sutherland dropped his hands, pushing back from the desk and almost jumping to his feet. “Where exactly were the fucking auditors when all this was going on?”
“A question the FRC, as regulator, will no doubt be asking.”
“Yeah, well I want their bloody Chair on the phone right now!” he snapped. “There’ll be a Select Committee hearing as a fucking minimum and she’s gonna need to have a bloody good explanation for why this has been allowed to happen!”
“Sir Frederick is speaking to her now to request an immediate investigation.”
“Request?” he snapped. “She’d better bloody do it! What the bloody hell is the FRC there for, if not to prevent this kind of thing?”
“No doubt she’ll see the urgency,” she said, her tone calm. “I thought we might give her a few hours to make some enquiries before you speak to her. She’ll need to speak to the head of whichever firm was auditor, for a start.”
“Good,” he said, with asperity. “I don’t care if she has to pull the wanker off his bloody yacht, I want some answers. How can this have been allowed to happen? Were they doing their job in scrutinising the accounts, or was it all sewn up on some bloody golf course somewhere?”
“Sir Frederick told me he’d be asking the same questions.”
He grunted approval and began pacing back and forth across the room, running an agitated hand through his hair.
“So we’re going to have to find the redundancy payments, in the first instance,” he said grimly. “How much are we talking?”
“Tens of millions, at best,” she said. “A conservative estimate would be £87 million. That’s not the main problem, though.”
“No,” he said, stopping abruptly. “They were the Government’s biggest contractor. Which means a whole bunch of projects are in jeopardy, right?”
“Some of which were already running over budget.”
“Jesus fucking Christ!”
“Not to mention the knock-on effect that this will have on Emerald’s own suppliers,” she added. “If they fail, it’s likely we’ll see hundreds of SMEs fail with them. We’re talking a potential loss to the wider economy getting into the tens of billions.”
A sudden, dreadful thought came to him, and he turned swiftly to face her.
“Arendelle?” he asked urgently. “The defence contract?”
Anna winced.
“They’ll be affected,” she admitted. “Too early to say what impact it’ll have. I suggest getting Sir Frederick to speak with their CEO to see how this affects their long-term plans for Avonleigh.”
Sutherland groaned, letting his head roll back.
“Just what we need in fucking election year!” he growled. “I’d hoped to pick up that constituency! Where’s the Chancellor?”
“Getting briefed by his aides,” she said. “I’ve suggested you meet at nine p.m. when we’ve got a firmer idea of the impact and he’s had a chance to crunch the numbers. Projects are going to have to be delayed, some scrapped altogether, I expect. I think we need to prepare the electorate.”
Sutherland shook his head, hands resting on his hips and his shoulders hunched. His tie felt as though it was trying to choke him, and he tugged at the knot irritably, tearing it from around his neck and flinging it on his desk. Pushing open the top two buttons of his shirt seemed to let him breathe again, and he flopped onto the couch next to Anna.
“I’d been hoping for some good news stories to carry us through to polling day,” he said quietly.
“We’ll do our best,” she said. “Dealing firmly and decisively with a crisis can play well, remember.”
Sutherland pulled a face. A vision of Belle French floated into his mind, her blue eyes shining with anger and passion as they looked up at him. He shoved the image away.
“Well, we’re going to have to make some difficult decisions,” he said. “Something tells me it’s gonna be a long night.”
“I ordered coffee.”
“Good.” He ran his hands over his face again. “Did you speak to the Press Office?”
“They’re working hard on some lines to take. I thought we’d ask Sir Frederick to do the morning media rounds.”
“Good. That’s good.” He let his head roll back against the cushions with a sigh. “We need to find the least worst way to deal with all this.”
“We’ll do our best,” she said. “But whatever you decide, there’s a sizeable amount of shit heading towards the nearest fan.”
“Best start passing around the fucking umbrellas, then,” he said gloomily.
-
Belle rolled her shoulders, reaching for the glass of wine on the table in front of her. She had just closed up the library following the Friday book club, and Merida had invited her to go for a drink at the local pub, The Miner’s Arms. Leroy had joined them, staring glumly into his pint as though he was due to face the gallows the next day. Belle nudged his arm gently, making him look up.
“I’m sorry Astrid couldn’t make it tonight,” she said. “I thought she was on early shift this week.”
“She had to cover for someone,” he said gruffly. “Working herself into the ground at the moment. That Miss Blue is a tyrant.”
“I’m sure Astrid can stand up to her,” said Belle. “She’s nice, but she’s not a pushover.”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t like leaving ‘em short-staffed,” he said. “Says the patients lose out. She’s gonna make herself ill working all hours. An angel, that’s what she is.”
Merida took a slurp of her pint and banged the glass on the table, making Belle jump.
“Man, would you just bloody ask her out, already!” she complained. “If I have to look at the besotted expression on your face one more time I’m gonna puke!”
“I am not besotted!”
“You are head over heels in love with the woman!”
“Yeah, and I don’t stand a chance with her!”
“Well, not if you just sit there and never say anything!”
Leroy opened and closed his mouth.
“I’m - I’m preparing!” he insisted, fingers splayed in the air in front of him.
“Preparing for what? Dying alone?” Merida snatched up her beer again. “By the time you psych yourself up to it you’re both gonna be in a nursing home!”
“Shut up!”
“If you don’t ask her out I’m gonna do it for you.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“Alright, cut it out, you two,” said Belle wearily. “Merida, stop teasing him.”
“He’s driving me insane!”
“Then let’s talk about something else,” suggested Belle. “How’s work? You said you were going to ask for a raise today. How did it go?”
Merida snorted, shaking back her red curls.
“I got a load of bloody flannel about how much I was appreciated and what a contribution I made to the team, and how they’d love to give me a raise but the company wasn’t in a position to do it,” she said. “It’s this bollocks with Emerald plc going tits up. You see it on the news this morning?”
Belle nodded, taking a drink, and Merida pulled a face.
“Major Government contractor goes down the drain, it affects a lot of businesses,” she said. “I’ll be lucky to have a bloody job, at this rate.”
“The Business Secretary was on the radio this morning saying that they’re trying to limit the impact as much as they can,” said Belle. “Don’t ask me what that means in practice, though.”
“Probably that they’re gonna cut spending elsewhere,” said Merida. “Usually does. It’ll be the least well-off that suffer, you mark my words. God forbid they make the greedy bastards responsible for this pay, right?”
Belle opened her mouth to respond, but her phone buzzed, cutting her off. She picked it up as Merida took a long swallow of her beer, swiping the screen to view the email that had popped up.
“A message from Ella Deville-Waters about the consultation,” she said, scanning the email header. “At last, I was wondering when we’d hear something.”
“That the posh blonde woman I saw on the news the other day?” asked Merida.
“Yes. Under-secretary for Education. Good sense of humour. You’d like her.”
“She’s a Tory,” said Merida, with a note of disdain.
“She doesn’t have horns and a tail,” said Belle impatiently. “She’s nice.”
“She can be as nice as she wants, I’m still no’ bloody voting for her.”
“Well, neither am I, I’m just working with her, that’s all.”
“Aye, that’s how they worm their way in.” Merida took a drink. “Like Sutherland.”
“He hasn’t wormed his way anywhere,” said Belle, feeling her cheeks heat a little. “I haven’t spoken to him in weeks, and I doubt I will again.”
She opened the email, brows drawing down as she scanned the contents. Shaking her head, she read it again.
“They’re pulling the plug,” she said in disbelief.
“Huh?” Merida put down her drink.
“The consultation!” Belle waved the phone at her. “They’re pulling the bloody plug. Listen. “Given the dramatic impact that the failure of Emerald plc will have both on Government finances and the resources within the Civil Service, we are unable to commit to additional spending at this time. It is therefore with great regret that we must postpone any further development of the Shaping a Stronger Society policy until after the election.”
“Oh, shit.” Leroy winced. “Sorry, Belle, I know you were giving that your all.”
Belle shook her head, frustration and anger welling up inside her.
“I can’t believe he’s doing this!” she said, and threw up her hands. “Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I can believe it! Stringing people along with empty promises is what politicians do! I guess I’m just surprised he bothered to pretend an interest in the first place.”
“The email said they postponed it,” said Leroy. “Maybe it’s not the end. After the election—”
“After the election he’ll have moved on to the next shiny new vote-grabbing bollocks,” put in Merida. “Tax breaks for all his city mates or hunting licences for posh people to shoot immigrants, or something. That’s if he doesn’t get kicked out by Labour, of course.”
Belle slumped in her seat, reaching for her wine and feeling as though she wanted to cry.
“I actually thought I had a chance to make a difference,” she said heavily. “What an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot,” said Leroy sharply. “You did what you could. You got the most powerful man in the country to fucking sit down and listen to you. That’s not nothing.”
“And you can make everyone else listen, too,” added Merida. “Talk to the press. Get the people on your side.”
Belle grimaced, pushing her glass across the table.
“I can’t,” she said. “I had to agree to keep all discussion of the consultation confidential.”
“Doesn’t have to involve the consultation,” said Leroy. “You don’t even have to mention it.”
“I know, but everyone knows I was working on it, it’s bound to come up,” she said. “I don’t want to give them an excuse to bin all the work we did.”
“So get a petition going,” suggested Merida. “One of those ones on the Parliament website. If you get over one hundred thousand signatures they have to debate it. Make the fuckers say outright that they want to take away people’s local public libraries. Shame the bastards, Belle!”
“Better still, you could get Leopold White to back the thing,” added Leroy. “If you have an MP on side then it’s gonna get more attention, isn’t it?”
“Plus he’s the Opposition,” said Merida. “He’ll want to give Sutherland a bloody nose, won’t he?”
“I don’t want to give him a bloody nose, I just want…” Belle cut off with a sigh, running her hands over her face. “I don’t know what I want. I want him to care, I guess.”
“Great big fuck-off petition should make him care,” said Merida, gesturing with her pint glass and making the beer slosh dangerously close to the rim. “How many new Twitter followers did you say you got after you yelled at him on TV?”
“I don’t know. Thousands, I suppose.” Belle rested her chin on her hand, feeling glum. “Mind you, some of them were trolls and there were more than a few creepy weirdos, remember?”
“Yeah, but you blocked them,” said Leroy. “The rest must be regular people who were interested in what you were saying.”
“I suppose…”
“So start the petition, launch it on Twitter, and sit back and see what happens.” Merida sat back, a satisfied smile on her face. “It’s a brilliant plan.”
Belle thought it over. A petition would get the attention that her cause needed, and increased library funding was a problem nationwide. Perhaps it was worth a shot.
“Alright,” she said. “I’ll draft something and set it up tomorrow.”
“You never know,” added Leroy. “Could get the news talking about it again.”
She smiled, feeling a little better, and sat up.
“I’ll do it,” she said, and raised her glass. “Here’s to causing a stink.”
“To giving Sutherland a headache,” added Merida, and clinked her glass against Belle’s.
-
Sutherland pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling loudly as he tried to clear eyes grainy with tiredness. He scrawled his signature on the documents in front of him, closing the leather folder and sitting back in his chair.
“I’ll take those.”
He wasn’t sure where Anna got her energy from. She had been awake as long as he, and on her feet running between offices for most of the day, but she looked full of energy, while he felt as though he’d been hit by a truck. She scooped up the folder, tucking it under her arm.
“Give them to one of the aides,” he said. “What else is there?”
“Nothing,” she said briskly. “I cancelled your nine o’clock. Sir Frederick still hasn’t finished speaking to the Treasury, so it can wait until morning. Drink?”
“What would I do without you?” he asked wearily, and she chuckled.
“That’s a yes, then. Whisky?”
“Make it a large one.”
“Is there any other kind?”
He sat back, taking off his glasses and rubbing his hands over his face as he listened to the clink of glasses and the glug of liquid.
“Come on, get out from behind that desk,” she said sternly. “It's Friday night. You’re taking a break.”
He got up obediently, rounding the desk to sit on the couch, and she handed him a glass of whisky before sitting down next to him.
“Did you speak to Ella this evening?” he asked, and she nodded.
“She’s emailed all the consultation participants to tell them the news. Nothing back as yet, but there again it’s late. Probably won't get any response until Monday.”
“Right.” He took a sip of his whisky. “She alright about it?”
“I think she was hoping to raise her own profile off the back of that policy,” she said, “so she’s a little disappointed, of course, but she understands the reasons.”
“She’ll get her opportunity at some point.”
“She said to remind you of that, so I’m glad you said it.”
He grunted in amusement, turning the glass between his fingers. Anna nudged him gently.
“What’s wrong?” she asked softly.
“You mean aside from the economic meltdown we’re heading towards and the contracts that need re-tendering and our ratings—”
“Yes, aside from that,” she said impatiently. “That’s the third time today you’ve asked me about the Shaping a Stronger Society consultation.”
“We made a pledge, remember?”
“Yes, and we now have a crisis to deal with that means we can’t fulfil that pledge right now,” she said. “It’s not the first time that’s happened, and I doubt it’ll be the last.”
“I know.” He took another drink, enjoying the mellow heat of the whisky and the taste of peat and smoke at the back of his mouth.
“You had some hard choices to make, and you made them,” she added. “That’s your job.”
“I know,” he sighed. “I know I made the right call.”
“So what’s bothering you?” asked Anna, and he shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Usually when I make the right decision, there’s a sense of - of certainty there. This time, I feel - bad.”
“And you’re sure this has nothing to do with a certain librarian?” she asked, with a grin. Sutherland turned back to his whisky.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered.
“Oh, merely the fact that Belle French is extremely pretty and clever and capable and has no qualms about telling you to fuck off to your face.”
“No, I’m—” Sutherland frowned. “She never specifically told me to fuck off.”
“Not using those words, perhaps.”
“And I never noticed whether she’s pretty or not.”
Anna snorted.
“Liar.”
He ignored that, because it was true, and took another sip of his whisky.
“I’m half expecting her to turn up on the doorstep to yell at me,” he admitted.
“I think you’d quite enjoy that.”
Sutherland chuckled.
“I get yelled at enough, thank you.”
Anna settled back a little, crossing her legs.
“Well, she may not have to come to London to do it,” she said. “If things look bad with the Arendelle contract, I’m going to suggest you make another visit to Avonleigh to reassure the constituents. Including Belle. She seems to be the heart of that town, in many ways. You’ll need her on your side.”
Sutherland sighed, letting his head fall back against the cushions.
“Our last visit didn’t exactly cover me in glory.”
“No, but you two have worked together now.” She took a sip of her drink. “I’d like to think your relationship is more civil.”
“Try telling Miss French that.”
“I think you should tell her yourself,” she said. “We both know how persuasive you can be. I might even say charming.”
Sutherland let out a humourless laugh, raising his glass.
“Something tells me she’s not easily charmed.”
“Something tells me you haven’t tried.”
“Because she’d cut my bollocks off if I did,” he insisted.
“Oh, so we’ve completely bypassed apathy and gone straight to dramatic overreaction, have we?”
He took another sip of his whisky, relishing the burn on his tongue, and let his head roll to the side to meet her eyes.
“Alright, fine,” he said wearily. “If you think I need to, I’ll go to Avonleigh. But I’m not meeting her in public until we know what sort of reception I’ll get.”
“Good,” she said briskly. “It’s the right decision.”
“I hope so,” he said. “If I have to come face-to-face with Miss French, I’d prefer it to be pleasant.”
Anna gave him a satisfied smirk, raising her glass.
“If you can both behave yourselves, I’ve no doubt it will be.”
