The Trouble with Keeping Mum

by Rosie Wallace

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

When Annie finds out she's pregnant, aged 44, it comes as a bit of a shock - after all, she's been celibate for five years. As a divorced single-mother caring for both a teenage son and an elderly parent, Annie has enough on her plate without having to look after a new baby as well - especially as she still hasn't figured out who the father is. There are two candidates in the running: her ex-boyfriend Tariq and Andrew, the widowed leader of the Scottish Parliament. With Annie's job as Health Minister placing her firmly in the public eye, she needs to solve the problems of her tangled personal life before the press cotton on - and she needs to solve them fast.

Release date: August 2, 2012

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 355

Sample

Chapter One

Annie Cochrane, Member of the Scottish Parliament and government minister, looked at herself in the changing-room mirror. She had taken the loud seventies-style creation from the rail in the hope that it would make her look slimmer. In vain, as it turned out. She undid the zip and yanked the dress to the ground. Next, she took a long black skirt from its hanger and paired it with a satin blouse. Now she looked like her mother at the pensioners’ club Christmas night out. Annie stuck her head out of the cubicle in search of an assistant and encountered a small lady with a badge pronouncing her the manageress. Pencil-thin and five foot three in her dainty stilettos, she obviously bought her size eight clothes from the petite rails.

‘Very nice! Classic!’ simpered Mrs Manageress.

‘No. It’s not me. Do you have something a bit more . . . glam, but not too racy?’

‘Size?’

‘Twelve,’ said Annie hoping what might be produced would have a generous cut.

Mrs Manageress reappeared with a long jacket, camisole and trousers. It certainly looked better, but the cut was not as favourable as she’d hoped. She ventured out of the cubicle again.

‘Very elegant, Ms Cochrane.’

Ah, Annie thought, that explained why the manageress had replaced the junior assistant. She had been recognised – one of the perils of TV appearances.

‘It’s better than the other one, but it’s a bit tight.’ Annie gestured vaguely, first towards her chest and then to her hip area.

‘I’ll get you a fourteen. Better to go up a size and look slimmer, I always say.’

What looked like a huge pair of trousers and an enormous jacket were produced, but Annie had to admit that they were an improvement.

‘Do you have anything else for black-tie occasions?’ She might as well make the most of the help at hand. ‘I seem to have grown out of my present wardrobe and, unlike my male colleagues I can’t just get away with one dinner suit.’

‘Must be a perk of the job getting to all these grand events,’ gushed Mrs Manageress as she disappeared in search of suitable clothes.

Annie surveyed herself. Being Minister for Health and Wellbeing meant an average of two black-tie dinners per week, followed by at least two hours’ work on her ministerial papers. Hardly very healthy. Her preferred option, an evening in the Edinburgh flat with a plate of scrambled eggs, was out of the question tonight. A gathering of orthopaedic surgeons awaited her.

She tried to find her waist. Despite picking at her food and refusing more than one glass of wine at these rich dinners, weight loss seemed to be evading her. Everybody said that your mid-forties were dangerous, weight-wise. The one consolation about this evening was that she wasn’t very hungry. Annie shook her head at her reflection. She should enrol at a gym, but there weren’t enough hours in the day. And anyway – she couldn’t bear the thought of all those treadmills.

‘How about this?’ said Mrs Manageress displaying a purple lurex ball gown with a long slit up the back. ‘This designer believes that ladies should flaunt their curves. It’s off the shoulder,’ she added, unnecessarily.

Annie swallowed hard. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘This?’ Another sparkling confection was swished in front of Annie’s nose.

‘No, I don’t do sequins.’ She smiled weakly, regretting having prolonged this painful experience. She looked at her watch. She had to be at Edinburgh Castle by 7 p.m. to host the pre-dinner reception and it was now 6.45. ‘Thanks. I’ll just take the outfit I’m wearing and I’ll keep it on. Can you put my old clothes in a bag?’

Dressed in her new finery, she emerged into the cold damp January evening, to find her ministerial car had disappeared. Eoin, her driver, must have been told to move on by the traffic wardens. Keeping an eye out, she looked at the illuminated window displays around her and tried to remember the last time she had ‘gone shopping’ just to have a wander and indulge in impulse buys. It must have been three years ago, before she became a government minister and personal time became something she simply didn’t have. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy her job. In fact, she thrived on it and she knew she did it well. She juggled two full time political roles – those of minister and Member of the Scottish Parliament – and still managed to give her son a secure family life. She was proud of that. On the eve of his departure, Kenny, her ex-husband, had announced that her priorities were her constituents, her party and then her family, and that he wasn’t staying around to come third in anyone’s life. Now, with her additional ministerial duties, she had four priorities. Well, she might lack a husband, but she had the help of her mother, the redoubtable May Laverty.

The toot of a horn brought Annie back to the present. She piled herself and her bags into the back seat of the ministerial car, just as her tame stalker rounded the corner.

‘Drive!’ she urged. ‘I swear, that guy has this car on some kind of satnav.’

‘Success?’ her driver asked over his shoulder.

‘I wouldn’t say success, Eoin, but I am wearing an outfit which will have to do.’

The car-phone rang. Could only be one of her civil servants. Annie picked it up.

‘Hello . . .’

‘Mum!’

‘Annie, got you at last!’

‘How did you get this number? It’s restricted . . .’

‘It’s written in my book with all your other numbers. Annie Car it says. You must have given it to me. You never answer your mobile. I thought I’d give this number a try.’

Oh dear. ‘How are you, Mum?’

‘I wanted to know how you got on with the cardinal today.’

‘Ah . . . We had . . . an interesting and lively exchange of views.’

‘Did you go to confession before you met him?’

‘No.’

Annie could hear tutting noises.

‘Well, tell me what you talked about.’

Annie braced herself. ‘We talked about the campaign we are running in schools to educate children about STDs and using condoms.’

There was a brief pause. ‘You are telling little children about . . .’ Her outraged mother whispered the last word, ‘. . . condoms?’

‘Not little children, Mum. Big children . . . fourteen and over.’

‘And why do you need to tell them about phones? They all have these mobiles nowadays.’

Annie was lost. ‘Phones? What are you talking about?’

‘STD . . . something . . . something . . . dialling . . . I can’t remember now, but it’s to do with phone numbers . . .’

‘No, Mum, STD means sexually transmitted disease.’ There was no response. ‘Hello? Are you still there? Mum?’

‘. . . You mean to tell me, you were talking about VD to His Eminence?’

‘I suppose I was,’ said Annie. Eoin was doing some fancy manoeuvring to avoid a new set of roadworks on Princes Street.

‘Did you talk about anything else?’

‘Well, since you ask, we strayed onto gay issues, which wasn’t on the agenda, and then I had to go to another appointment, so that was it. Somehow, though, he knew I was brought up a Catholic and kept using the pronoun “we” all the time.’

‘I don’t like this brought up bit,’ said May sharply. ‘You are Catholic! I said to Father McIver after Mass on Sunday that you were going to be meeting His Eminence and he said he knew the cardinal’s press secretary.’

‘Well that explains it! I sympathised with some of his arguments, but we can’t legislate solely for a Catholic point of view.’ It was fun winding her mother up.

But May’s mind had moved on. ‘Did you get your photo taken?’

Annie smiled as the car drove up the road onto the Castle Esplanade. ‘No, you’ve already got one of us together taken after his installation. Look, Mum, I’ve nearly got to where I’m going. Is Joe there? Can you put him on?’

‘Had his tea at six and then off out to goodness knows where. He never tells me anything these days. Treats my house like a hotel, swanning in whenever—’

Annie cut her short.

‘Mum, we’ll talk about it tomorrow over tea when I’m back. Six o’clock as usual. Bye.’

She called Joe’s number and left a message: ‘Hi, Mum here. Just hope you’re okay and had a good day. I might be late back to the flat tonight, but give me a text if you need to chat. Love you.’

As she was getting out, she paused.

‘Eoin, you’d better get the number on the car-phone changed. Mum can’t be the only person to have it.’

He smiled and nodded. ‘I’ll see to it.’

‘Are you picking me up? I should be finished about ten.’

‘It’s the contract-hire company to collect you tonight, Minister, but I’ll be there to pick you up at seven-thirty tomorrow morning to go to the constituency. Just as usual.’

Having a driver made Annie’s life so much easier.

She made her way towards the Grand Hall of Edinburgh Castle and found her private secretary, Tony, waiting for her in the ante-room. He handed her the after-dinner speech and started briefing her about those present.

‘This is a world-wide conference for orthopaedic surgeons and this evening is the highlight of the non-medical events. The speech is the usual one for international conferences: “Scotland’s health care is wonderful” etcetera.’ He pointed at the speech. ‘I’ve filled in the gaps for this event and there is even a small joke about hip-replacements.’ He looked rather pleased with himself.

‘Can I have a couple of minutes to read it through? It’s a while since we last delivered this one, Tony.’

He looked at his watch, walked to the door and glanced into the corridor. He returned just as Annie was skimming the first page, the one about Scotland having a rich history in pioneering medical advances. She almost had that paragraph off by heart.

‘Minister,’ he said in a low voice, ‘we are running really late and if you are going to work the room before dinner, you are going to have to go in now. The president is waiting to introduce you to people.’

Annie put on her polite conversation face, closed the folder and handed it to him.

‘Okay then, let’s go. Put the speech at my place.’

She was introduced to eminent surgeons from all over the world. She couldn’t help wondering whether they might have saved themselves time and considerable sums of money by some sort of video conferencing. Surely these shindigs did nothing for their waiting lists? A Mr Norton had forsaken his native Scotland for a senior consultant’s post in Timaru. He was waxing lyrical about the glories of Scotland over New Zealand when the drone of the pipes signalled the move to dinner. Annie excused herself and waited with the other inhabitants of the top table. Once hoi polloi had taken their places, the procession followed the piper into the Great Hall while everyone stood and clapped. It was just like a wedding – but with no bridegroom and no cake.

Dinner was much as she had expected – smoked salmon terrine, beef filet balanced precariously on a tower of potato and puréed something with a puddle of something else, then Crannachan. Why did someone have to ruin fresh raspberries and cream with horrible gravelly oatmeal? She picked at her food and sipped her glass of wine. Her audience was less abstemious. They had had their glasses refilled several times in that unobtrusive way caterers have perfected over the years. When she rose to speak, it took a moment for conversation to die down. Everyone, including Annie, viewed the next five minutes as a dull but necessary part of the evening’s proceedings. She opened her folder and delivered the page about Scotland’s medical heritage before moving on to the section relevant to the evening.

‘I deem it a great honour to be able to address the delegates and their partners of the International Conference on . . .’ On automatic pilot, she turned the page and glanced down for the exact wording of the organisation and read the words Advances in Genito-Urinary Surgery. Nothing to do with orthopaedic surgeons. She flicked the page to make sure she hadn’t turned two at once, but the large font page numbering confirmed her suspicions. Someone had managed to print off the previous speech – the one from the last medical conference – rather than the one Tony had carefully amended.

‘. . . this international conference on orthopaedic surgery.’

A quick glance down the page revealed that the joke was about someone confusing opening waterworks with the commissioning of a reservoir.

She was going to have to wing this. The adrenaline surge kicked in. If in doubt flatter.

‘Your skill as orthopaedic surgeons can turn lives around: my aunt who was trapped in her home has had a new lease of life since her double hip replacement; my nephew was involved in a car accident and is now able not only to walk but to captain his school football team, thanks to the skills of dedicated surgeons like yourselves. Advances in your field mean that the arthritic, the critically injured and those sportsmen and women with injuries which might deny them their sporting achievement are all in your debt.’

She looked up briefly. They seemed to be soaking it up. A joke would be good but only one came to mind, told to her by a medic years ago when she was nursing: How do you hide a twenty pound note from an orthopaedic surgeon? Put it in a text book. No. Tonight would have to be jokeless.

She paused while she turned the next page . . . it was all about urinary problems and sexual dysfunction. It had been bad enough delivering it to the correct audience and there was no way she could adapt it for this one.

She turned another page and found she was back on script . . . the merits of holding a conference in Edinburgh, the world’s most beautiful and welcoming capital city, what the Scottish government was doing to improve the health service and research opportunities, and her hope that delegates would get to see other parts of Scotland while they were here. She sat down to polite applause. She took a sip of water and concentrated hard. Eventually, after the president’s reply which was full of orthopaedic in-jokes about anaesthetists, and a recital by a harpist, she was able to make her escape.

As they drove away from the Castle, Tony was silent at first, then asked in a rather huffy tone why she had not read the prepared speech, as they had discussed.

‘It would be helpful to have feedback, Minister, for the next time.’

Annie handed him her folder, ‘Have a read at that.’

There was a short pause. Tony flicked over pages with increasing urgency. ‘Ah! Sorry, Emma must have printed the wrong one.’

‘I don’t care whose fault it was. Just try not to let it happen again. Please?’

‘You managed fine,’ Tony’s tone was less accusatory now, ‘and I didn’t know your nephew had been involved in an accident.’

‘He broke his leg when he was three. And to answer your next question, I don’t have an aunt with a double hip replacement. Next time, either you or I read it over first.’

‘Yes, Minister, sorry.’

Chapter Two

After he had left Annie at the Castle, Eoin had driven the ministerial Volvo to the government car depot. It was the driver’s responsibility to make sure the car was clean and tidy at the end of the day. He put Annie’s clothes in the boot ready to go to the constituency in the morning before removing his copy of the Express and an empty cardboard coffee cup. As he walked towards the bin, he passed the First Minister’s Lexus. All its doors were open and the rear end of Patrick Liddell, the First Minister’s driver, protruded from the back seat.

‘Good thing I’m not into bums, Patrick.’

Patrick reversed out and stood up clutching a can of upholstery shampoo and a sponge.

‘And I’m not into witty repartee today, Eoin.’ He looked stressed.

‘What’s happened? First Minister wet her pants?’

‘Fucking budgies!’

‘Budgies?’

‘I . . .’ He jabbed his sponge at his chest ‘– have been transporting budgies from the FM’s house to a bungalow near Edinburgh Zoo and one of the fuckers got out of the cage and crapped all over the car.’

‘Transporting pets is not in the job description.’

‘Tell me about it!’ Patrick continued, ‘I take the FM home to Glasgow and as I’m unloading all her paraphernalia, the husband comes to the door with a cage in his hand; next thing she takes it from him, trots down the path and puts it on the back seat. Without so much as a rug to protect the leather. Then she gives me her “woman of the people” smile and says, “Patrick, you won’t mind delivering these budgies for Robert. It’s on your way. The address is on the label.” So I said I wasn’t sure I was allowed to do this kind of thing and she says she’s telling me to, and she’s the First Minister, so off we went. Then when I was doing eighty along the motorway, one of them got out and started flying round the car. I pulled over to the hard shoulder and tried to catch it. That’s when it got scared and started crapping all over the place. Then it flew into the windscreen.’

‘Suicide?’ Eoin asked, smiling.

Patrick saw nothing funny in the experience. ‘It was still twitching so I bundled it back into the cage, replaced the cover and delivered the cage to the Edinburgh address as commanded.’

‘Let’s hope it was just mildly concussed or she’ll be after you.’ Eoin bent down and picked up the lid of the shampoo canister. He handed it to Patrick. ‘FM doesn’t usually go home on a Thursday does she?’

Patrick tapped the side of his nose.

‘Got an appointment at the school in the morning, hasn’t she? The obnoxious, sorry misunderstood, Jordan has been excluded for a week for swearing at his English teacher.’

‘She tell you all this?’

‘Not exactly, but, as you are aware, she doesn’t bother what she says in front of the driver. We don’t have ears, don’t you know. Or lives. She was giving the school secretary hell, telling her she would be there first thing to see the headmaster. God help him, poor bugger. I wouldn’t want the full force of FM’s wrath descending on me. Not first thing in the morning.’

‘I thought poor, hard done by Robert sorted out all things domestic.’

‘Budgie man tried and failed, didn’t he, so he’ll be getting bollocked for incompetence. As usual.’

‘That stuff about Jordan could be worth a bit if leaked to the correct quarters.’

‘Could be,’ Patrick sounded gloomy, ‘but I bet no one will dare to touch it, especially if she browbeats the school into changing its mind about her little darling.’

‘Going to give it a try?’ Eoin asked quietly.

Patrick shrugged.

‘Perhaps. Things aren’t what they were. When the last lot were in power, that kind of snippet used to add up with all the other little snippets until it paid for our summer holidays; you know – Caribbean cruise one year and Florida the next. Last year we rented a cottage in Caithness and it rained all the bloody time.’

Eoin laughed. ‘Well, as an Orcadian, I would say it served you right. You should have kept going, got on a ferry to Orkney.’

‘Yeh, yeh . . . and you think the weather would have been any better?’ Patrick shook his head. ‘Being promoted to Marlene Watt’s driver has certainly resulted in a loss of income.’ Patrick attacked a new blotch of budgie poo with some violence.

‘Why does she still call herself Watt?’ Eoin pointed out another stain. ‘She’s been married to Chirpy for years and years, hasn’t she?’

‘Aye. Perhaps twenty years ago there were still enough people about who thought being called Keiller meant that you slept with politicians and the aristocracy on a daily basis – in return for a wad of notes and a few spy stories. Perhaps she didn’t want to be associated with a jar of marmalade. Perhaps it’s her feminist principles. Who knows?’ Patrick noticed yet another stain and sprayed it fiercely. ‘What about yours? You got any interesting snippets about Ms Cochrane?’

‘Putting on the beef – had to go and buy a new posh outfit today. Her mother’s very impressed the cardinal came to see her. Oh! That reminds me, car-phone.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ll do it in the morning. Time to go home.’

‘Lucky you.’

Eoin put a hand on his colleague’s shoulder. ‘Now, Patrick! You make sure you check it all carefully. Budgie shit may be small, but it could leave a nasty stain on the First Minister’s backside.’

Patrick raised a friendly middle finger at his colleague’s departing back.

Chapter Three

To say that First Minister Marlene Watt was angry was an understatement. For a start, she was sharing the back seat of her official Lexus with a budgie cage. And for another thing, her party press officer was not answering his phone.

She had started the day discussing her son’s behaviour with his headmaster who felt that calling a female English teacher the C word was indeed grounds for a week’s exclusion.

‘Jordan thinks Mrs McNeill may have misheard him. He assures me he did not use the word in question. He was merely bantering with his friend, calling him “a stupid runt”,’ Marlene enunciated this phrase with military precision, ‘because he had forgotten to bring a pen with him to class.’

The headmaster held her penetrating gaze without blinking.

‘Mrs McNeill is a very experienced teacher, one who most certainly knows the difference between banter and abuse. I have already explained this to your husband, Ms Watt. Jordan had failed to hand in his homework for the third time in a month and Mrs McNeill informed him that unless his English folio was complete, he would not be able to sit his exams. He then called her a stupid . . . we both know the word I mean – and left the room. By no stretch of the imagination could that be called friendly banter.’

Marlene moved to her next line of attack. She leant forward in her chair and lowered her voice.

‘Mr Rutherford, you’re probably right. But Jordan is a very sensitive lad and he’s been having a tough time recently on account of my very public position.’

‘There is no probably about it – Jordan swore at Mrs McNeill.’ The headmaster was not to be swayed.

But neither was Scotland’s First Minister. ‘As I said, he’s been having a tough time. You obviously don’t realise how much bullying goes on in your school or I’m sure you would have addressed it, Headmaster. Robert and I have been finding it difficult to get Jordan to come to school at all. We’ve been telling him that he needs to learn to stand on his own two feet, but there are some very unpleasant children who have been taunting him – and worse. Before his English class yesterday, he was ambushed in the toilets, had his dinner money stolen and water poured into his bag. When Mrs McNeill criticised him, it was the last straw and he must have lost his temper. I will ensure that he apologises to her.’ Marlene paused and looked at Mr Rutherford.

‘I will ensure that he apologises to Mrs McNeill too, but as a result of the verbal abuse, she refuses to have him in her class and I feel she has good reason. From now on, Jordan will be in Mr Goodman’s class and is on his final warning.’

Marlene considered this some kind of victory. ‘Thank you, Mr Rutherford. I will make sure Jordan is back in school by morning interval.’

‘The exclusion still stands, Ms Watt.’

Marlene gave her head a tiny shake. ‘I don’t think you quite understand, Mr Rutherford. Jordan has been victimised within your school and you and your colleagues have done absolutely nothing about it. I’m sure neither you, nor I, for that matter, want any negative publicity. Unfortunately, my family is of interest to the press and should it become known that Jordan has been excluded, then I would have to put the record straight as to the bullying which led up to the incident, and I would have to say that, very reluctantly, we are considering moving him to a private school. Somewhere like . . . Glasgow Academy.’

Glasgow Academy was welcome to her ghastly son, the headmaster thought to himself, but he then made what he considered to be a conciliatory gesture.

‘I think perhaps a compromise is in order. Jordan will be excluded for three days. He can return to school on Wednesday.’

Sensing weakness, Marlene went for the kill.

‘Headmaster, I understand this school is in line for a major refurbishment. There is such a lot of competition for funding these days. Only yesterday I was speaking to our local councillors and they said that they had insufficient funds to carry out all the planned school refurbishments in the area.’

Mr Rutherford knew he was beaten.

‘Jordan can come back to school on Monday.’

‘Today!’

Oh, how he loathed this woman. ‘All right; but he reports to me first, then he will apologise to Mrs McNeill – in my presence.’

‘He will be back in school by eleven. I’m so glad we’ve cleared up this misunderstanding. I would be grateful if this could remain confidential. As I said, I wouldn’t want to have to highlight the school’s bullying problem if I had to explain things to the media.’

Marlene swept out of the school gates to the ministerial car and told Patrick to drive her home. Five minutes later, she was marching Jordan down the path while he attempted to tie his tie and walk at the same time.

‘You will go to the headmaster and grovel. You will then go to Mrs McNeill and grovel. Make sure you sound as if you are sorry. Then you will keep out of trouble. For the rest of your life. I have better things to do than sort out teachers who cannot control their pupils. Is that understood?’

The boy raised an eyebrow at his mother.

‘Patrick, drive him to school and come back immediately and pick me up.’

Patrick did as he was told, parked at the school gate and couldn’t help watching Jordan sauntering into the playground. It was morning break and there were various groups of children outside the main doors. Jordan strolled towards a solitary bespectacled boy who was sitting on a bench reading. In a nanosecond the book was snatched from his hands, and a handful o. . .