One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [24]
‘One more thing. Katya is… very protective of her position here, and frankly marvellous. I suppose the reason it’s taken me a while to hire anyone to help is I’ve been sensitive to her feelings: of her wanting to do it all herself.’ He turned. Gave me a searching smile.
‘That’s only natural. This is her patch. You’re very much her baby.’
‘Figuratively speaking.’
‘Of course. Like the Pope.’
I was quite pleased with that little sally. He looked bemused, then smiled. ‘She’s already admitted you’ve been a huge help. But I just wanted you to be aware of…’ He looked awkward.
‘Her toes?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I won’t step on them.’
‘Thank you.’
He grinned at me and I grinned back, an understanding arrived at. In fact I’d go so far as to call it a meeting of minds. After a few minor incidentals, like money and hours and time sheets, I left, on air. Positively hovering.
When I resumed my position, Katya, I could see, was wrestling with herself.
‘I’m so pleased,’ she said as I sat down. She was trying hard. ‘Really, I mean it. I know I’m overprotective and I know it had to be someone, eventually, and I’m glad it’s you.’
I saw her eyes glisten and knew, in that moment, she was in love with him. I also knew ‘I’m glad it’s you’ meant, not someone more his age. I was still very young and gauche and scruffy. What she didn’t want was some sophisticated thirtysomething desk-perching and crossing her legs, flicking back a mane of expensively highlighted hair, and reeking of Chanel.
I think she might have seen my flash of recognition, because she went on hurriedly: ‘Of course, you must meet Letty now. She’s delightful, and terribly friendly.’
Well, I’d already met her at the graduation, but meet her again I did, that very Friday.
Dominic thought it was important I had an all-round view of the job, and that meant going to his constituency, where he disappeared to most Fridays. Who was I to demur? Apparently it was where his surgery was.
‘Makes you sound like a doctor,’ I said as we purred down the M40 to Thame in his rather sporty low-slung car. He was looking fairly sporty and low-slung himself in jeans, a checked shirt open over a white T-shirt, sleeves rolled up, tanned arms at the wheel. So unlike an MP I could hardly breathe. I lifted my legs off the seat beside him to make them look less fat.
‘Well, in a way it’s not dissimilar. Local people come to me with their worries and I try to sort them out. The problem is, by the time they get to me, they’ve exhausted every other avenue. I’m their last hope. They’ve already harangued the council, or their school, or local authority, but I do what I can. And to be honest that’s the bit I love most, the bit that makes it seem slightly…’ he hesitated.
‘Vocational?’ I offered.
‘Yes.’ He glanced at me, pleased. ‘When I get a result, I feel like punching the air. Feel I’ve really made a difference.’
Aware I was staring, I closed my mouth.
‘Although, of course, you do get the occasional oddball who comes regularly, and you know there’s no hope of ever helping them. Barking Brenda is my particular cross to bear. She runs the village shop and thinks it’s possessed. She wants me to exorcise it. The Church have washed their hands of her, but she’s convinced things are moving of their own accord – baked beans into the freezer, shampoo mysteriously appearing in the fridge – although in fact it’s just her losing her marbles and forgetting she’s put them there.’
‘Oh! Sad.’
‘Very, and what she really needs is a doctor, but then she might be sectioned, and is she really ready to be? She might lose her shop too, where she’s worked