Read Online Sockpuppet: Book One in the Martingale Cycle by Matthew Blakstad - Free Book Online
Authors: Matthew Blakstad
Ads: Link
Private Office where there was no privacy, battling to ensure her intentions, her policies, didn’t drown beneath the tidal surge of officialese and debate about the finer points of law. When she could stand no more her civil servants passed her battered frame back to the driver, who delivered her to husband and sons so she could spend a few hours role-playing marriage and motherhood – until Jake, Hugo and Peter in turn withdrew upstairs, unacknowledged, leaving Bethany to her nightly exercise.
Tonight, though, there’d been no time for more than a cursory peck on the cheek for Hugo, as she rattled instructions into her BlackBerry. Jake was sickening for something: she left him with barely a scuff of the hair and a Lemsip. It was after eleven before she shook her pursuers, the chance of getting her up on Newsnight having finally evaporated. It would start again in a few hours. Today , the breakfast shows, then every time-slice of the media day: all wanting their twenty second clip of a minister crumbling under questioning, to drop into the hourly bulletins. She would have to talk to them eventually, though Krish was firmly agin it. Somehow they had to fix this whole rotten mess before she took to the platform on Friday morning, to announce that Digital Citizen was live across the nation.
The house breathed and creaked. She had a stark five hours of calm: during which she should also, in theory, sleep. She put down the paper she’d held unread in her hand for the last half hour and moved her reading glasses to rest on the top of her head. Ah: no wonder the room had been looking so blurry. The heating had been off for nearly two hours but the sealed room carried a homeopathic trace of warmth. She shivered as the day unfolded back at her. Incredible how quickly things play in a crisis. You don’t seem to do anything, just react as events fly past. Bethany hoped she’d retained a can-do spirit – at least the team seemed buoyed. They thrived on the hands-to-the-pump stuff.
They’d gathered round her desk when the summons came from Number 10. An early morning slot: Karen Arbiter was fond of Gestapo tactics. Bundle the victim out of bed at the crack of dawn, bombard them with questions till they crack. At least the PM was unlikely to be there: she wouldn’t like Simon to see her break under torture.
In any case, she wouldn’t crack. She was big enough and ugly enough to cope with Karen. But the thought that this brouhaha could scupper the Digital Citizen put an acid lump in her throat. All that graft to get things to a place where she might do real good: and in a way Gramma would have been proud of. She couldn’t let her own idiotic behaviour bring the programme down.
All the more need for the steadying presence of Big Krish Kohli. Her instinct to retrench was working against her. So much she wouldn’t and couldn’t tell her spads, but they were primed to help her. They’d be waiting for her call right now. And why not? No cause to suffer this alone. She tapped out a text suggesting a conf call: a functional text, with no babes -es or kisses. She included Krish and J-R on the message and pinged it off.
While she waited for a response she flipped her glasses back down onto her nose and pulled the next paper from her dispatch box. Digital migration of regional libraries: DECISION REQUIRED. She sighed and began to read, Pentel hovering.
Each afternoon her Private Office primed these Parliament-red valises with progressively more impossible tasks to test her mettle. They knew precisely how to pull her strings, her puppet-masters. They filleted her days into six-minute chunks until her diary resembled a bar code, leaving her no time for actual decisions. Then they crammed all the real business into these boxes for her to work on through the night. The resulting sleep deprivation left her tender and suggestible for the next day’s programming. She might as well be Linda Kasabian.
Though in fairness they’d rallied
Tonight, though, there’d been no time for more than a cursory peck on the cheek for Hugo, as she rattled instructions into her BlackBerry. Jake was sickening for something: she left him with barely a scuff of the hair and a Lemsip. It was after eleven before she shook her pursuers, the chance of getting her up on Newsnight having finally evaporated. It would start again in a few hours. Today , the breakfast shows, then every time-slice of the media day: all wanting their twenty second clip of a minister crumbling under questioning, to drop into the hourly bulletins. She would have to talk to them eventually, though Krish was firmly agin it. Somehow they had to fix this whole rotten mess before she took to the platform on Friday morning, to announce that Digital Citizen was live across the nation.
The house breathed and creaked. She had a stark five hours of calm: during which she should also, in theory, sleep. She put down the paper she’d held unread in her hand for the last half hour and moved her reading glasses to rest on the top of her head. Ah: no wonder the room had been looking so blurry. The heating had been off for nearly two hours but the sealed room carried a homeopathic trace of warmth. She shivered as the day unfolded back at her. Incredible how quickly things play in a crisis. You don’t seem to do anything, just react as events fly past. Bethany hoped she’d retained a can-do spirit – at least the team seemed buoyed. They thrived on the hands-to-the-pump stuff.
They’d gathered round her desk when the summons came from Number 10. An early morning slot: Karen Arbiter was fond of Gestapo tactics. Bundle the victim out of bed at the crack of dawn, bombard them with questions till they crack. At least the PM was unlikely to be there: she wouldn’t like Simon to see her break under torture.
In any case, she wouldn’t crack. She was big enough and ugly enough to cope with Karen. But the thought that this brouhaha could scupper the Digital Citizen put an acid lump in her throat. All that graft to get things to a place where she might do real good: and in a way Gramma would have been proud of. She couldn’t let her own idiotic behaviour bring the programme down.
All the more need for the steadying presence of Big Krish Kohli. Her instinct to retrench was working against her. So much she wouldn’t and couldn’t tell her spads, but they were primed to help her. They’d be waiting for her call right now. And why not? No cause to suffer this alone. She tapped out a text suggesting a conf call: a functional text, with no babes -es or kisses. She included Krish and J-R on the message and pinged it off.
While she waited for a response she flipped her glasses back down onto her nose and pulled the next paper from her dispatch box. Digital migration of regional libraries: DECISION REQUIRED. She sighed and began to read, Pentel hovering.
Each afternoon her Private Office primed these Parliament-red valises with progressively more impossible tasks to test her mettle. They knew precisely how to pull her strings, her puppet-masters. They filleted her days into six-minute chunks until her diary resembled a bar code, leaving her no time for actual decisions. Then they crammed all the real business into these boxes for her to work on through the night. The resulting sleep deprivation left her tender and suggestible for the next day’s programming. She might as well be Linda Kasabian.
Though in fairness they’d rallied
Similar Books
