The office is full of election fever; everywhere I look people are discussing how Nick will cosy up to David; whether Gordon will go gracefully; or if Peter Mandelson will become the next Dr Who villain.  It’s all very exciting.  But proof (if ever it were needed) that Jane is impossible to please.  Although she has spent the last three months tirelessly straining for a Conservative victory; when it comes, she is unhappy.

“I can’t believe we did so well,” she huffs at the election coverage on the BBC website.

“But that’s good, isn’t it?”

“Not really.”

“Oh, come on,” I urge.  “306 seats is a darn sight better than before.”

“Not for me.”

As so often with Jane, I have absolutely no idea what she is talking about.

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s good for the party,” she agrees, “But it’s pretty dispiriting for me.”

“How can it be dispiriting?  You have spent weeks working towards this goal.”

“But I didn’t think we would do so well.   Now we have so many seats, the only ones left are the ones which are really hard to fight.”

So that’s what this is all about: her own Prime Ministerial ambitions.

“You have only been a member of the party for five minutes,” I point out. “I don’t think you should worry about winning seats.”

She gives one of her most despairing eye rolls.  “Of course I have to worry about winning seats – and winning good ones.   I don’t want to waste my time preaching Tory policies to Glasgow East, do I?”

“I don’t know.”

“The Tories polled less then 1500 votes out of 32 000 there.”

“Ah, but if anyone can persuade those canny Scots to change their minds, it’s you.  The new Tory election torpedo.”

She agrees with this but points out that she would rather aim her ammunition at somewhere with better weather.

Whilst Jane grapples with the thorny issues party politics, Malcolm is busy taking credit for the Conservative success.

“Katherine got in,” he tells me. “Good to know that we helped to raise her profile.”

“We invited her to a golf club with a few OAPS and the local vicar,” I point out.

“Precisely,” he nods. “She might never have met those people if it hadn’t been for us.”

“I don’t think it would have made much of an impact on her campaign.”

“Don’t be so dismissive,” he frowns. “Every vote counts.”

“Not when you have a margin of twenty thousand.”

“Have you heard anything from her?” he casts me a curious look.

“No.”

“I thought she might have called to thank us.”

Yes, I’m sure that’s high on her agenda!  Right before helping to negotiate a coalition government and preventing total economic collapse.

“I wasn’t expecting her to,” I tell him. “She must be very busy, besides, if anything, we should be thanking her.”

“For what?”

“For supporting Mr Haliday’s case.  I asked her, remember?”

“Oh yes.” He had forgotten about that.  But the opportunity to make contact with his new love conveniently presents itself. “You’re absolutely right,” he smiles. “I shall order some flowers.”

“Roses?” Liz speculates, when I tell her, “with a box of heart-shaped chocolates?”

“And a bottle of Tia Maria,” I laugh.

Tia Maria being Malcolm’s favourite aperitif.  Never a client dinner goes by without a request for a little drop of the hard stuff.

“I hope Mrs Morris doesn’t get wind of this infatuation,” Alex warns.  “She might withdraw his marital privileges.”

I think they were withdrawn a long time ago.

“Have you ever met Mrs M?” I ask.

“No, but I hear she’s a female version of him,” Liz offers. “They read The Daily Mail and wear matching sweaters when they go on holiday….”

“To the caravan in Tenby!”  We all cry together.

“Holiday chalet,” Alex corrects us.

‘Caravan’ (with the freedom of the open road and the roar of campfires) being considered too exotic a concept.   ‘Much better to stay on one all-purpose site,’ he once told me. ‘Then you don’t have to worry about running out of tea bags.’  That has never been a great concern to me but I would imagine it might send Malcolm over the edge.

Meanwhile election fever has, even, trickled down to the Secretarial pool.  Danielle and Melinda are busy deciding who the ‘fittest” MP is.

“I quite fancy Nick Clegg,” says Melinda, “but I think he could be a bit dull.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yeah,  I think he might go on about boring things like the economy and the EU, all the time.”

“Yeah,  he does seem a bit obsessed with stuff like that.”

“Shame really, cos he was in my top three.  Ah, well.” She puts him to the bottom of the pile and seeks out MP’s more interested in dance music and reality TV.

Work only, finally, commences when Alistair returns from lunch and tells us that we’ll be all  sacked if we don’t “stop pretending to be political pundits and get back to earning fees and pulling the country out of recession.”

He should be a politician.

We are just about to shuffle back to our offices when the Librarian hands me some newspapers.

“Coverage of your demonstration,” she explains, with a wink.

Malcolm is beside me before I can even thank her.

“Marvellous!” he snatches them from my grasp.  “I’ll have a quick read through and then you can have them Helen.”

He scuttles off, excitedly, to his room, no doubt hoping to see if there’s a full page spread of his new beloved.

And there is.

“Look at this!” He marches into my room and thrusts a picture of Katherine Edison under my nose.

“Nice picture,” I agree.

“No, not that, that!” He points at the headline:  ‘Edison Attacks Government Waste’.”

“Yes?”

“Well, what relevance is there to our case?”

“Well,” I skim the page. “It’s highlighting the fact that HMRC is throwing taxpayers’ money away on it.”

“But it’s just a throwaway line between a piece on pointless quangos and an attack on shameless benefit scroungers!”

Oh dear.  “Well, at least it is there.”

“For all the good that will do,” he fumes. “No one will take any notice of that.”

“They might and, anyway, it’s a start; it shows there is some interest and we can build on that.”

“I don’t think so, I told you the papers are all staffed by deceit peddling distortionists!”

Well, perhaps not all of them, but the local rag near Eastbourne ran a half page spread in which Malcolm’s stand off with the PR man was depicted in hilarious detail.  This is, clearly, the real object of his fury.

“This one is good,” I point out.  “It has some photos of the demo and an interview with Mr H and, even,  a good explanation of the case.”

“But I look like a complete idiot!” he splutters.

Who says the papers don’t reflect the truth?

“No, not really,” I lie, “It just adds a bit of colour to the piece.”

“Colour!  It says I punched a Conservative press officer!”

“The threatened closure of this well-loved local facility provoked strong feelings from the assembled throng; Malcolm Morris, Partner in City firm, Craven Wiley & Sharpe, forcibly remonstrated with a Conservtative PR Man who appeared to misunderstand the message.”

“It says you forcibly remonstrated with him.”

“But I didn’t!”

“Well, you, sort-of, did……”

He glares at me.  “I told you we would lose control if we involved the press.”

And, indeed, he did; it’s here for everyone to see.