Monday
I’m pacing up and down in the bedroom of our flat. Carrie keeps going on about this baby she’s about to have, but all I can think about are these rumours of parties in Downing Street.
“Cripes,” I say. “It’s going to come out.”
Carrie is sitting on the bed with her hands on her bump. Probably by the end of the week, she agrees.
“I just hope,” I say, “people don’t think it’s got anything to do with me.”
“You what?” says Carrie.
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It was lockdown, I say. It was just so boring. Everybody did things they regret. Shut away in rooms. When they’d perhaps had too much to drink.
“Wow,” says Carrie.
“It wasn’t just you,” I say. “It was the girls in the press office, too.”
“Bastard,” says Carrie.
“Look,” I say, “all I’m saying is that, if you want any more, you’re having them right here in the flat.”
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“I hate you,” says Carrie.
“Maybe at the kitchen table,” I say.
Tuesday
The party story is blowing up. Dominic Raab says it’s a good job the police don’t investigate the past.
“Don’t they?” I say, frowning.
“Do they?” he says, frowning more.
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“What do you think the police do, Dom?” asks Allegra Stratton, whom I’ve called in, too.
“Never mind him” I say to her. “We need to talk about your party.”
Allegra says she didn’t even go, though. She just told a joke about it.
“Which is even worse,” I say. “Because jokes about very serious matters are just not what people expect of my government.”
Allegra asks if I’m joking right now.
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“Stop it,” I say. “This is serious. I cannot defend the indefensible.”
“Yeah, I know,” says Allegra. “That’s why you employed me.”
Wednesday
Now Allegra has resigned. So I summon Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, and I ask him if there’s anybody else we need to worry about. And he says no. Except, he adds, for the people who did go to the party, and the people who organised it, and all the people who lied about the party. Which, he says, is roughly everybody.
“Also,” he says, “there’s the problem of all the other parties.”
Then I say my new plan is that he’s going to draw up a list of every party there was. And he asks if that should include the one I made a speech at.
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“No,” I say.
“Seems fine,” he says.
Also, I say, we need to announce plan B tonight, to curb the spread of the Omicron variant. Which will mean more masks, and working from home.
“And what about,” says Simon, heavily, “parties?”
I think about this. Then I ask what will make us look the least ridiculous.
“I’m struggling,” he says.
Thursday
New baby. Looks like Winston Churchill. Might be why I keep having them.
Simon calls when I’m at the bedside.
“So,” I say. “How many have there been?”
“Babies?” he says, nervously.
“Parties,” I say.
“Unknowable,” says Simon. “But at least seven.”
“Weird,” I say. “Same answer.”
Simon says he’s actually calling about the Electoral Commission, who have uncovered a WhatsApp message in which I asked Lord Brownlow for more money to decorate my flat. Which suggests I was lying when I said I didn’t know he’d paid for it.
“Look,” I say. “This isn’t complicated. I just asked a very rich man for money. But I didn’t know the money would be his.”
“But who spends other people’s money?” says Simon, confused.
“Is this a trick question?” I ask.
Friday
Still in the hospital. All Carrie’s friends are here, crowding around and cooing. Then Dominic Raab and Sajid Javid turn up, too, looking grim.
“It just seems mad,” says Raab, “that you’re saddled with the consequences of something that happened almost a year ago.”
Carrie asks how he thinks babies normally happen, though.
“What he means,” says Javid, “is that you’re sliding in the polls, and the backbenchers are baying for blood and your government is becoming a byword for dishonesty.”
“OK guys,” I sigh. “Let’s take this outside. I don’t want to ruin the party.”
“Bit late for that,” he says.
*according to Hugo Rifkind