bout of self-loathing was interrupted by a vibration somewhere near her thigh. She dug out her cellphone. Where the number should have appeared it just said: Restricted.
A voice she did not recognize spoke without saying hello. ‘Is this Maggie Costello?’
‘Yes.’
‘Please come to the Residence right away. He wants to speak to you.’
Confused, Maggie replied, ‘Who wants to speak to me?’
‘The President.’
Washington, DC, Monday March 20, 08.07
There was no time to visit the bathroom: she had been summoned to see him ‘right away’. But there was no way in the world she could go to the Residence looking like this. Maggie swung open the door to the Ladies’, praying she would run into no one that she would have to speak to.
Shit.
Tara MacDonald, Director of Communications, African-American mother of four and undisputed matriarch, first of the Baker campaign and now of the Baker White House – coiffed and confident in her midlife prime, coming out of the stalls and checking her make-up.
‘Hi there, Maggie, how you doing, sweetheart?’
Maggie froze, reluctant to take up her position in front of the vanity mirror. Lamely, she ducked her head and began to wash her hands.
‘I’m OK.’
‘You seem a little, I don’t know, agitated.’
Maggie turned to MacDonald with a harried attempt at a smile. ‘I’ve just been summoned. To the Residence. I thought I’d better . . .’ she nodded towards the mirror, ‘. . . you know, make myself presentable.’
The instant change in Tara’s expression – as if her smile muscles had been suddenly severed – told Maggie she’d made a mistake.
The older woman pursed her lips. ‘That right? The Residence. That’s quite an honour.’
‘I’m sure it’s nothing important. Probably wants some input ahead of the UN speech.’
‘Sweetheart, he has a National Security Advisor for that.’ Tara MacDonald went back to the mirror, but Maggie could see she was not done. ‘Well, ain’t you the insider. And there I was thinking you were just an NSC staffer.’
Maggie ignored the remark, staring at the mirror, aware that she had already been here a minute – which was a minute longer than she should have been. Besides, she had heard this kind of barb before.
The face that stared back at her looked pale and strained: no surprise, really, given the excruciating little scene that had just been played out in the Chief of Staff’s office. In the panicked dash to get here this morning she’d forgone her usual lick of paint: there had simply been no time to apply concealer to the dark shadows beneath her eyes or the tinted moisturizer that did its best to conceal the tiny crows’ feet that now perched at the corners of her eyes along with the cigarette-lines around her mouth. Just a touch of mascara and a sweep of nude lipstick was all she’d managed, and it showed. Not much evidence at the moment of what the gossip column of the City Paper had recently referred to as ‘the delectable Maggie Costello’.
After yet another attempt to restore swift order to her hair, she headed off – walking as fast as she could without triggering a security alert – through the press briefing room and then outside along the colonnade towards the White House Residence, home for little more than two months to Stephen Baker, wife Kimberley, their thirteen-year-old daughter Katie and eight-year-old son Josh.
The Secret Service agents ushered her through without so much as a question, clearly expecting her. Through one set of doors, then another and suddenly she was in what looked like any other American household at ten past eight in the morning. There were cereal boxes on the table, school bags spilling over with gym kit on the floor, and childish chatter in the air. Except for the minor matter of armed officers posted outside the door and state-of-the-art, encrypted communications equipment in every room, it looked like a regular family home.
Stephen Baker was not at the table scouring the New York Times over his half-moon reading glasses as she was expecting. Instead he was standing in the middle of the kitchen, jacket off, with an apple in his hand. Standing opposite him, three yards away and staring intently, was his son Josh – clutching a baseball bat.
‘OK,’ the President whispered. ‘You ready?’
The little boy nodded.
‘Here it comes. Three, two, one.’ He tossed the apple, slowly and at just the right height for it to make contact with the little boy’s bat.
Struck firmly, the fruit went flying past the President’s hand and splattered into the wall behind him.
A voice came from the next room, raised to full volume. ‘Josh! What did I say about ball games inside?’
The President made a mock-worried expression for the benefit of his son and then, conspiratorially, put his finger to his lips. In full voice he called out, ‘All under control, my love,’ as he retrieved the apple from the floor and wiped the pulp from the wall. Then, catching the eye of the Secret Service agent who had witnessed the entire episode, he mouthed, ‘You too. Not a word.’
Even here, without the trappings and grandeur of office, he was a striking man. Six foot three, with a full head of brown hair, he was always the first person in the room you noticed. He was lean, his features fine and sharp. But it was his eyes that grabbed you. They were a deep, penetrating green and – even when the rest of him was animated and quick – they seemed to operate at a slower pace, gazing levelly, never darting. During the TV debates, the camera seemed to seek them out, as if it were as mesmerized as the audience. When commentators wrote about Candidate Baker exuding calm and steadiness, Maggie was convinced it was not his answers or policy ideas they had in mind. It was his eyes.
And now they were looking towards her. ‘Hey Josh, look who’s here. Your favourite Irish aunt.’
‘Hi Maggie.’
‘Hi Joshie. How’s your new school?’
‘S’OK. I play baseball, which is cool.’
‘That is cool.’ Maggie was beaming. Josh Baker was a contender for America’s cutest boy and having first met him nearly two years ago she felt as if she had almost seen him grow up.
That first encounter had come on a summer Saturday in Iowa, at the State Fair in Des Moines. Stephen Baker had been there with his family – Josh, then aged six, kept nagging to ride on the bumper cars – as the candidate tried to endear himself to the ever-discerning, and crucial, people of Iowa. Baker was then the rank outsider in the Democratic field, the little-known governor of Washington State. His name recognition was zero, he had no national experience and carried no regional advantage: historically, Democrats liked governors from the South who might deliver a chunk of votes that would otherwise be hard to reach. Washington State? In a presidential primary, that counted as a disability.
Still,
