Edward Wellesley looked around the room that had been his home for the last year. As odd as it sounded, he’d grown fond of it.
Pictures of his wife and son, Milo, hung on the walls, along with countless shots of his beloved border terrier, Wilf, and of Eddie himself, shaking hands with world leaders or speaking at the Tory Party conference. In the corner was a small desk where Eddie had spent many fruitful hours working on his memoirs.
It was a ‘room’ rather than a cell. Not like the awful hole he’d been shut up in for the first three months of his sentence at HMP Kennet. Some chippy pleb in the SFO had decided to make an example of the former Work and Pensions minister, packing Eddie off to the most overcrowded prison in Britain. It was a huge relief to be transferred to Farndale Open Prison, a rambling former stately home set deep in the Hampshire countryside. Compared to Kennet, it was the Ritz-Carlton. Eddie had gone from sharing a squalid cell with five men to sharing a comfortable room with one: a perfectly charming stockbroker named William Rees who’d been had up for insider trading. Will had been released a month ago. Since then Eddie had had the room to himself.
Not that Kennet was all bad. Eddie had made some good friends there too. The truth was, he made friends everywhere. Sir Edward Wellesley was an easy man to like.
In his early forties, with thick black hair greying slightly at the temples and a faint fan of laughter lines around his wickedly intelligent brown eyes, Eddie radiated charisma in a manner that had always drawn others in. Unashamedly posh, he somehow managed to carry off his Eton accent without making people want to punch him. Although not what one would call fit, exactly, at six foot four he carried his weight well, and projected a masculinity and youthful vigour not at all common in politicians. It was widely thought that Fast Eddie looked more like a handsome actor playing a minister than an actual minister. Women had always adored him and men admired him, perhaps because he never took anything too seriously, least of all himself.
‘Ready, Eddie?’
Bob Squires, one of the prison officers, stuck his head around Eddie’s door. A charming old boy in his sixties, Bob was a fanatical cricket buff. He and Eddie had bonded over their love of the game.
‘Not quite,’ said Eddie. ‘I’m still packing up, I’m afraid. Never do today what you can leave till the absolute last minute, that’s my motto.’ He grinned, placing a neatly folded Turnbull & Asser shirt into his suitcase. ‘Besides, chucking-out time’s in an hour, isn’t it?’
‘It is.’ Bob Squires held out an envelope awkwardly. ‘I only stopped in early ’cause me and some of the boys wanted to give you this.’
Eddie opened it. Inside was a photograph of all the Farndale warders and staff, raising their glasses to the camera. On the back someone had written: ‘Good Luck Eddie – We’ll Miss You! – From all at Farndale’. Everyone had signed it.
‘My goodness.’ Eddie felt quite choked. ‘That’s terribly kind of you. I shall hang it up in my new house the moment I find a hammer.’
‘I’m not sure I’d do that if I were you. You might not want to be reminded of … all this … once you’re home.’
‘Nonsense,’ Eddie said robustly. ‘It’s been an experience! I shall hang it in pride of place in the downstairs loo. That’s the only place one ever really looks at pictures.’
‘Well, if I don’t see you, I wish you all the best,’ Bob said gruffly. ‘And I hope you stick it to that bastard Carlyle.’
Eddie laughed. ‘Thank you, Bob. I appreciate that.’
Zipping up his case, he took a last look around. Then he made a tour of Farndale’s common room and cafeteria, saying his farewells to inmates and staff alike and promising to keep in touch. Eddie had learned a lot in prison, but the main lesson he had taken away had been that those inside Her Majesty’s Prison walls were no different, intrinsically, from those outside. There, but for the grace of God, went all of us.
At ten fifteen, only a few minutes late, Eddie Wellesley walked out of Farndale to freedom. It wasn’t exactly a Nelson Mandela moment – there weren’t any gates to unlock for one thing – but it was still a strange and satisfying feeling. Last week’s dreary weather had given way to crisp, bright blue winter skies. A glorious frost blanketed the Hampshire countryside like glitter on a Christmas card. One couldn’t help but feel hopeful and happy on a day like today.
Eddie recognized his old friend Mark Porter, the Telegraph’s political editor, amongst the scrum of press that had surrounded his car, a chauffeur-driven Bentley Mulsanne.
‘Bit cold for you, isn’t it, Mark?’
‘I wouldn’t have missed this for the world, Sir Edward. How do you feel?’
‘Pretty good, thanks for asking,’ Eddie beamed.
‘Nice motor.’ Luke Heaton from the BBC, a weaselly, chinless little leftie in Eddie’s opinion, raised an eyebrow archly. ‘It doesn’t exactly scream “contrition”, though, does it? Given that you were convicted of fraud whilst in high office, do you not feel such an ostentatious show of wealth might be considered in bad taste?’
Eddie’s smile didn’t waver. ‘No.’
Eddie’s driver, dressed in full livery, stepped forward to take his case.
‘Ah, Haddon. Good to see you.’
‘And you, sir. Welcome back.’
He opened the rear door and Eddie stepped inside. Scores of cameras flashed.
A girl from the Daily Mail called out from the crowd: ‘What are you most looking forward to?’
‘Seeing my dog,’ Eddie answered without equivocation. ‘And my wife, of course,’ he added as an afterthought, to ripples of laughter.
‘What about David Carlyle?’ A lone voice Eddie couldn’t place drifted across the melee. ‘Do you have anything you’d like to say to him this morning?’
‘Nothing that you can print,’ Eddie said succinctly.
‘Do you blame Carlyle for your incarceration?’
Eddie smiled, pulling the door closed behind him.
It wasn’t until they reached open countryside, crossing the border from Hampshire into Sussex, that he started to relax. He was excited to see his wife again. Whatever outsiders might think about the Wellesley marriage, Eddie loved Annabel deeply. But it was an excitement tinged with nerves. He’d put his wife through hell. He knew that. Annabel loved their life at Westminster and the kudos she’d enjoyed as a senior minister’s wife. When it had all come crashing down, she’d been devastated. It wasn’t just Eddie’s fall from grace and two-year sentence for tax evasion. It was the horrendous publicity of the trial, the humiliation of seeing Eddie’s mistresses crawl out of the woodwork one by one, like so many maggots. David Carlyle and his newspaper, the Echo, had seen to it that every skeleton in Eddie’s closet was dragged out and rattled loudly before the British public. Including Eddie’s devastated wife.
They hadn’t really talked about any of it during Annabel’s prison visits. Not properly. Now they would have to. Despite having had a year and a half to work on his apology, Eddie still didn’t fully know what he was going to say. ‘Sorry’ seemed
