Polls Apart Read Online Free PDF Page B

answered after a couple of rings but spoke hesitantly.
    “Hello.”
    “Hi. It’s Anna Lloyd. You dialled my mobile a couple of times this morning?”
    “Yes… Anna, it’s Sylvia Levine here. I hope you don’t mind me calling.”
    Anna’s heart plunged as she realised who she was talking to.
    “What do you want Sylvia?” she demanded coldly.
    “I didn’t know what else to do,” Sylvia’s aged voice sounded shaky and panicked as she got to the point of her call. “A newspaper reporter’s been calling me these last few days telling me she knows all about your work for the agency and asking me all these questions. I didn’t know what to say to her, Anna. I thought I should tell you.”
    Anna clutched the edge of the car seat in a futile attempt to stop the world from spinning around her. Her breathing sped up to a pant as the implications of what Sylvia was telling her played through her mind.
    “What paper is she from?” Anna asked icily.
    “The Sunday Echo .”
    “Shit. Have you told them anything?”
    “No, nothing Anna. But they know you worked for me for six months and they know what kind of work you did.”
    “This… is a bloody nightmare ,” Anna shrieked. “We’re just about to go into a general election campaign and this blows up in my face. I knew the past would come back to haunt me, I knew it.” Anna’s voice sounded strangled now and she fought hard to regain some kind of composure. She could see John giving her alarmed glances in his mirror and she realised quickly that she would have to try and avoid more people finding out or the evidence against her would start piling up.
    “I’m so sorry, Anna. They already know the names of some of your regulars.”
    “Don’t say it like that, Sylvia. You make me sound like a hooker.” Anna could feel the cold sweat breaking out across her brow. “Look. I need you to just stay quiet and never call me again, do you understand?”
    “Perfectly,” Sylvia replied calmly, and Anna instantly detected the shift in her voice. Her stomach lurched when she realised what had just happened. Sylvia had set her up – and she had no doubt that she was well and truly stuffed.
    “Well, Dicky, this is really it. The moment we’ve been waiting for.” But Henry quickly realised he was talking to himself. Richard’s attention was firmly locked on the TV balanced precariously on a pile of folders above the filing cabinet in his office. A blonde newsreader with a perfect bob spoke earnestly into the camera as a ticker running beneath her proclaimed: PM set to announce general election date.
    Henry moved silently to sit next to Richard as they watched Kelvin Davis emerge through the front doors of a primary school and make his way towards the crowd of waiting photographers and reporters.
    “Look at him,” scoffed Richard, shuffling uncomfortably on the edge of the meeting table where they were both now perched. “Not a hair out of place while there’s a bloody gale raging around him. How does he manage it?”
    “Hairspray I expect,” said Henry.
    Richard glanced at his head of communications, but decided there was no time to analyse whether his comment had been genuine or in jest. Henry’s dry wit and deadpan delivery often left Richard a little bewildered as to how he was supposed to respond.
    Kelvin smiled like a well-practised Hollywood star as he approached the cameras, the teeth-whitening for which he’d recently been ridiculed by the press now in full view.
    He took a moment to nod in acknowledgment to the hundreds of school children who were gathered all around him.
    “Trust him to surround himself with kids, as well,” said Richard. “Is there any stunt too low for him to pull?”
    “Doubt it,” replied Henry.
    Kelvin fixed the cameras with a look that said “I’m about to say something really important” before he began his prepared speech. “Earlier today, I saw the Queen at Buckingham Palace to ask for a dissolution of Parliament so