Campaign Ruby Part 31

The finger painting. Sun, house, cat, man, child. Woman?

'Yep. Daniel. He's nine. I missed it.'

'I didn't know you have children.'

'Child. Just the one.'

'Well, Daniel probably appreciated it as a gesture of trust. I used to dread parentteacher night.'

His smile returned. 'You're right: Dan's fine. Bella, on the other hand-'

'Your wife?' I breathed in.

He rubbed his bare finger. 'My ex.'

I breathed out. 'How do you cope doing your job and being a parent? I don't even have a goldfish and find it difficult enough to balance things.'

'That's the point-I don't cope. I suck at multi-tasking. I can't keep going like this.' He sighed. 'Win or lose the election, this is it for me.'

'You can't be serious,' I said. 'If we win, you'd walk away? Just like that?'

'No, not just like that. Don't get me wrong: it's a b.l.o.o.d.y tough call, but it shouldn't be a tougher call for me to walk away from my job than it is to walk away from my son.'

'Sir,' said the man on the front desk, 'Miss Stanhope's room key is ready.'

'Thanks, mate.' He dragged himself to his feet.

In the lift, Luke said, 'I shouldn't have said all of that. I don't want to stress Max out before the election so I haven't told him yet.'

'My lips are sealed.'

Ping pong.

'Thanks for the jacket.' I handed it back to him.

'You're welcome. See you in an hour.' He walked towards his hotel room. 'And Roo?'

'Mm?' I said, looking over my shoulder.

'Thanks for listening.'

'My pleasure.'

I inserted the new key. The green light flashed approvingly. I turned on the lights, ran for the loo and added 'buy pyjama pants' to my To Do list.

The Launch.

'Why are we launching the campaign twenty-five days in?' I whispered to Maddy backstage.

She rolled her eyes. 'Shhh.'

'Definitionally,' I said, 'a launch marks the commencement of something. A rocket can't go into orbit until somebody says "We have lift off." This campaign has already lifted off.'

'What about s.h.i.+ps?'

'What about s.h.i.+ps?'

She leaned in closer. 'Are you telling me that every time a boat named after one of her ancestors is built, Her Majesty steps into her overalls, picks up a bottle of Yellowglen from the Windsor bottle-o and pops up to a Liverpudlian dry dock to scream "bon voyage" over the PA system?'

'Yellow what from the Windsor what?'

'Shoosh,' she said. Max stood beside us. The pages of his speech were tightly rolled into a tube. He stared at the floor, his fingers fidgety with adrenaline.

An elderly man approached the stage. Abigail got out of her seat to help him up the stairs. He wore a grey suit with a purple MASTERS FOR PM badge on his lapel. The audience clapped. When he reached the lectern, he said, 'h.e.l.lo, everybody, my name is Frank and I'm pleased to introduce a boy who loves his country.'

The crowd went quiet.

'When he was eight, he had to write an a.s.signment for school about careers. The other kids wrote that they wanted to be ballerinas or firemen. This particular kid said he wanted to serve his country. He got a C on the a.s.signment because apparently that wasn't a career, but, boy, did he prove them wrong.

'At age seventeen, he borrowed my late wife's Datsun and drove to Melbourne to join the navy. There, he served for decades, both here and abroad, before an injury made it difficult to continue.

'But his a.s.signment was still clear. Now he seeks the highest office of service for his country, and I couldn't be prouder of him.'

Max looked up, his fingers still.

Frank's voice broke a little, but he re-established composure. 'He's a man of conviction, courage and integrity. He's my son, Max Masters, the Leader of the Opposition and next prime minister of Australia.'

The crowed erupted into spine-tingling applause, the kind you could feel. Max moved across the stage and into his dad's arms. The flas.h.i.+ng cameras were blinding, but I could just make out the tear stains on Milly's emerald silk tunic as her dad introduced her baby brother.

'Thanks, Dad,' said Max, when we had all calmed down.

I studied the audience as Max spoke. People laughed, nodded, clapped, cheered and, at the end, stood up. Hardened hacks were stirred to their feet. When our hands tingled from being smashed together, Sh.e.l.ly, Milly, Abigail and her grandpa joined Max on stage, so we clapped until our palms throbbed.

Afterwards, Max sat calmly in a chair with a salad sandwich and cup of tea. 'How do you think it went?'

Luke, who like Max and Theo was operating on no sleep, could scarcely contain himself. 'It couldn't have been better.'

Sh.e.l.ly squeezed her husband's knee. 'It was the best speech you've ever given.'

Max smiled. 'Thanks, sweetheart.'

'I'm glad we did the redraft last night,' said Theo. 'There was a standing ovation when you talked about gutter politics. It could have been a disaster after the s.h.i.+t sandwich Archie served us.'

Maddy nudged him, gesturing to Abigail.

'Sorry,' he said. 'After the poo sandwich...'

Abigail giggled.

'Roo, can I borrow you for a minute?' said Di, barging into the room.

'Sure.' I excused myself and closed the door behind me. 'What's up?'

'What do you know about social networking sites? How permanent are things once they're on there?'

'As permanent as black shoe polish on white carpet. Why?'

'Gary Spinnaker is running the only negative angle he can find on the launch. Abigail said something online this morning. Apparently her friend posted something like, "How come you're not at sports day Abs?" She replied, "Dad's making some boring speech and Mum said I have to go."'

'That seems harmless enough.'

'Wrong,' said Di. 'All the happy, clapping pictures of Abigail next to Sh.e.l.ly today will look fake in tomorrow's papers. And the wowsers out there will say she should have been in school.'

'Firstly, she's just turned thirteen, so of course she acts cool with her friends. I would have eleven nose piercings and an eating disorder if I was thirteen and my father was Opposition leader.' I shuddered at a flashback of my father making a speech at my school careers fair ent.i.tled 'The Merits of Banking', which became known as 'The Merits of w.a.n.king'. 'Secondly, every parent can relate to pulling their children out of school for an aunt's wedding, a sibling's graduation, a holiday.'

'Roo! We need to fix this. The LOO can't do much without belittling Abigail, which he would never do. Abigail can't exactly retract because it'll look forced. The PM hasn't had her campaign launch yet. She might decide to leave her kids in school to make a point, then this becomes an issue about parenting...Hi, Sh.e.l.ly.'

Di and I stared at our shoes.

'What becomes an issue about parenting?' Sh.e.l.ly moved closer.

'Would you mind if I talked to Max about it first?' pleaded Di.

'Yes,' she said, 'I would.'

'Can we perhaps talk to you both at once?'

'If you must. Max, can you come out here for a minute, darling?'

He was utterly exhausted. It seemed unfair to give him this news.

'What's up?'

When Di explained, they laughed before realising what it could mean for their daughter: unnecessary public exposure. Max flopped onto a chair. The adrenaline crutch that had been holding him upright gave way. He was too tired to think. Sh.e.l.ly stood next to the window. Outside, Melbourne was grey and stormy.

'Let me talk to Spinnaker.' Sh.e.l.ly unfolded her arms. 'Give me his number. I'll call him.'

'With respect, Sh.e.l.ly, I'd need to know what you were going to say,' said Di.

'I'm going to remind him that she's thirteen years old, just a year older than his son, the one he told me about at Christmas drinks.'

Di pondered it. 'But if Spinnaker doesn't write it, someone else will.'

'I'll talk to them, too.'

'I think you should make light of it,' I said. 'Max is lucky to have such a savvy critic in the family. This time, she says, her grandfather made the better speech.'

'Yeah.' Di closed her eyes to capture her thoughts. 'How about you say something like, "Max and I consider ourselves lucky to have such an honest and savvy critic in the family. We encourage her to have her own opinion on things and are immensely proud of her." If Spinnaker presses you on why you took her out of school for the event, tell him you made the decision to pull Abigail out of sports day for the same reason his wife pulled his kids out of school to attend the Walkleys.'

'I'd do it again in a heartbeat,' said Sh.e.l.ly.

'We might need to keep a bit of an eye on what she says online in future,' said Di.

'Let her be,' said Max through closed eyes. 'I wouldn't be where I am today if Mum and Dad had told me to shut up when I was a kid, and that's what I'll say if anyone asks me about it.'

'Come on, love,' said Sh.e.l.ly, 'let's get you home for a nap.' She helped him to his feet and led him to the door.

'Thanks, guys,' he yawned.

'I'll text you Spinnaker's number and let him know to expect your call, Sh.e.l.ly,' said Di.

'Ta,' said Sh.e.l.ly.

'You're not bad at this, you know, Roo,' said Di, before her phone rang. 'G'day Gary, I was just about to call.'

A dish best served with mini-pies.

Archie's final contribution to the campaign shaved two whole points off us in that Sat.u.r.day's Southpoll, dampening Max's post-launch high. The two-party-preferred count put us at fifty-one to Brennan's forty-nine, giving her the perfect underdog status with which to start the final week of the campaign. With the finish line in sight, Max and Sh.e.l.ly found new energy. We spent the weekend visiting key marginal seats like Donaldson in Tasmania to sh.o.r.e up support. Now, in our seventh city in four days, Max read his brief as I sponged oily make-up onto his sweaty face.

'Do I really need that?'

My head was unkind. With those eye bags and crow's feet, he could probably audition for the before shot in a Botox commercial. The polls open in less than four days.

'We just need to make sure your face isn't too s.h.i.+ny for the cameras.'

'I'm at a defence base in Woop Woop,' he said. 'It's thirty-four degrees. If I wasn't s.h.i.+ny I wouldn't be human.'

'Isn't Woop Woop in Tasmania?'

His laughter made my hand slip, printing a lightning bolt of concealer across his forehead.

'Keep still. You look like Harry Potter.'

'Woop Woop is a generic description of somewhere a long way from anywhere.'

Oh.