Protecting Miss Dawes - a job like any other

Chapter 9: Charles

During my therapy sessions to treat the PTSD I had gradually learned not to shut off my feelings, quit placing them in boxes in some hidden place at the back of my brain and instead be open with them. It was achieving this which finally had enabled me to get through on the other side, be a fully functional man again. However, now I saw it necessary to dust off that skill, and resolutely put my newly discovered feelings for Ms. Dawes in such a mental box, carefully taped it closed and placed it in a god-forsaken corner with the intention never to open it again. At least that was what I told myself and it worked quite fine over the week that followed after my pub evening with Elvis. I focused on the job, stayed alert on the surroundings, never let my eyes linger on her longer than was motivated, held my conversations with her as brief as possible. I was quite satisfied with myself for being so professional. Then came the Friday and the PM's birthday party.

I had turned down Trinny's kind offer to arrange a dinner jacket for me, as I owned one which had been tailor-made for me during my university years and still fit me in the same way it had then. I brought it with me to the Home Office that morning, as I hardly could walk around in dinner jacket all day but wanted to be prepared to go directly to the party without having to stop by my flat. When Ms. Dawes saw the bag, she commented;

"Excellent. I'll be going home to change and have stylist help me get prepared so I look a bit more exciting than the regular boring me. You can just bring your clothes and get changed over there too."

I agreed, not to that she usually looked boring in any way, but to that it would be efficient to get changed at her place.

When we got to the flat, she referred me to her studio, said I could change there, meanwhile she was off to her bedroom and the ensuite bathroom with the stylist in tow. I briefly reflected upon that these days she did not hesitate at all to let me in there, in contrast to the first evening when my presence in her studio had seemed to upset her.

Changing clothes was a quick affair, so I was ready long before her and sat down in the armchair in her studio, let my gaze wander over the photos and little trinkets and drawings, taking the opportunity to try and decipher more about who she really was. There was only one photo of her, together with what I assumed to be her family. She seemed to be in her late teens, and already somehow stood out from the rest of the group in the photo even if I could not put my finger on exactly what made her do that. She was just different from the rest. She seemed to be the eldest of her siblings and I could count to five brothers and sisters. The parents were young for having teenage kids but looking like life had not been easy on them, and in the case of the father maybe not the booze either. There was one elderly woman in the photo, maybe a grandmother. The photographer had not managed to coordinate a photo where all nine looked into the camera and smiled simultaneously. Several of the smaller kids seemed to be half-fighting with each other, the mother appeared to try to keep them in check, the younger teen sister looked embarrassed to be there and the father gazed somewhere to the left, possibly drunk. Only the elderly woman and Molly looked straight into the camera, the woman smiling, Molly serious and like she wanted to be somewhere else. I suddenly realised that when I looked at this picture I could only think of her as Molly, not Ms. Dawes or the Home Secretary. Maybe because that was who she had been then, unaware of who she would become in the distant future. I wondered how she had had the possibility to become who she was now, but I was not sure how she would take it if I asked her.

There were other photos of the family members growing older, and of the sister with a baby, then with a toddler and another baby – I assumed Ms. Dawes' nephews, her sister a young mother like their parents had been. The photos indicated that Ms. Dawes was the only one who had risen above her background and made a class-journey. I wondered how she felt about that, how they felt about that. Were they proud, or did they feel that they had lost her? Or maybe both?