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artificialqueens · 4 years

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Different People (Different Arguments), 1/14 (Branjie/Jankie) - Ortega

a/n: once upon a time there was an author named Ortega who wrote war and fucking peace of a the thick of it au called Just the Game We’re In. she finished it and was proud of it and everything was fine. then suddenly, it turned out one of the main characters was…well, we’ll park that. so Ortega then decided to rewrite it with different girls, a few different details, and a different title. and it’s called Different People (Different Arguments)! and chapter one is here now for u all to enjoy (i hope).

(ps. no i’ve not forgotten about strictly au)

fic summary: Brooke Lynn is a political advisor for a government department where she has to contend with an incompetent Minister, maintaining her stone-cold bitch image, working alongside a press team of slackers, and the Prime Minister’s ever-so-slightly terrifying enforcer breathing down her neck 24/7. So when a familiar face from her past arrives as her new boss, she’s not exactly thrilled to add another problem to her ever-growing pile.

And then she admits she’s got a crush on her coworker.

In this chapter: A standard working day is turned on its head when Brooke has to play a role in engineering Cabinet Minister Darienne Lake’s resignation.

***

High heels. The definitive sound of Brooke’s job. Day in, day out the click-clack, click-clack sound would echo through the offices, closely followed by the constantly ringing phones and the tap-tap-tap of keyboards. Often there was also shouting, the volume of which was never helped by the design of the building which allowed every whisper to be amplified by around a million decibels and broadcast into the lobby.

Brooke hated the new building. She’d hated the idea of moving into it, insisting it would reflect badly on their party and cost them in the polls.

“What kind of message is it going to send out?” she’d rolled her eyes, tearing her hands through her hair. “If we’re trying to tell the public we’re still in touch with them and understand their fears of another recession it doesn’t exactly help moving into what looks like Aquaman’s secret fucking lair.”

She had been ignored, of course, as the decision had already been made. Brooke often wondered what the point of being a political advisor was if nobody ever actually listened to your advice, especially since the person you were supposed to be giving advice to seemed to be blundering about the world of politics like a headless chicken. Darienne Lake had been head of the Department for Social Affairs and Citizenship (Dosac for short) for quite some time now. Too long, Brooke thought. It was harrowing working for a woman who was clearly in the wrong profession, watching her get slammed by the media almost daily as a result of the latest crackpot policy she’d dreamed up. Brooke could’ve left the department a long time ago, should’ve left a long time ago. But she didn’t.

Politics was all about climbing the ladder and making connections. It was a game of chess, and over the years Brooke had seen many people make the wrong move both in and out of the public eye and subsequently watched them get disposed of. She’d seen people cross to the other side, watched both her own party and the opposition divide and conquer. It was all extremely black and white. The party line was a tightrope you had to walk. If you stepped out of line, you fell off the tightrope. If you weren’t up to date on what the line was, the tightrope got cut.

Brooke could appreciate it wouldn’t sound hugely appealing to someone who didn’t live, breathe, eat, sleep and shit politics. However, this was her world. It had been her world since she’d started watching the news when she was six years old and heard her family talk about the politicians on the screen, and her need to be within the political realm only intensified when she left school and went to uni to study politics and economics, her drive and determination ensuring she graduated with a first class degree. Something that never got old to Brooke were people’s reactions when they discovered she wasn’t some dyed blonde lobotomy job who’d slept her way up the ladder. She wanted to keep giving people that shock day after day, and if that meant staying and advising an under-qualified, over-privileged cabinet Minister, then she could grit her teeth and bear it.

The echoey click-clack of Brooke’s heels provided a soundtrack as she briskly made her way across the black tiles of the department building’s lobby and pressed one red acrylic nail to the button of the lift, the doors sliding open almost instantly. As she stepped inside, quickly checking her reflection in the mirror, there was the frenzied sound of heels on tiles and a panicked yelling.

“Hold the lift!”

Smiling to herself, Brooke held the doors open as a small, pint-sized blonde ball of energy hurtled through them. Catching her breath and smoothing down her white shift dress, she shot her friend a quick smile.

“Morning, girl!”

“Hey, Jan. Great timing,” Brooke smirked as her friend fixed her windswept hair in the mirror.

If you’d ever asked Brooke if she could’ve seen herself becoming best friends with a previous member of the opposition she would have laughed in your face, but Jan was an exception. She had crossed the floor three months ago, finding a job as one of Darienne’s junior policy advisors after she became disillusioned with the ruthless ideals of the opposition. From what Brooke had heard, the offices of Nicky Doll’s party had been a little cliquey and Jan had wanted to spread her wings. Understandably, Brooke had been suspicious of her at first but Jan had been persistently kind and sweet to her to the point where Brooke basically blinked and they were friends as well as colleagues.

“What’s on the Minister’s agenda today then?” Brooke laughed humourlessly, leaning against the lift’s cool metal wall. “Are we demanding the extension of all buses by 30 centimetres? Bringing back the ha’penny? Outlawing kids?”

Jan threw her head back and laughed. “No, although all very possible Darienne ideas. We’ve to sort the public transport data before 5pm. That’s the only real pressing thing we have to do today.”

Brooke felt uneasy. The prospect of 24 hours that didn’t seem like being strapped to a bullet train speeding through fire seemed too good to be true. Something was always going wrong at Dosac and the fact that the only important thing they had to do with their day was to type some figures into an excel spreadsheet was suspicious.

“How was your weekend anyway?” Jan asked, smiling kindly.

Brooke thought back to the previous two days which were spent holed up in her studio flat eating instant noodles and working her way through expenses forms which the Minister should have been doing herself.

“Oh, you know…just a quiet one,” she gave Jan a small smile, which she returned.

The elevator doors opened and Brooke and Jan made their way to their desks. They were stopped in their tracks by a tiny, olive-skinned woman with flowing dark locks of hair babbling away at them at about a mile a minute. Smirking, Brooke shared an affectionate glance with Jan.

“And good morning to you too, human megaphone,” Brooke smiled, lazily throwing her jacket over her desk as the girl rolled her eyes.

“Brooke Lynn! This is serious shit. It would help if you made it into fuckin’ work on time,” she snapped back, pacing back and forth in her heels with worry.

“Relax, Vanessa. We were only a minute off, Darienne’s not going to be in for another fifteen,” Jan smiled lazily, kicking her heels off as she lounged in the wheely chair behind her desk. “Anyway, what’s the panic? It’s a chill day.”

There was one second of almost-silence as the clicks of computer mouses and the whirr of monitors were the only sounds in the room. Then, Vanessa’s eyes widened in horror. Brooke’s stomach dropped as she met Jan’s eyes- she’d known the prospect of a quiet day had been a veritable pipe dream.

“A chill…shit, you guys didn’t get the briefing that Nina sent out? Oh Christ, what am I doin’ even asking that.”

“Are my ears burning?” came a sleepy voice from down the hall. A figure emerged bundled up in countless scarves and woollen cardigans, her blonde frizzy curls only just visible through the layers of clothing. Her manicured fingernails were curled around a Starbucks cup, which she was clinging to for dear life.

“Morning, Nina! Great timing!” Vanessa greeted her sarcastically.

“Ignore her, girl. She hasn’t had her morning shot of Sambuca yet,” Jan drawled, smiling at the human game of pass the parcel who was currently detangling herself from her mummification of knitted clothing. Nina was Dosac’s press secretary who was kind and easy-going but also did the bare minimum, as her determination started and ended at getting home to her wife Monét and the latest episode of EastEnders every day. The girls all both loved her and were vexed by her in equal measures as it was often near to impossible to get any information from her or through her. But Brooke had to admit she did make a good cup of tea.

“Nina. Is there a reason why these bitches haven’t been briefed on Darienne’s interview with Raja Gemini today?” asked Vanessa.

Brooke threw her head back and groaned. Oh, fuck. This was bad news. Raja was one of the fiercest bitches in the media, a BBC journalist who was almost impossible to influence with spin. Fixing Nina with a stony glare, she was irritated even more when she simply shrugged.

“Vanessa, that email was sent to me at four minutes past five yesterday evening and you know fine well that the moment it hits five o’clock my out of office is on and my work phone is off,” Nina raised her eyebrows, curling her Bluetooth headset round her ear as she logged into her computer.

“Christ. So the Minister has a Gemini interview and we’ve got no idea what it’s meant to be covering,” Brooke massaged her temples slowly.

“Well, I’ll tell you what it’s about. She’s runnin’ with the mobile phone policy,” Vanessa sighed, nodding fiercely as both Brooke and Jan cried out in disbelief.

“Absolutely not. I thought we’d convinced her that it was a non-starter?!” Jan exclaimed, her tone nothing short of outraged.

“Apparently she’s feelin’ the pressure of the opposition as a result of Nicky pushing to cut down on Co2 emissions, so she wants to bring out a policy that goes hand in hand with that so the government can look good.”

“That doesn’t even make any fucking sense! God, Nicky could sneeze and she’d be ‘feeling the pressure’. Sometimes it’s like this department’s being run by a startled cat,” Jan sighed, pushing her blow-dried waves of hair away from her face with her hand.

“Yeah, I always think watching her decision-making process is like watching an enormous baby trying to do calculus,” Brooke piped up, humour masking the genuine, real fear that this disastrous policy was about to go live. Its basic premise was to fine people who used their phones while they walked, to avoid collisions between pedestrians on the streets and therefore reduce waiting times at Accident and Emergency as there were less injuries. It was absolutely insane, but then this was a typical Darienne Lake policy. Vanessa had once told Brooke that she often genuinely wondered if someone was sneaking cocaine into Darienne’s pasta salads.

Obviously suffering from a rare pang of guilt, Vanessa sighed as she leant against Jan’s desk. “I don’t know. I think sometimes this party’s way too harsh on her. And the press.”

“Can you blame them?!” Brooke snorted derisively. “It sucks, but if you’re a woman in politics and you go out in dresses that look like someone put stick-on diamantes onto a burlap sack mid-seizure, of course Hello magazine are going to have a field day.”

“Come on, Brooke Lynn, you gotta admit that she’s a very nice woman,” Vanessa shook her head, laughing only slightly.

“Being a very nice woman doesn’t make you a good politician, though,” Jan chipped in with a grimace.

“So you’re going to follow her when she eventually goes then, Vanessa?” Nina piped up from behind her monitor, her eyebrows raised high into her blonde curls. Vanessa bit her lip.

“…well. I still want some form of career, let’s not take it too far.”

The three girls laughed as Vanessa blushed pink. Vanessa’s loyalty to Darienne didn’t stretch all that far. When Darienne had entered the job last year it had also meant she had arrived as Darienne’s senior advisor. It had quickly become clear to Brooke that Vanessa had got to where she was by telling people what they wanted to hear, smiling and nodding at every turn as Darienne drove the department into one dead end after another. Brooke admired Vanessa’s craftiness; her method of going along with whatever Darienne wanted meant that whenever the time came to blame someone Darienne never looked her way. Of course, Vanessa secretly hated basically every idea that Darienne had and quickly grew to trust Brooke (and eventually Jan when she joined the party) as somebody she could share her true feelings with. Over her time as part of Dosac the three girls had become great friends, forming a sort of secret alliance of common sense against Darienne’s crazy politics. She didn’t look in any way like a traditional government advisor, but Brooke still thought she was amazing.

At her job, that is.

“Face it, V,” Jan smiled sleepily, giving a stretch as Brooke shook herself out of her daydream. “Everyone’s running from Darienne like…ugh, I’m crap at one-liners at this time of the morning. Brooke, help me out?”

“Like she runs from Weight Watchers? Like obesity runs in her family? Like McDonald’s employees run whenever she steps foot in the building? Come on, Jan, that one was easy.”

“Guys, c’mon! That’s both way harsh an’ fatphobic as shit. Check yourself,” Vanessa chastised her friends, shaking her head. Jan pulled a guilty face and made a helpless gesture.

“All I’m saying is that Darienne Lake is sinking like the Titanic, if the Titanic was on fire and made entirely of burning shit, and we’re going to be playing the violins if we don’t start distancing ourselves from her as soon as we can,” she yawned.

“Does shit float or sink?” pondered Brooke as she chewed a pen.

“That’s not really the point here,” Jan rolled her eyes.

“Look, I don’ give a shit about burlap sacks, or burnin’ shit, or spitroasting or whatever the fuck you guys are talking ‘bout, I just think she’s gonna notice if we start lookin’ like we’re about to jump ship!” Vanessa cried, flustered.

Jan and Brooke shared a concerned look.

“I didn’t say anything about spitroasting. Do you even know what spitroasting is?” Brooke laughed uproariously. Jan and Nina giggled as Vanessa shot Brooke a displeased glare.

“No. It don’t sound very classy,” she sniffed, scrolling through her phone nonchalantly. As the laughter died down, Nina sighed from her desk.

“Even if she does notice, it won’t be an issue. I heard Bianca’s sorting her departure.”

The three girls gave Nina equally shocked glances, their jaws slack at this bomb of information coming from someone who was usually so little help.

“You…heard something? You have working ears? You have a working set of five senses?” Brooke teased her, gobsmacked but also a little excited at the prospect of getting someone competent in to run the department.

“Hey, I am actually of some use sometimes! Akeria over at Richmond Terrace told me at our last meeting.”

All at once, Brooke deflated in her seat. “Right, so what you really mean is…a senior press officer for the opposition told you that Bianca was planning to get rid of Darienne, knowing she’d eventually find out and making sure she’d become rattled so that Nicky would be able to capitalize on the fact that she’d be acting more like a bat on Ritalin than normal.”

Seeing Nina’s peeved expression, Jan piped up. “I’m sure there’s some element of truth in it, Brooke. I mean, Akeria’s not exactly party loyal, she’s just a civil servant.”

Brooke gave a little exhale. Jan was kind to the point of frustrating sometimes. “Well, if what Nina is saying is a fact-”

“Excuse me, I’m not Beedle the fucking Bard!” Nina cut in, resembling a meerkat as her head popped over the top of her monitor.

“- then maybe we should start distancing ourselves,” Brooke finished, shooting Nina an irked look, annoyed at having been interrupted. She noticed that Vanessa was giving her a confused sort of glance.

“How? How do we create distance when we’re advising the bitch?” she stammered, clearly becoming nervous at the prospect of a minor coup. Brooke laughed. These were the situations where Vanessa’s inexperience showed and, although it was sometimes tedious having to hold her hand through such conditions, it was also ever so slightly endearing.

“Don’t panic, ‘Ness, it’ll be fine. Bianca will have it taken care of,” she smiled, trying her best to reassure her friend.

Casting her eye to the clock, Jan narrowed her eyes. “V, you should probably head downstairs and meet the Minister. Her car’s going to be pulling up in, like, a minute.”

Cursing, Vanessa trotted towards the lifts as fast as her high heels could carry her. Brooke watched as she left, then exhaled loudly as she switched her computer on. Trying her best to relax, she cast her eye over the office. Apart from one glass-fronted room at the far end which belonged to Darienne, the majority of it was open plan. It was mostly filled with identical IKEA desks which were all the same shade of creamy grey and topped with piles and piles of work. Vanessa’s desk was messy with post-it notes plastered all round the screen of her monitor, encroaching on top of the piles of folders and ringbinders like some kind of horrific, neon disease. Brooke’s own was a sort of middle ground- most things were ordered but the nature of the job meant that sometimes a chaos of papers, files and briefing notes would sometimes hurricane itself across her desk. A stark contrast to the other two, Jan’s desk was like a beacon of order and tidiness in the hectic office. Everything had its place, her folders were all stored neatly and were colour-coded, and a packet of disinfectant wipes sat just beside the screen of her monitor. Their desks represented the three of them quite well.

Over to her left beside the lifts sat the cluster of desks which housed the communications team. Nina sat at its helm, situated near the desks of the advisors. To the right of Nina’s desk sat the two senior press officers, Scarlet and Yvie, and to Nina’s left were the two junior press officers, Jaida (who Brooke often thought to be far more competent than Nina and often prayed the two would somehow find themselves in some form of Freaky Friday body swap) and Adore, whose chair was empty. Brooke rolled her eyes hard- Adore had started as a civil service intern and Darienne had ended up keeping her on permanently. It had been another one of her diabolical decisions as Adore was ever so slightly scatterbrained, preferred scrolling her socials to tackling any of the pile of incomplete work the size of Kilimanjaro on her desk, and devoted around 90% of her day to making cups of tea. As a person she was great fun and brought a certain element of life to the office when everyone was down, but as someone Brooke had to work with she was a challenge. There had been many times where Brooke had fleetingly thought of pushing over the pile of folders on her desk one day and killing her, doing the department a great service.

Before Brooke could even open her emails, Darienne was marching through the department with Vanessa following behind her holding two large, red briefcases.

“Morning, morning!” she sing-songed as she made her way into her office. “Meeting in ten, yes ladies?”

Brooke shrugged half-heartedly in response, scrolling through her emails with disinterest. As she watched Darienne swing her office door shut she let out a huge, bored sigh.

There was suddenly a flurry of activity as the sound of approaching footsteps thundered along the corridor. Soon enough, a small girl with wide eyes, cheeks flushed pink and blonde hair with black roots appeared and flung herself down into the empty desk beside Jaida. Getting herself comfy, she kicked her heeled boots off and fired up her computer. Adore had arrived.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, ain’t anyone able to get to work on time?!” Vanessa hissed, exasperated and trying desperately to mask the fact that Adore had only just arrived at the office. Sipping on the coffee that was no doubt in her porcelain keep cup, Adore shot her a slack-jawed smile as the other press officers looked up from their work.

“Hey, I was working, thank you very much! I was doing important party business before I got here.”

“What kind of important party business?” asked Yvie, her interest piqued at the thought of Adore voluntarily doing any work.

“Laila McQueen,” Adore beamed, taking another big, loud sip. Jan laughed as Brooke rolled her eyes so hard they threatened to fall out her sockets. “Hey, it just means we have The Independent on our side for the next couple of days!”

“Good work, girl. You’re like a broadsheet Julia Roberts. I didn’t know Bianca had started pimping people out,” Scarlet shot Adore a sarcastic grin and received a tight-lipped smile and one middle finger in response which made her snort a laugh.

“Yeah, yeah, very good, Adore, real impressive. That’s your one minute of glory up. You think you could go and get us some tea? And maybe some pastries, Darienne’ll probably be hungry,” Vanessa ordered, Adore pouting and lazily rising from her desk.

“Probably? It’s not like there’s an element of doubt to it,” Brooke snorted a laugh. “Get her a cinnamon roll the size of a fucking Swiss cheese, that should do her fine.”

Five minutes later, Brooke found herself sipping a subpar cup of tea in Darienne’s office, craving the sweet embrace of death as she listened to her witter on about how Raja Gemini wasn’t that intimidating, and that contrary to popular belief she was able to hold her own against the big journalists. Jan was attempting to talk her down from the ledge of misplaced confidence she had seemed to have clambered up to, Vanessa was doing her best impersonation of a nodding dog, and Nina was sleepily casting her eyes between Darienne and Jan as they spoke, her notebook blank.

“Do you have a strong opening line?” Jan asked the Minister nervously, prodding at her lip with nerves. Darienne smiled smugly, leaning back and relaxing in her chair.

“Once we implement these fines, the waiting times at A&E will be shorter than the waiting times at McDonalds. Ambulances will practically start operating drive thrus!” she reeled off, grinning proudly at the line she’d clearly spent hours thinking up. Stifling laughter, Brooke watched the reactions of the other girls. Nina’s pen hovered above her notebook hesitantly as if she couldn’t quite believe she had to write the drivel down, and Vanessa and Jan were staring at each other, wide-eyed with incredulity.

“Jesus. I’ve seen stronger newborn children,” Brooke sighed as she leant forward and sat her cup of tea on Darienne’s desk, too disgusted to attempt to drink any more. “That cup of tea was stronger than that opening line.”

“Hey! I spent all night thinking that up,” Darienne cried, offended. Jan furrowed her brow.

“Honestly Darienne, it does kind of sound like you pulled it out of your ass.”

“Speaking of assholes, Bianca’s in the building,” Nina spoke up, checking her phone. The mood in the room suddenly plummeted.

Everyone was afraid of Bianca. The only separating factor was just how afraid they were of Bianca. She was the prime Minister’s enforcer and spin doctor, the lady who made it clear to everyone in government that they had to know the line and toe the line, often spinning the party out of crises like a terrifying dreidel. She had no time for time wasters, bluffers, blue-sky thinkers, or people who weren’t one hundred percent capable of doing their job, and often unleashed hell on those that weren’t. Brooke was a big girl, she could handle herself, but there was still something about the authority that Bianca radiated and how intimidating she was that made her just that little bit nervous. She knew she had an easy-going side, but Brooke hadn’t seen it often.

“She looking for us?” Vanessa asked nervously.

“No, I’m sure she’s walking around the department trying to get her steps in for the day. What do you think?!” Nina hissed back, glaring momentarily at Vanessa then back to her phone. “Any second now…”

“Good morning, Bianca,” Jan greeted as a woman strode confidently into the office on six-inch Louboutins. Despite the fact her caramel waves of hair had a slight haze of frizz from the drizzle outside she was otherwise perfectly put-together, wearing a matching black suit jacket and pencil skirt combo. Her makeup was bright like the patterns on a poisonous frog and her lips were painted with bright red lipstick. Or perhaps that was just the blood of another poor cabinet Minister.

“Yes, good morning, and I’m hoping it’s going to be a good fucking morning, because this one-” she trained a single black fake nail on Darienne’s face “-is fully prepped for her Gemini interview at 12, correct?”

“Don’t worry Bianca. I was up all night,” Darienne gave her a saccharine sweet smile, which Bianca turned her nose up at.

“So you’re fully aware she thinks it’s an utterly fucking horrible idea?” Bianca tilted her head very slightly.

“She’s not the only one,” Jan muttered, just loud enough for Brooke to hear.

Darienne looked somewhat put out, her face falling. Sighing, Brooke looked to the ceiling. Vanessa was right- the Minister was a nice lady, but how in the hell could she think that policy was anything less than an utter car crash?! Brooke began to allow herself to daydream, which admittedly was always a risk in Bianca’s presence, but already this day was like a huge, massive wave towering over them all before a tsunami and she needed to disconnect. She was aware of Bianca’s voice tearing into Darienne in the background.

“What if she asks you how many police hours this will take up? What are you going to say then?”

“I would simply point her to the amount of money that this policy would generate, which would well make up for the drain on resources-”

“Jesus H Fuck, who did your media training? Myra Hindley? Don’t use the word ‘drain’! Don’t use any words with any negative connotations whatsoever! I don’t want a single word out of place in this interview; otherwise Gemini is going to start analysing it like Gillian McKeith analyses people’s shit.”

Darienne appeared to think things over for a moment. “So can I…I mean…can I use the word no?”

Brooke only just stopped herself from physically slapping her hand to her forehead. Bianca looked incredulously at the faces of the four other girls, each as long-suffering as the last.

“Have I suddenly imagined a storybook character into life? Did a child make a wish on a shooting star last night, is that why fucking Moon-Face is sitting at a desk in front of me? Are the other Faraway Tree friends about to walk in through the door and start running the country?”

Darienne cast her eyes to the floor, the message well and truly received.

“You mentioned the amount of money that this would generate. Is this going to be the saving grace of this policy? Is this going to be the diamond ring within the shit of the dog who accidentally ate it?”

“You’re very faecally focussed today, Bianca,” Jan piped up with a frown as Brooke stifled a laugh.

“Yeah, well. It’s hard not to be when you’re within a 5 mile radius of this department,” she scoffed.

“Well within the first month, we’re looking to generate around…um, Vanessa?” Darienne cast her eyes to the senior advisor, whose gaze shifted to Bianca nervously.

“Unbelievable. She can’t even retain her own fucking figures. Come on then, Britain’s number fifteen Rihanna impersonator, give me some good fucking news.”

“Uh, we think…well, Darienne thinks…that within the first month of enforcement we could generate around £25,000 in £50 fines.”

Bianca’s face grew very gradually cold, Vanessa freezing to the spot as if she’d just been stared at by Medusa. Even Brooke shivered.

“You mean to tell me,” she began, her voice extremely measured and shaking only slightly. “That out of a population of 64 million people, who normally stumble around the streets with their heads in their phone screens like puppets with their strings cut, we’d be able to fine…500 a month?”

“Well, we deliberately predicted under target so that the actual figure would come as a pleasant surprise!” Darienne smiled back, completely nonplussed at Bianca’s rage.

“If I could interject, I don’t seem to remember there being any ‘we’ about it,” Nina spoke up dryly, before lowering her head back down into her notebook.

“I really love the logic of this department. Maybe you should all become teachers! 50 add 50 equals 25, and when you find out that the real answer is actually 100, well that’s just a fucking pleasant surprise, isn’t it?! The crime stats from the last quarter revealed that there had been 73 murders committed, except- what a nice surprise! There were actually 78, because we forgot to count your five fucking bodies after I ripped them to fucking shreds!”

Brooke had no idea why Darienne was so calm. It was like her brain had been replaced by a huge goldfish bowl. Vanessa, however, looked a little shell-shocked, and Brooke couldn’t help the pang her heart gave as her protective instincts took over.

Only for a moment, though.

“We’ve got time to accumulate some more accurate figures. They wouldn’t be bang on, but definitely a lot more impressive than £25,000, and they’d probably placate Gemini,” Brooke shrugged, sitting up a little straighter in her seat as she addressed Bianca. Casting her frown Brooke’s way, Bianca seemed to calm down very slightly.

“Finally someone in this room that isn’t a massive, walking, talking sac of amniotic fluid. Get it done, okay? I’ll see you all after the interview.”

As Bianca left the room, the other girls all visibly relaxed. Vanessa began rubbing at her shoulder, clearly tense after being momentarily in the firing line. Flustered, Darienne finally spoke.

“Right well, Brooke, if you could sort that out within the hour,” she smiled, as if she was in control in any way. “Jan and Nina, if you could stay with me so that we can smooth out the finer details of this interview, and Vanessa if you could get started on the transport data please.”

“Uh, that ain’t gonna be possible, Minister, ‘cause I got a lot of stuff left over from yesterday an’ I still need to send that email over to Nick at the treasury, an’ uh…” Vanessa suddenly blurted out, clearly still slightly rattled from Bianca’s visit. Brooke screwed her face up. What the fuck was she doing? Darienne looked equally perplexed as Vanessa stammered a correction. “I mean…no, yeah, of course. I’ll get it done as soon as I can.”

As Darienne dismissed them and Brooke and Vanessa marched out of the office, Brooke immediately grabbed her by the arm and wrenched her into the toilets.

“Brooke Lynn! What the hell?!” Vanessa protested, her eyes fiery.

“What the hell was that in the office there?!”

Vanessa knit her brows together. “You told us to start distancing ourselves from her! I was tryin’ my fuckin’ best!”

“Yeah, distancing yourself, not starting a revolution! Am I talking to someone who works in politics or a seventeen year old who just got a D in their Modern Studies A-level?!” Brooke sighed, exasperated. She regretted it immediately when she saw Vanessa’s shoulders slump forward as she did her best impression of a kicked puppy.

“I’m sorry,” Vanessa muttered, shaking her head slightly. “I just…Bianca kinda panicked me.”

Without thinking, Brooke rested her hand on Vanessa’s arm in an attempt to comfort her. “Look…I know it’s hard for you. I get that you entered politics as Darienne’s aide and that if she goes, the road ahead is going to be kind of…non-existent. Well, not non-existent, just extremely winding and bumpy and parts of it might not have been built yet. But you’re party loyal, right?”

Vanessa nodded silently. “I’m not a fuckin’ hack. I came into this job so I could help change things for people, except sometimes I just feel like we’re not doing much good.”

“Yeah, well. That’s because the PM is too balls-deep in his secretary to run the country for more than five minutes, but anyway. The point is that you’ll be okay, we’ll all be okay! You, me, Jan. The dream team,” Brooke beamed at her, her heart soaring as Vanessa’s face lit up. “Just keep following whatever Darienne does, but keep your ears open. Any sign of a possible new option, glue yourself to them. Do your best leech impression.”

Vanessa’s face contorted as she took Brooke’s last comment literally, and both of them shared a laugh.

“But don’t panic. Like Jan said, Bianca’s going to sort it. You saw her in there, she’s at the end of her tether with that giant egg we’ve got running the department. We’ll be fine.”

As Vanessa giggled, Brooke found herself blushing very slightly. Stepping forward that little bit more, she wrapped her arms around Vanessa in a gentle hug. She smelt of a very sweet, sugary perfume, and momentarily Brooke found it hard to let go, her heart thudding in her ribcage.

“Thanks, Brooke. You’re a sweetheart,” Vanessa smiled bashfully as she pulled away, sweeping her hair behind her ears. Brooke cast her eyes to the floor, embarrassed by the compliment.

“Come on. We’ve got work to do. You should start doctoring those transport stats for fun.”

Pushing open the door, Vanessa laughed and raised her eyebrows. “I got a C in my Modern Studies A-level anyway, so I don’t appreciate the accusation, ma’am.”

As the two girls made their way back to their desks, Brooke tried to clear her head. The conversation had dredged up a lot of feelings she’d been trying to repress. She didn’t have a crush on Vanessa. She wasn’t attracted to her like that at all. She was just protective of her, and she couldn’t help it if she was cute when she was flustered, or nervous, or happy, or irritated, or doing anything. That was just a fact. It didn’t mean she liked her as anything more than a friend.

Besides, the position of token workplace lesbian couple had already been filled by Scarlet and Yvie.

***

Brooke sighed, her disapproval hidden in the darkness of the news studio along with cameras, a teleprompter, and Vanessa. Why in the name of God was this interview live? It was barbaric to screen a brutal murder on lunchtime TV. Christ, there could be kids watching. Casting her eyes to the ceiling, she knew that Nina could have helped the situation. She could’ve pushed for it to be pre-recorded. But in her head she was already hearing the excuse about Raven at the BBC being “such a nice girl”, and that “she complimented my outfit once at Alyssa’s book launch”, so perhaps there was never any chance of it being anything but live.

As the Minister stammered and stuttered her way through her lines, Brooke wondered how Raja was able to keep such a stony, cold expression. She was essentially watching the complete breakdown of Darienne’s political credibility in front of her, that was surely worth some pity. Contemplating the situation, Brooke supposed that having pity wasn’t really going to do a journalist any favours. Raja had been out at Gaza, for fuck’s sake. She was hardly going to be sympathetic to this human pannacotta sat in front of her, Darienne’s voice wobbling and wavering over every line she spoke as Raja’s eyes bore into her.

Brooke looked briefly to Vanessa, who was just looking at Darienne sadly. Brooke had to feel sorry for her. Vanessa had placed her trust in the Minister to introduce her to the world of politics, a world she clearly wanted to be a part of for all the right reasons, and yet this was the thanks she got. Sitting having to watch her boss pedal horrific policy after horrific policy and watching as her and her colleagues got constantly ignored.

She deserved better.

Momentarily Brooke thought about making a joke, but reasoned that it would probably go down as well as a lead balloon. Instead, she texted Jan, safe from the debris of Darienne’s collapsing career at the office where she, Bianca and the communications team were all watching.

B: Jesus. I’ve seen ISIS condemned for less than this.

There was a pause as Jan texted back. Brooke tuned back into the interview.

“…shorter than the, um, waiting times at McDonalds. Ambulances will practically start operating drive thrus!”

Brooke audibly groaned. Darienne had obviously inflated her life belt, pulling out her precious line as a last-ditch attempt to save the interview. Raja was less impressed.

“That sounds like an extremely serious comparison, Minister, you’re saying that this policy will simply rush patients through A&E as if they were…a burger? How thorough will doctors and nurses be?”

And there Darienne was again, back to flailing around the interview as if she was drowning.

J: I’ve never seen a human being reduced to actual liquid before. Hope you have a tub to transport her back to the office.

B: How’s Bianca holding up?

A pause.

J: I’ve seen mothers look less disgusted at their own afterbirth.

B: I really hope you haven’t.

***

The first thing Brooke, Darienne and Vanessa were greeted with on their arrival back at the office was Nina, a frown on her face.

“Well I’m glad that interview went so well. We’ve been fending off calls from several papers asking if this policy is, quote, the government’s dying whalesong, and The Sun are planning to run with the headline ‘Would you like dies with that’, in reference to the suggestion that the NHS is about to go down the drain.”

Brooke shook her head in contempt. “Imagine going to university for three years, getting a first in journalism, and then being paid to come up with that crap.”

“Absolutely. I think we should run with the line that these accusations are nonsensical,” Darienne bristled, annoyed that her pride and joy of a policy wasn’t making the impact it was supposed to. Brooke snapped her head round to face the Minister.

“I mean, I don’t think we can cover our backs that easily. You did that interview sounding as if you’d just survived a house fire, I mean why did you include that drive-thru line?!”

“It was an emergency! It was a last ditch attempt, I had to do something!” Darienne barked back, her face set in a frown.

Vanessa butted in. “An emergency line? A line to be used in an emergency? What the hell were the instructions? In case of emergency, break glass by throwin’ yourself through the top floor window of Broadcasting House?!”

The shouting match was stopped abruptly as Jan’s calm drawl trailed through the office. “Brooke, I just got a text from Bianca. She said she wants to see you in her office in five minutes, and if you’re late she’s going to make you stand in the Dosac lobby on a hot day and watch your face fry off.”

A horrified pause. “Her words, not mine.”

Exhaling noisily, Brooke grabbed her bag from where she’d just thrown it down on her desk. She tried to ignore Darienne’s smug smile as she made her way to the lift and a meeting with the most feared woman in politics.

***

Being able to see the inner workings of 10 Downing Street was like the part in The Wizard Of Oz when the curtain gets pulled back to reveal the Wizard as a sham. On the outside, it was the most perfect professional façade, a backdrop for thousands of press announcements, resignations and appointments. On the inside it resembled a prison riot at best, a hive of people running around trying to fix something, or spin something, or frantically complete some piece of unfinished work. It was slightly quieter today, Brooke had noticed, as she sat on a hard, wooden chair outside Bianca’s office.

She’d been there dead on time but Bianca was running ten minutes late so far. Lesser, more idiotic humans would call her out on it, but Brooke had a functioning brain and a desire to stay alive until at least the end of the day. She blew a strand of hair out of her face and curled her lip. She hadn’t a clue why Bianca had called her for a meeting and chose to pass up on the opportunity to berate Darienne about that car crash of an interview. If Bianca was looking for someone to blame, it couldn’t be Brooke. She had been under the impression that Bianca found her tolerable, but you could never really tell what her opinions on anything were. The woman’s poker face was so good she could’ve gone professional in Vegas.

The varnished, wooden door of Bianca’s office suddenly swung open, Bianca standing poised in front of Brooke like a bird of prey.

“You’re late,” she sniffed, as she held the door open for Brooke to come in. Mumbling an apology, Brooke slumped down into the leather-bound chair opposite Bianca’s desk and simply waited for whatever was about to come, looking casually around the room. It was a setting she knew all too well- the marble, white fireplace, the eerie green lamp giving off an abnormal white light on her desk. The nondescript paintings of some long-dead war heroes, the bookcases filled with files and files and files. The entire room screamed power and intimidation.

“Do you want a coffee, Brooke?” Bianca began casually as she sat down opposite her. Perplexed, Brooke shook her head.

“I’m okay…I’d kind of just like to find out why I’m here. I mean, aren’t you supposed to be after Darienne?”

Snorting a laugh, Bianca rose from her chair and moved to perch on the edge of her desk. She was slightly above Brooke’s level, but her tone and general aura were quite relaxed, bordering on informal.

“You were friends with Jaqueline Cox at university, correct?”

Ouch. The memories ripped through Brooke’s mind like a migraine. Jackie Cox, the know-it-all in every seminar. Jackie Cox, the try-hard in every presentation. Jackie Cox, with the smug smile and the glossy dark hair and the perfect matching stationary. She knew Jackie, and Brooke knew enough to know she wasn’t a fan.

“Friends is pushing it. She was on the same course as me and was about as irritating as thrush, and that’s all I really had to do with her,” she sniffed in her own non-committal way. Bianca flared her nostrils and made a face, indicating to Brooke that she’d given a wrong answer.

“Okay, maybe my phrasing was a little off. In case you haven’t noticed, you haven’t stumbled into some friendship bracelet craft class, this is Downing Street. So I’ll rephrase the question. Is she any good?”

Brooke felt momentarily like she was trapped in a lion enclosure. “Is she any good at…?”

“At juggling silicone breast implants and walking a tightrope over a lake of tepid piss. Is she any good at politics?!”

“God, I mean…I guess she’d be a good politician,” Brooke admitted begrudgingly. “She’s principled, she’s got strong morals and a backbone. She’s eloquent enough and nowhere near as big a car crash as that sheep’s placenta we’ve got as a Minister.”

Bianca smiled fleetingly, then stood and walked back to her chair, appeased.

“Perfect,” she said, her eyes boring into Brooke’s as she sat down. Looking momentarily behind her, Brooke shifted in her seat.

“So…why are you asking about Jackie?” she asked slowly, drawing each word out just that little bit too long to be necessary in her hesitation. Bianca smiled slowly in return.

“It came to my attention this afternoon that maybe there needs to be some…changes made around here. My party is being made to look like a laughing stock, and I don’t like it,” she growled, her eyes growing dark. “Darienne’s been palming off her expenses forms onto you, correct?”

Brooke nodded silently.

“Maybe it would be in your best interests…and the party’s best interests…to doctor them slightly. Then if they end up in the hands of the media…so be it. She’s left with no credibility, there’s no coming back from that. She’ll have to resign. Then really all that’s left to do is get a replacement in. Smooth as a bottle of Moët,” Bianca shrugged, leaning back in her chair calmly. Blinking twice, Brooke suddenly became apprehensive.

“Bianca, I can’t…I can’t just fake her expenses claims.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you have a note from your Mum? Have you got a cold and you can’t take part in this part of your actual job? You’re surprising me, Brooke,” Bianca sighed, clearly disappointed. “I honestly thought you had something different in you. A spine, a brain. Some form of drive, determination to succeed. You love this party, yes? You came into politics to make a difference, right?”

Brooke flinched slightly. Bianca was hitting her where it hurt, and she knew it was going to get a rise out of her. “Of course. I want us to succeed. I want us to change things.”

Bianca smiled, glad to have received a sufficient reaction.

“Then sometimes things have to be done by any means necessary,” she said gravely, running her tongue along her teeth. “If Jackie accepts the offer, she’ll be the new head of Dosac by tomorrow afternoon.”

Something about the whole appointment of Jackie Cox didn’t sit right with Brooke. She was just an annoying, opinionated, mouthy university girl, and there were ten a penny of those in London. Why her? Why not someone slightly more tolerable?

“Why does it have to be Jackie, why can’t it be someone else?” she voiced what she was thinking, annoyed. Bianca laughed, clearly amused.

“Okay, Miss Political Advisor. Advise me, since I’ve clearly not weighed up all the options.”

Stuck for a moment, Brooke’s brain began racing round at a hundred miles an hour. “Kelly Mantle. The back bencher from Education, she’s good.”

“No. She looks too much like a resident of Whoville to be put in the spotlight. Can you imagine when she inevitably fucks up, what the headlines will be? Who dunnit? Whose fault is it this time? Who, who, who, all over the front pages like owls with tourettes.”

Brooke sighed, then perked up with another idea. “What about Bianca Castro from Health?”

“Who, Jiggly?” Bianca asked, nonplussed.

“…Bianca Castro. She has a good track record, the public would love her-”

“Yeah, Jiggly.”

“Bianca, her name isn’t Jiggly.”

“The media damn well think it is after they got hold of those photos of her at the all-you-can-eat world buffet. Not exactly astounding publicity for a junior health Minister. She’s going nowhere.”

Brooke barely held in a grunt of frustration. “Ongina, that MP for-”

“Her name literally sounds like vagina. PR disaster. Next.”

“Jade Jolie.”

“She couldn’t run a bath, never mind a department.”

“Lashawn, then?!”

Bianca threw her head back and hooted a laugh. “You’re joking, right? Can you imagine her even trying to pronounce some of the names on the immigration database? She stays firmly on the back bench.”

Brooke pouted a little, frustration seeping out of every pore. Seeing her obvious displeasure, Bianca’s tone became placating, the woman’s softer side making a rare appearance.

“Look. Right now, we need strong leaders in this party. Jackie is about as strong as we’re going to get from what I’ve heard, and we need her to steer us out of this ditch that Darienne’s gradually lowered us into. You don’t need to worry about a thing, apart from those expenses forms. I’ll take care of it,” she smiled, reassuring Brooke as she stood and made to leave. Before she reached the door, a thought suddenly struck her like iced lightning, freezing her to the spot.

“Bianca…” Brooke began hesitantly. “Do you think Jackie will come with her own people? I mean, I’m not hugely up to date with her movements, so I don’t know how prepared she’ll be, and I’m fine, I can look after myself, you know? But like, Vanessa…and Jan, of course. Will she…will they get to keep their jobs?”

Bianca’s eyes were instantly on her, searching and wondering about the hidden agenda behind Brooke’s question. “I’ve worked with you for a while, Brooke Lynn. I must say, I’ve never seen you get attached to anyone in this game.”

“Well, you know,” Brooke shrugged, maintaining a cool exterior. “We work well together. We’re a good team. And she’s a valuable member of the department, that’s all.”

“Vanessa or Jan?” Bianca questioned.

“They both are! I just…I just want to make sure they’ll both be fine.”

Bianca moved to the doorway, gently showing her out. “Just doctor those expenses. Try not to pop a blood vein while doing so.”

Sighing, Brooke shook Bianca’s hand and click-clacked her way down the marble hallway towards the famous black door. Not too far along the corridor, she heard Bianca call after her.

“Brooke Lynn!”

She turned around sharply.

“Loyalty gets remembered in this party. Especially by me.”

***

Brooke hit send on her email to Bianca at 5.30pm on the dot. Darienne had claimed for Ubers from here to Downing Street, business lunches at nearby curry houses, and, just for laughs, a helicopter. Brooke had felt a little guilty fabricating it all, but it was impossible not to. If she had a complete lack of morals she’d be working for Nicky’s party, not Darienne’s. However, as Bianca had said, it was for the good of the party that she had to go.

She was still unsure about Jackie though. If everything went smoothly, by this time tomorrow she’d be sitting in Darienne’s office barking orders at her. It would be like every university group project all over again. Brooke had never actively disliked Jackie, she’d just found her grating. She was slightly unique, though. True, there were many girls of her type on her course, argumentative and challenging, but there were few that held their composure so well throughout a debate, maintaining class and superiority the entire time. Maybe that’s why she’d rubbed Brooke the wrong way so violently. Anyway, there had been a good eight years separating her time at uni and her time within the realm of politics. Perhaps Jackie was different now.

Shutting down her computer, she swivelled her chair round to face the other girls. She’d communicated to everyone through hushed whispers that Bianca’s plan was being put into effect immediately, creating an excited buzz around the office for the last few hours of the day. Regrettably she’d noticed that Vanessa had become more subdued because of it, the girl clearly wondering where this left her career. Brooke wanted nothing more than to see her happy again. She just hadn’t had time to attempt to cheer her up in between the expenses and finishing the transport data.

It looked as if Adore had already left, her chair empty and her bag gone with her half-empty coffee cup on her desk. Nina had long since vanished, her desk clear and any evidence of her ever having been there completely gone. Jaida was clearly in for the long shift, still working steadily through her excel spreadsheet with an energy drink by her keyboard. Jan was pulling on her coat, fixing her hair rapidly, and Scarlet and Yvie looked ready to leave too. Vanessa suddenly appeared in front of her.

“Hey,” she smiled gently. “We’re goin’ for a drink, think we could all do with one after today. You coming?”

Brooke fleetingly thought of a night with the girls, of just having a laugh and being slightly less stressed than normal. The thought of a glass of wine was tempting, but then the immediate thought of work the next day and how chaotic it would be made her decision for her.

“Sorry, ‘Ness. I’m going to head back. Next time though, yeah?” Brooke gave a tight smile, sighing a little when Vanessa’s face grew slightly more disappointed than before. As she nodded understandingly and turned to leave, Brooke suddenly grabbed her hand without really knowing why. Checking the office to see if anyone was looking at them, Vanessa then gazed at Brooke, confused.

“Talk to me. You’re still worried about tomorrow, aren’t you?” Brooke murmured quietly, trying not to draw attention to them. Jan was chatting happily with Scarlet and Yvie was hugging Jaida goodbye, so they were safe for now.

Vanessa’s face was worried. “I just don’t like the uncertainty. I wouldn’t be as worried if it didn’t mean I could get split up from you and Jan. We’re so good together. I don’t wanna lose that.”

Brooke’s heart swelled a little in her chest. “Listen. Don’t make it common knowledge, but I might have had a hand in Bianca’s plan. She kind of hinted that I’d be repaid in some way. We’ll all stay, don’t worry. I trust her.”

Brooke almost breathed a sigh of relief as Vanessa’s shocked face grew into a bright, happy smile. “Fuck, Brooke Lynn, you serious?!”

“Yeah. I got one wish. I sold my soul to the devil. Sue me,” Brooke snorted sarcastically, making Vanessa laugh.

“Wait, what’d you have to do for her?” Vanessa whispered, her eyes excited.

“I had to sleep with her. It was horrendous. She eats pussy like I eat noodles. Slurp slurp slurp.”

Vanessa’s nose wrinkled up as she laughed uproariously, drawing the attention of the other girls to them to Brooke’s dismay. Vanessa looked beautiful when she laughed. Then again, she looked beautiful all the time. That was just a fact, of course.

“Hey, Brooke! You coming out with us or what? Silk and Akeria are joining, ” Yvie yelled over, smiling as she wrapped her arm around Scarlet’s slim waist. Brooke tried her best not to screw her face up- she had a hard time being polite to anyone from the opposition, even if they were only civil service comms officers.

“Nah, she’s being boring,” Vanessa teased, sticking her tongue out.

“Aw, come on, Brooke! You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, ‘specially tequila ones,” Scarlet piped up, giggling and throwing her other arm around Yvie. Brooke smiled at the affectionate couple.

“Yeah, well, like Vanessa said, I’m being boring tonight. You and Yvie take care of those two liver transplants waiting to happen, okay? I can’t quite believe I’m saying it but you need to be the responsible ones.”

As Scarlet laughed, Yvie and Jan said their goodbyes to Brooke. Vanessa was still hovering at her desk, a small smile on her face as she bent down and hugged Brooke without warning.

“You’re the best member of this whole department, an’ the best damn work friend I could want,” she whispered, her words lighting up Brooke’s heart. Pulling back, she gave a quick glance to the girls who were waiting on the lift to arrive. “I owe you one, bitch. Have a good night. Eat dinner and sleep well, ‘kay?”

Brooke gazed fondly at Vanessa, her tiny frame retreating into the lift. Vanessa cared about her. She cared about everyone. It was part of the reasons why Brooke liked her so much.

In the most platonic way possible, obviously.

***

Arriving at work the next day, it was clear that Bianca’s plan had worked. Thanks to a few emails to the big papers, Darienne’s false expenses claims were plastered over all the front pages, giving a pretty damning verdict.

“She’s good at leaking, isn’t she? Bianca, I mean,” Nina pondered casually from her desk, causing Brooke to look up from The Times.

“She’s brilliant. She’s like an 85 year old woman that never did pelvic floor exercises,” Scarlet muttered, ignoring the ringing phone.

“Nothing in The Independent about it though, I’ll give you that, Adore. Laila McQueen must’ve been one satisfied customer,” Jan laughed, holding up the front page which was jarringly dissonant with the other headlines, instead focussing on something to do with the polar icecaps melting.

“I’m good! I keep telling you all and you never listen,” Adore winked cheekily, as the phone continued to ring.

“Ain’t someone gonna answer that?!” Vanessa snapped, frustrated. Jaida reached for the receiver hesitantly, looking at Nina to gauge her reaction. Fixing her eagle eyes on her in disapproval, Jaida drew her hand back as if the phone was a hot stove.

“I’ve told them all we’re in a no comment situation,” Nina turned to Vanessa, shrugging. “There’s nothing else we need to say. If those bastards don’t get the meaning of that then quite frankly they shouldn’t be in journalism.”

Brooke stayed quiet throughout the whole exchange. She was worried, fretting about what Darienne would say when she arrived. She knew full well she was going to get the blame, hell, she was to blame. As much as Brooke could pretend to be completely ruthless, the guilt was beginning to seep in. At this point everyone in the department knew it was Brooke who had a hand in fixing the expenses forms and although everyone was being perfectly normal and friendly towards her, she was concerned about what they really thought and what they’d say when she left the room.

She hadn’t even seen Jan come and stand next to her.

“You’re awful quiet today, sweetie,” she drawled, leaning against a set of shelves that contained about twenty thousand government files. “Everything alright?”

Brooke nodded silently, brushing her fringe out of her face. That didn’t appear to satisfy Jan.

“Look, nobody thinks any less of you for what you did. It’s politics, it’s not kid’s TV. Sacrifices have to be made, people have to be disposed of. You did the department a favour, to be honest,” she continued, as if she could read Brooke’s mind. Brooke couldn’t help but smile. Jan had a certain telepathic quality, and often she could begin cheering you up before you even knew what reasons you had to be sad. She was a total ray of sunshine, and her happy-go-lucky personality was welcome in the department today.

“Thanks, girl,” Brooke sighed, stretching out in her chair and giving Jan a tight smile. “That means a lot. You’re a blessing to this department. I mean, God knows the mood in here today’s about as flat as…well. Maybe it’s my turn to not be good at one-liners today.”

Jan laughed softly, leaning back a little more against the files. “I try my best. But hey, I should thank you! Once Darienne goes, I might see about standing as an MP in the next by-election.”

Brooke raised her eyebrows a little. She had no idea that Jan had even had ambitions outside of performing at every available karaoke bar London had to offer. “Really?!”

“Yeah, I’ve kind of been thinking about it for a while.”

Brooke was secretly excited about the prospect of working with just Vanessa. Purely because things would be easier to organise between just two people, and things would just run more smoothly. It wasn’t because she had a crush on her or anything, that would be a ridiculous accusation. Brooke was a professional. There was no scope for things like that in this game.

“Well, I’m sure you’d be amazing. The public would love you,” she smiled at her friend sincerely. Flattered, Jan relaxed completely against the shelves, a giant file careering from the top shelf onto the ground.

“I’ll get it,” Brooke reassured Jan, whose face was apologetic.

“Right, I’m goin’ to fetch Darienne,” Vanessa announced, making her way to the lifts a little nervously. “Smiles an’ happiness when she arrives please, people, try not to make the office feel too much like a wake.”

Yvie tipped her head back over the back of her chair, looking at Vanessa upside-down. “Are we not supposed to be mourning the bitch’s career?”

With a long-suffering shake of her head, Vanessa disappeared into the lift.

Five minutes later, Brooke was picking up the dropped file from behind the shelf when two sets of footsteps thundered through the office and a voice cut through the click-clack, tapping keyboards and ringing phones.

“MEETING ROOM, NOW!”

Slowly, Brooke crept towards Darienne’s office, following a running Nina and Jan. Darienne was standing behind the desk, her face a thunderstorm. As soon as Brooke skulked in she narrowed her eyes.

“Can someone, maybe Brooke Lynn, tell me why my face is all over the papers like a disgraced fucking gym teacher?!” she barked, her voice reverberating off the glass door of her office.

“Okay, there must have been some form of mix-up with the forms because yours was completely clean when I submitted it,” Brooke immediately fired back. She’d had a bit of time to come up with her defence and, even though it was completely feeble, it was better than silence.

“That’s got to be the most shit excuse I’ve ever heard. How does something like that happen?!” Darienne yelled back. Suddenly, everyone’s eyes shifted to the doorframe of the office, where Bianca had arrived.

“Hey, big spender,” she greeted the Minister, the joke sitting out of place with the purpose of her arrival.

“Bianca, I didn’t claim for those things. I don’t know what’s going on, I gave my forms to Brooke to do, we need to tell the press that these claims are fake!” Darienne gibbered, panicking like Bianca was holding her hostage.

“Yeah, what are we running with, Bianca? We’ve been in a no comment situation all morning,” Jan asked.

“The phone’s been ringing off the hook. I’ve been ignoring it but we’ve got to give them something soon enough,” Nina shrugged, nodding in agreement. Bianca let out a harsh exhale, rubbing her neck tersely.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, could you all just get off my back for a hot second?! You’re like a pack of fucking fleas. Are you not supposed to be a team of advisors? Are you not supposed to be head of communications?!” Bianca cried, shooting Nina an icy glare. Completely unfazed, Nina clicked her pen.

“Yes, but I’m completely unable to do anything if I don’t know what we’re communicating!”

Bianca rolled her huge eyes up to the heavens, seemingly trying to cool her boiling blood. As Brooke scanned her eyes over the rest of the room, she caught Vanessa looking straight at her, her eyes a little fearful. Brooke shot her the most reassuring smile she could manage and almost gave an audible sigh of relief when Vanessa seemed to relax.

“So, you want to go out to the media and tell them that, hey! It’s not so bad, because the truth is that I’m too lazy to fill out my own fucking expenses forms, so I just gave them to one of my aides to fill out! I’m not actually keeping that close an eye on how much I’m claiming back! Do you realise how that’s going to look?” Bianca scowled, Darienne sighing and slumping into her chair.

“So what do we do?!” she asked, her voice somewhere between a whine and a plea. Brooke began to feel a bit less guilty as she rolled her eyes. She wished Darienne had a bit more backbone, a bit more of a spine. It would endear her to her a lot more. That sort of big-eyed deer act was only cute when Vanessa did it.

There was a momentary silence in which Nina clicked her pen repeatedly, looking from Darienne to Bianca, then back to Darienne.

“You have two options,” Bianca finally said, her voice much quieter than before. Turning to the other girls, she addressed them gravely. “Could you ladies give us a moment.”

Not a question, a demand. One by one, Brooke, Vanessa, Jan and Nina all filed out and wordlessly closed the door. After a heartbeat of silence, Nina sprinted over to the comms team.

“Is it happening?!” Scarlet asked, wide-eyes and open mouthed, like a child at Christmas.

“It’s happening now! It’s happening now. Two bullets in the back of the head, bang, bang!” Nina replied excitedly, her voice ringing through the offices as she mimed a brutal murder.

“Nina!” Vanessa hissed, motioning to the glass-fronted office where Bianca and Darienne were standing motionless, looking at Nina impassively. Horrified, she abruptly sat down in her seat.

“I can’t believe it’s actually going on right now. Fuck. She’s gonna hate me, ain’t she?” Vanessa worried, biting her nails. Jan slapped her hand away from her mouth.

“Stop that!” she reprimanded, Vanessa looking to the floor sheepishly. “She won’t hate you, and if she does, well, that’s politics. She’s a grown adult, she can handle it. She knew the profession she was entering into was ruthless.”

“Nobody could hate you,” Brooke added, brushing Vanessa’s cheek with her finger very slightly. “You’re like a fucking carebear. It’s impossible.”

A pink blush crept over Vanessa’s face. “You two are too sweet to me, get outta here. Hey, have we heard about a replacement?”

Brooke sighed. “I don’t know if she’s accepted it or not yet, but Bianca told me Jackie Cox is in the running.”

Jan and Vanessa’s faces both screwed up. “Who the hell is that?”

“I went to Uni with her. I didn’t even know she was in the game until Bianca told me she’d scouted her out. I still think Jiggly would be better.”

“You mean Bianca Castro?” Jan raised one eyebrow.

“Fuck, yes. Now she’s got me doing it,” Brooke sighed, further confusing the two girls.

Suddenly, there was a creak from the office door. Darienne emerged, her posture perfect and her head held high as she walked towards the three girls. Her eyes were cold, so much so that Brooke found herself shivering a little.

“Right, well. Thank you, ladies, for your unwavering support. I wish you all very long and successful careers,” she said cooly, then her face darkened. “And I hope you all get heart failure.”

“Aw Darienne, c’mon!” Vanessa pleaded as the ex-Minister marched towards the lift, a storm cloud of rage. As Darienne stepped into the lift, Yvie began whistling Another One Bites The Dust under her breath and Scarlet started laughing so hard Brooke momentarily thought she was suffocating.

Brooke started laughing too. She had to, she couldn’t help it. This pathetic, et tu, Brute? act was wearing. Jan was right, these were the rules of the damn game. People in the department had come and gone as if Dosac was a massive revolving door and Darienne had never shed a tear for them. Brooke hated the hypocrisy that was so freely batted about in politics. Mourning a departure with a simple “it’s a shame, but they had to go” and then acting like the damn Godfather when your own time came. There was no dignity in it, no class.

“Ding dong, the useless fucking bitch is dead,” Bianca deadpanned, Vanessa relaxing and giggling a little at the slightly less high-intensity Bianca.

“What happens now, then?” Brooke asked her. “Did Jackie take the job?”

“Like a trout on a hook. Barely even had to sell it to the kid. Right, here’s the line!” Bianca suddenly yelled, loud enough that Darienne could probably hear it from the ground floor. “Darienne will be giving a statement outside Number 10 in fifteen minutes. After that, all I want to hear is praise. Praise, praise, praise, Psalm one hundred and fucking one. At 12pm, you guys will have a new Minister. Nina, it’s your job to break her in. Break her fucking spine if necessary.”

Nina nodded apprehensively, unsure of how serious Bianca was.

“I’ll see you all again at half 12. Oh, and Destiny’s Child?” Bianca said, turning suddenly to address Brooke, Vanessa and Jan as she hit the button of the lift. “It won’t be necessary to clear your desks if you don’t plan on leaving.”

As Bianca left Vanessa turned excitedly to Brooke and Jan, grinning madly as she gave them a huge hug, happy at being allowed to stay.

Brooke decided she’d probably have quite literally stabbed Darienne in the back in order to have that smile flashed at her again.

***

“Ladies, I’d like to introduce your new Minister for the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship…Jackie Cox!”

Everyone started clapping, but in equal measures scrutinising the tall girl in front of them, standing beside Nina nervously and waving hello. She hadn’t changed all that much since Brooke had last seen her. Her hair was still long, swept back into a neat pearl headband so that her dark waves fell down her back instead of over her shoulders. Her makeup was simple as it always had been: a few swipes of mascara, a dark brown eye pencil to bring out her equally dark eyes, a dusky rose shade on her lips. She was in a matching red suit jacket and tailored skirt, and had red heels on to match. Brooke’s feet were beginning to get sore in her own heels, tired from standing in line with Vanessa and Jan waiting to welcome Jackie. She didn’t have to wait much longer though as Jackie was already shaking Vanessa’s hand, smiling and gushing about how she was so honoured to take up the position and how she was so looking forward to working with her. Brooke stared at her, a little irritated with the dramatics. Jackie then moved on to Jan who was standing in the middle of the line. Brooke watched as they both looked at each other, Jan sort of open-mouthed and Jackie seemingly finding it hard to formulate words.

“You must be Janette. It’s so good to meet you,” she finally said as she shyly held out her hand. Jan took it, shaking it gently.

“It’s good to meet you too. And, uh, Jan’s fine. My friends call me Jan. Not that you’re my friend, of course, you’re my boss. But uh. You can still call me that,” Jan mumbled, her voice quiet and a little nervous and her eyes not once tearing away from Jackie’s.

“Right! Sure. I, um. I hope you’re staying on?” Jackie asked, her voice a little hopeful as she gave Jan a smile, her teeth white and dazzling.

“Absolutely. I can’t wait to start working with you! It’ll be, uh. Jan-tastic!” Jan raised her eyebrows a little as she made her joke, Jackie giving a polite laugh of her own. Brooke’s brow furrowed in confusion, the corners of her mouth turning down slightly. What the fuck was this?

“Well, I’m really excited to get started. It was so good meeting you, Jan,” Jackie smiled, giving Jan one last look as she finally tore her eyes away and faced Brooke. Her face immediately changed, taking on an awkward sort of expression as it was clear she had no idea what to say to Brooke. “Brooke Lynn! Hi! What a nice surprise! Gosh, it’s been a while!”

“Yeah, like, eight years. You look good,” Brooke replied curtly, not really instantly warming to Jackie despite her efforts.

“It’ll be nice working together. Just like at uni! I didn’t really believe it when Bianca said you were here!”

“Yeah, well. I’m just climbing the ladder. Where have you been these past few years, anyway?”

“Just the stock exchange. It was always the economic side of our degree I was more interested in, but when Bianca phoned me I thought this was a pretty unmissable opportunity!” Jackie beamed at an unimpressed Brooke. Receiving no reply, she stepped back a little awkwardly. “Anyway, it’s nice that you’re here. I’d better start my briefing, so I’ll speak with you later?”

Brooke nodded wordlessly as Jackie click-clacked away. Say ‘nice’ again, bitch, I dare you.

Vanessa tilted her head as she watched Jackie retreat, her glossy hair swaying.

“Well, I like her. I think she’s gonna be good,” she concluded, clasping her hands together. Brooke narrowed her eyes at Jan, whose gaze was still fixed on Jackie.

“Jan-tastic? What the hell was that?”

Jan gave her a funny look. “What?! You know I love a pun.”

“Not just that. What about your MP thing? You’re seriously going to pass that opportunity up?”

Jan leant back against the glass door of Darienne’s old office, gazing dreamily at nothing in particular. “Um…yeah. Yeah, I think I’ll stay on. I’m still young, I’ve got time for the whole MP endeavour in a few years’ time. No, I think I’ll stick around here for a bit longer. Things might get interesting.”

Still confused at Jan’s sudden change of heart, Brooke shook her head and shrugged. In her opinion Jan was out of her mind, but if that was her decision then that was that. As Vanessa and Jan chatted excitedly Brooke made her way back to her desk, her head kind of in a daze. A lot was happening and she didn’t really know what the next few months were going to be like. An economist in a political position wasn’t new, but she was still reserved about welcoming Jackie with open arms. Still, whatever would happen she was glad that she had Vanessa and Jan to stumble through it all with.

God, she was glad Vanessa was staying.

Looking over to the Comms team she saw that Yvie’s computer was displaying the BBC website, where a live stream of Darienne’s resignation speech was playing. Yvie was sat in her chair, Jaida crouching at her right and Scarlet at her left, Adore peering over Scarlet’s shoulder as Darienne set down her sheets of paper and walked away from the lectern set up outside Downing Street. Yvie threw her hands in the air as if she was praising God.

“The old Minister is dead,” she cried dramatically. “Long live the Minister!”

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