A great cheer went up. Pauline clapped and the audience followed suit. She looked around, catching the eyes of one ambassador after another, nodding special acknowledgement to Lateef and Giselle and Faisal; then she came down from the podium and was escorted by the Secret Service through the crowd, getting out of the door before the applause began to fade.
Gus was right behind her. ‘Brilliant,’ he enthused. ‘I’ll call Sandip and give him the details, if you like. He should press-release this right away.’
‘Good. Do it, please.’
‘I have to go back inside,’ Gus said ruefully. ‘Only the privileged few get to avoid the chilli-glazed salmon. But I’ll drop by the Oval Office later, if that’s okay?’
‘Of course.’
When she got into the car Gerry was already there. ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘It went well.’
‘The DMZ should be on tomorrow’s front pages.’
‘And people will realize that while Moore is shooting off his mouth you’re actually solving problems.’
She smiled ruefully. ‘That might be too much to hope for.’
At the White House they went straight to the Residence and entered the Dining Room. Pippa was already at the table. Looking at their clothes, she said: ‘There was no need to dress formally just for me, but all the same I appreciate the gesture.’
Pauline laughed happily. This was the Pippa she liked best, smart-funny rather than smart-sulky. They ate steak with a rocket salad and had a light-hearted conversation. Then Pippa returned to her homework, Gerry went to watch golf on TV, and Pauline asked for her coffee to be served in the small Study next to the Oval Office.
This was a more private space, and people did not walk in without permission. For the next two hours she was mostly undisturbed. She worked her way through a stack of reports and memoranda. Gus came in at ten thirty, having escaped from the ball. He had changed out of his tux, and looked relaxed and almost cuddly in a dark-blue cashmere sweater and jeans. She pushed aside her briefings with relief, glad to have someone with whom to chew over the day’s events. ‘How was the rest of the ball?’ she said.
‘The auction did well,’ Gus said. ‘Someone paid twenty-five thousand dollars for a bottle of wine.’
She smiled. ‘Who could ever drink it?’
‘They loved your speech – they talked about it all evening.’
‘Good.’ Pauline was glad, but she had been preaching to the converted. Few of the people at the Diplomats’ Ball would vote for James Moore. His supporters belonged in a different stratum of American society. ‘Let’s see how it plays in the tabloids.’ She turned on the TV. ‘In a few minutes there’ll be reviews of the first editions on the news channels.’ She muted a sports report.
Gus said: ‘How was the rest of your evening?’
‘Nice. Pippa was in a happy frame of mind for a change, and then I had a few quiet hours for reading. With all the information I have to digest, I wish I had a bigger brain.’
Gus laughed. ‘I know that feeling. My head needs one of the RAM upgrades you can get for your laptop.’
The newspaper review began, and Pauline turned up the volume.
The front page of the New York Mail made her heart stop.
The headline read:
PIPPA THE POTHEAD
Pauline said: ‘Oh, no! No!’
The anchor said: ‘The president’s daughter, Pippa Green, aged fourteen, is in trouble for smoking pot at a party in the home of a fellow pupil at her elite private high school.’
Pauline was stunned. She stared at the screen, mouth open in bewilderment, both hands held against her cheeks, hardly able to believe this was real.
The front page filled the screen. There was a faked colour photo of Pauline and Pippa together: Pauline was looking furious and Pippa wore an old T-shirt and needed to wash her hair. The two images came from different shots that had been melded to show a scene that had never happened, with Pauline apparently berating her drug-addicted daughter.
Shock was replaced by rage. Pauline stood up, yelling at the TV: ‘You fucking shits!’ she screamed. ‘She’s a child!’
The door opened and an anxious Secret Service agent looked in. Gus waved him away.
On the screen, the anchor moved on to other newspapers, but every tabloid led with Pippa.
Pauline could accept any insult to herself and laugh it off, but she could not bear the humiliation of Pippa. She was so enraged that she wanted to kill someone: the reporter, the editor, the proprietor, and all the brain-dead fools who read this kind of trash. Her eyes filled with tears of rage. She was possessed by the primal instinct to protect her child, but she could not, and the frustration made her want to tear out her hair. ‘This is not fair!’ she cried. ‘We conceal the identities of children who commit murder – but they’re crucifying my daughter just for smoking a fucking joint!’