She was even more annoyed when she saw that the message was from her soon-to-be-ex-husband. The recent uncovering by an investigative journalist of his numerous dodgy business deals had very nearly derailed her political career before it had properly begun. Only her prompt action in throwing him out of the house and handing over his computer to the police had enabled her to ride out the storm, playing the betrayed and innocent wife to perfection. Naturally, he hadn’t taken this terribly well, but she had so far managed to keep him at arm’s length while the lawyers sorted out the details of their divorce, which she fervently hoped would be finalised before his fraud trial in a few months time.
She was also pretty certain that emailing her wasn’t allowed under the terms of the restraining order she had taken out to prevent him from contacting her, but she somehow couldn’t help reading the short message.
“Dear Bitch,” (it began, in typically classy style)
“Congratulations on your new post in the last reshuffle. You’ve got what you wanted, but enjoy it while you can. You screwed me over, and now it’s my turn. I’ve sent the attached to all the main British papers, and made sure it’s all over the net as well. Don’t worry, it’s too late to stop it now. Enjoy.”
Her heart sank as she looked at the attachment, knowing straight away what it was. She clicked on it, and watched with resignation as it began to play. As she had guessed, it was a copy of the tape they had made a couple of years previously in her new Parliamentary office, the one with the window looking out on the River Thames. It started with some pretty harmless scenes of her toying with the decidedly phallic trophy she had received from “Nads” magazine as “Hottest New MP 2010”, but moved very quickly to scenes of her with her skirt around her waist, panties round her ankles, and the trophy buried deep inside her vagina.
Soon, her husband’s trousers were round his ankles too, and she was sucking enthusiastically on his erect penis. They then undressed each other, and he fucked her enthusiastically on her desk before pulling out and spraying her tits and face with copious quantities of thick white semen.
The whole thing was pretty hot, considering it had only been filmed on a little video camera standing in the corner of the room, but maybe not appropriate for a member of the UK Parliament; certainly not one who had recently taken on her first Ministerial portfolio. Once upon a time, she’d have been rubbing her clit well before the end, but somehow she didn’t feel so aroused by the action this time. She went to the fridge, poured herself a very large glass of wine, and swigged down at least half of it. This didn’t look good. It didn’t look good at all.
She reached for the phone, and her finger hovered over the speed-dial number for the government-funded law firm who had advised her about her divorce, but then she changed her mind. Instead, her finger pressed the number for Martin. The lawyers could wait: Martin would know what to do.
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“Fucking hell, Penny,” said Martin as he watched the video start to play. He said it again rather a lot during the twenty minutes it lasted, along with a range of other increasingly intense expletives.
“You certainly had a good time, didn’t you?” he commented wryly as the video came to an end with Penny leaning over to switch off the camera, spunk dripping off her face.
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Penny. “The PM’s not exactly going to be over the moon when this hits his desk in the morning. But you’re the spin doctor – surely you can think of a way to spin this?”
Martin bristled slightly. “I prefer the term ‘communications and strategy executive’ if you don’t mind,” he grumbled, but she could see that he was starting to relish the challenge. She suspected he got bored by his day-to-day job of spinning routine policy initiatives to put the Government in the best possible light. Managing shit-storms like this was much more up his street.
“Ok,” he said, “First things first. If he’s sent it to all the papers, we need to get in touch and find out what they plan to do with it. As far as the content goes, they’ll probably print a few stills, though how explicit they are will probably depend on the paper. And of course the sub-editors will have a field day. If at least two of them don’t use the headline ‘Member of Porn-iament’, I’ll eat one of your used tampons.”
Penny sighed. Martin was shit-hot at his job, but political correctness just wasn’t in his dictionary.
“Of course,” he went on, “there are no restrictions at all on the internet, so the whole fucking thing’s probably gone viral by now. You might want to have a look while I make some phone calls”.
Penny took her laptop into the next room while Martin got to work. As he’d expected, practically every video porn site she tried featured her tape, and the blogosphere was already buzzing. The days when you could hush up a potential sex scandal by burning a few letters were long gone.
After a while, Martin wandered in.
“Ok,” he announced, putting his mobile phone back in his pocket. “Obviously all the papers have cleared their front pages to run with this one. They’ll certainly print stills from it, probably with the naughty bits blanked out, but as explicit as they feel they can get away with. We can’t stop them: they’ll claim it is legitimate public interest, which I’m afraid is fair comment. And I was right about the internet, wasn’t I?”
Penny nodded sheepishly.
“So now every part of the world with internet access will be able to see you enjoying getting fucked stupid, and there is fuck all we can do to stop it. I’ve spoken to the PM; he’s livid, as you can imagine, and not just because I had to get him out of bed. But I’ve persuaded him to hold off hauling you in to sack you, for the time being at least. But we need a strategy, and quickly. Have you got any whisky?”
And he sank down into an armchair with his electronic tablet. Penny knew better than to interrupt him when he was thinking, so she got out a bottle of her finest single malt and poured Martin a large one, before pouring herself one as well. She mused on how different things would have been if she’d never met her bastard of a husband at a party, when she was just a local councillor with big ambitions. Fuck all good those ambitions were now.
Eventually, Martin sat up. He looked at her with a very peculiar smile on his face.
“Right, Penny” he said. “The fact is, this is the omnifuck to end all omnifucks. So we need something drastic to spin it our way. And I think I have an idea. I have absolutely no idea if it will work, but if it does, then your career is safe. If it fails, you’re really fucked. But if we do nothing, you’re fucked anyway. So, if you’re ready to take the biggest gamble of your political career, here’s what we do.”
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They talked energetically until five o’clock in the morning, when Penny went upstairs to bed, as instructed by Martin. He had all her phones patched through to his mobile, and dragged several of his most trusted deputies out of their beds to take up residence outside her house, to fend off the media scrum that started to form at around dawn. When he was buzzing like this, Martin rarely felt the need for sleep, so he was lively and alert when he opened the door to the assembled journalists at around ten a.m.
“The Minister has nothing to say at the moment,” was all they could get out of him. “You’ve all seen the video, which was released by her estranged husband who is a criminal with a grudge.”
“There’s a General Election in less than three weeks,” said one of the reporters.” Does this mean that the present Government is doomed, and Ms Fielding is heading for the dole queue?”
“No comment,” said Martin firmly.
“Can you comment instead on the allegations that the Minister isn’t a natural blonde?” asked a reporter, and the rest of his colleagues guffawed.
“The Prime Minister will make a statement in the House this afternoon before PMQs, deploring the papers for publishing these pictures,” Martin said, ignoring the journalist’s question completely. “This is a clear case of unwarranted press intrusion into a personal matter, and our lawyers are looking at the case already.”
“That’s not the sort of intrusion she’s interested in,” said another reporter, to more laughter.
Martin smiled brightly. “The Minister will be considering interview bids during the course of the day,” he said. “You should submit them to me at my usual e-mail address. Good morning.”
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“Hello, this is Justin Porter, and welcome to ‘This Day Tonight’, on a day when one of the most spectacular personal scandals to hit a member of the present, or indeed any, UK Government threatens to spectacularly derail its chances of re-election in two weeks time. And, in a major coup for this programme, we have secured the first interview with the MP concerned; the Minister for Administrative Affairs, the Right Honourable Penelope Fielding.”
The camera left the presenter and panned round to reveal Penny sitting at the table, in one of her most elegant outfits. She wore the Armani suit that she had worn on the day she went to Number 10 to receive her new Ministerial portfolio, along with her best pair of black Louboutins: rather higher heels than she would have worn in the House, but which she knew showed her long legs to their best advantage. There was a small audience in the studio with them, and she peered at the mass of faces, trying to judge whether their attitude was supportive or hostile, but the studio lights made it hard to tell.
She had been surprised when Martin had rejected all other media bids for an interview, because Justin Porter was famous for his ruthless and probing questioning. But she could see why he wanted to hold out for a late-night TV slot: not least because the media interest had just got more and more intense all day long. And ‘This Day Tonight’ was the BBC’s flagship current affairs show – she’d been longing to get on it for years, although probably not in these circumstances.
Justin Porter had been all smiles while they did the sound and camera tests, informing her that the producers were expecting a record audience for the programme that night. The planned schedule had been scrapped, and the entire programme given over to her interview. She tried to look calm as Justin turned to her as she sat alongside him; not too close but not too far away either.
“Well, Minister,” he began, “We’re used to seeing sex tapes by C-list celebrities, usually put online by their PR companies to resurrect interest in their fading careers, but I think we can safely assume you had no knowledge of this in advance.”
“Certainly not, Justin,” said Penny earnestly. “As you know, my ex-husband has a grudge against me because I threw him out when I found out about his criminal activities…”
“Well, I understand your divorce has yet to be finalised, so he’s not quite your ex-husband yet, and we shouldn’t pre-judge the result of his trial,” interrupted Justin firmly.
“Well, as far as I’m concerned he’s about as “ex” as it’s possible to be,” countered Penny resolutely. “And if he thinks he’s going to ruin my life by this shabby action, then he’d better think again.”
There was an encouraging ripple of supportive applause from the audience. At this stage, they seemed ready to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“But surely this tape is a bit of a game changer,” went on Justin. “It’s not the sort of behaviour constituents expect from their elected Member of Parliament, is it?”
“Well, Justin, I think I have to disagree with you there. So my soon-to-be-ex-husband sends a private tape to the media? Well, in my book that makes him an obnoxious, untrustworthy, vengeful little shit, but it doesn’t make me any less able to represent my constituents or do my job on behalf of my country. So I like to fuck, and I like to masturbate? Well, no shit, Sherlock!”
There was a collective gasp from the audience at this, and even Justin was taken aback. Clearly, he hadn’t expected such a response.
“Look, Justin,” she said, leaning towards him and putting on her most earnest “trust me, I’m a politician” voice. “Everyone loves to fuck. I doubt there’s anyone out there watching who doesn’t fuck whenever they get the chance. They may not want to fuck me, or even you, but I bet they want to fuck someone. And what exactly is wrong with that? We were married to each other at the time, both consenting adults. What exactly is the problem? I love to fuck, and I bet you do too. What does your wife do when you get into bed at night? Kiss you on the cheek and go to sleep? No, I bet she makes you shag her until the bed-springs collapse. I know I would.”
During the course of this, Justin was clearly getting some sort of message from the producer through his earpiece, but he hadn’t stopped her yet, and as far as she could tell the cameras were still rolling. Instead, he gave Penny a slightly supercilious smile and fiddled with his clipboard.
“Well, Minister, I’m not sure Mrs Porter would wish me to comment on that,” he said.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” replied Penny. “And another thing – what’s so wrong with my tits that most of the papers couldn’t print pictures without blacking out the best bits of them? Hell, I’m proud of my tits. At least the “Moon” had the honesty to show them in all their glory. Thanks guys,” and she winked at the camera.
“I’m sure the viewers will be rushing out to buy the paper after that endorsement, Minister,” commented Justin.