Chapter Text

Chapter One

David Cameron's last memory of Nick Clegg was of watching television footage of Nick boarding a flight to Rio De Janeiro in September 2010.

Since that time David had seen more clips of the once leader of the Liberal Democrats; several had been streamed endlessly, on every news channel, for months after the plane Nick had been aboard went down somewhere over the Atlantic with no survivors, or so it was thought until now.

The search had lasted months. Hundreds of square miles trawled for anyone who might be alive, and then, when the likelihood of finding survivors had faded, for the wreckage of the plane.

When all efforts had turned up nothing, David had reluctantly agreed to allow the search to be called off. Now he wished he had insisted it continue, although in retrospect there was no way they could have known the plane had drifted so far off course; they had been looking in the wrong ocean.

That had been five-and-a-half years ago.

When the sleek ministerial car pulled up to the nondescript military hangar, David stepped from it and was ushered inside the building by a gaggle of people, all clamouring for his attention.

They had managed to keep the news from the press, but that would not last long and David was eager to leave for somewhere more secure before they were inundated by reporters. He made his apologies to the assembled crowd and hurried away with the senior officer, not quite knowing what to expect.

Following the man into the room where Nick had been taken when his plane landed twenty minutes ago, David could not help but gasp in surprise; having pictured Nick as being pale and fragile, he was unprepared for the lean, alert figure who greeted him.

Slightly underweight but perfectly healthy, Nick stretched out his deeply tanned hand to shake David's, the crisp line of army fatigues clinging to his body. His hair was sun-lightened, the hint of auburn shades David had sometimes glimpsed in direct sunlight now visible even in the dimly lit room.

For a moment David did not speak.

What could he say? I'm sorry. We should have looked harder, for longer.

But Nick settled the situation into a sense of equilibrium as he said, ‘David.’

‘Nick,’ David replied, an air of the automatic creeping into his voice. Nick's hand was thinner than David remembered; his handshake a little firmer.

Turning to the officer who had accompanied him, David uttered a few words of thanks. He could not now remember the man's name but that did not matter, he would find out later and send the proper letter of commendation to the man's superiors. Right now they had to leave before the ceaselessly hungry media learned what was going on.

Nick walked silently as David led the way back to the car, opening the door so Nick could climb in the back before sliding in next to him. After instructing his driver to take them to Chequers, David sat back, looking in Nick's direction and noticing Nick had closed his eyes.

He's probably tired, David thought, and sat in silence for the journey, pulling papers from his briefcase and beginning to read through them carefully; his latest set of notes from Simon Hughes, the current deputy prime minister.

The footing for the second peace-time coalition government was more equal than the first had been.

The outcome of the election ten months before had seen the Conservatives lose seats, slipping down to 288. That, coupled with the unexpected victory of the alternative vote and the reduction in the number of MPs, once again meant no one party had the majority to form a government, and like the election before, it was the Liberal Democrats who were the kingmakers.

After five years of working together the news media had predicted a return to coalition between the two parties, but the Liberal Democrats, strengthened by their increased numbers and experience in government, had demanded more concessions as the price for their support, and with the ability to force the Conservatives into a minority government there had been little option but to agree to most of them.

Naturally the Liberal Democrats had negotiated with Labour, but that process had been soured when Ed Balls had been overheard on camera saying: “The liberals are more annoying now than when Clegg was alive.” It was the political equivalent of biting the hand that feeds, for Nick was an untouchable icon.

The number one point on David's list of 'don'ts' during the election campaign had been: Do not say anything about Nick Clegg.

The word anything had been underlined three times.

If someone brought the subject up David simply said Nick had been a good and devoted politician, and moved on.

Now here David was with the very same man sleeping next to him, or at least Nick appeared to be sleeping until he opened his eyes and looked at David, silently watching every move David made.

‘Everything all right?’ David asked with concern.

‘It's just a bit... weird, you know,’ Nick murmured, leaning his head in David's direction.

‘I suppose it will be for a little while.’

‘Yeah.’

Nick closed his eyes again and David studied him intently for a moment; the lines on Nick's face were set a little deeper but he looked no older for the change, if anything he looked younger. His skin was tan and smooth, cheeks the faintest bit gaunt and dotted with freckles.

The buzzing of his phone interrupted David's thoughts, and Nick started at the sound, jumping away in the direction of the car door, obviously frightened.

David picked up his phone and looked at it, disturbed by Nick's reaction to such an everyday occurrence. There was a text from Simon saying his flight back from Paris had been delayed and he would meet them both at Chequers later that evening, and also the press had finally picked up the story but did not know where they were heading. Simon had instructed a party aide to put out a rumour they were going to Downing Street.

Good job, Simon, David thought.

The last thing he wanted was for them to be mobbed by reporters and photographers when they arrived. If Nick reacted with such shock to a simple text David could not imagine how he might react to the flashing lights of cameras and microphones being shoved in his face.

A flutter of warm air rushed over David's arm and he turned to see Nick had switched on the air conditioning and was tilting his face into the breeze coming from the vent, expression serene as his neatly cropped but slightly overlong hair flapped against his forehead.

‘Nick,’ David said, touching Nick on the elbow.

‘Hmm,’ Nick hummed, not moving from where he was.

‘Are you sure you're all right?’ David asked.

‘It's cold in here,’ came the muffled response.

David frowned.

It had been, until Nick turned on the air conditioning, a perfectly reasonable temperature in the back of the car, now it was most definitely starting to get stuffy, and David could feel prickles of sweat forming underneath his shirt.

Still, David reflected, Nick had spent over five years living on a near-equatorial island where the average temperature rarely strayed below 25°C, so the chill of the British spring would take some adjustment. He suffered the increasingly muggy feel of the car in silence, concentrating on his paperwork.

At around four o'clock they arrived at Chequers. David was relieved to see there were no members of the press parked outside the gates. An aide greeted them as they stepped from the car, Nick pulling his army jacket tight around his shoulders to ward off the brisk chill of the wind.

Once inside the sprawling country house David slipped gratefully out of his jacket and turned to Nick.

‘Is there anything you want? Are you hungry?’

‘I'd like to sleep,’ Nick stated, a yawn stretching his features even as he tried to suppress it.

‘Of course,’ David said.

He led Nick to one of the bedrooms and hovered by the door for a few seconds before telling Nick to call one of the staff if he wanted anything else. Nick thanked him in a quiet voice and lay down on the bed, wrapping himself, still fully-clothed, in the blankets. David closed the door and walked away, checking the time on one of the wall clocks. He would be able to squeeze in a few more hours of work before Simon arrived.

As David sat down at a heavy, oak desk another text message arrived, this time from George and telling him someone had leaked 'Clegg' was at Chequers; he should expect the press to show up any time.

Sighing, David set his notes aside and began to prepare a short statement he could deliver at the door, hopefully without disturbing Nick, who he was genuinely worried about.

Nick had barely said a word since he had been found. By all accounts he had answered any questions put to him in four or five words and spent most of the time during the multiple plane journeys it had taken for him to return to the UK sitting in silence. It was a worrying development for a man who David remembered as fiercely animated, almost excessively so.

David could not even begin to comprehend the effects of five-and-a-half years of total isolation, but it must have gone some way to explaining Nick's behaviour: the quietness and the alarm at unexpected noises. It would get better with time, David was sure of that, but what he was not sure of was just how much time it would take.

By five-thirty a horde of reporters were swarming outside. David switched on the television to get an idea of the general mood among the many media sources, and to learn how much they already knew of what had happened. Very little, it seemed; so far, only that Nick was alive and at Chequers with David, and David had personally collected Nick from Halton air force base earlier in the day.

Speculation as to where Nick had been was rampant, with everything from kidnapped to faking his own death being given an airing.

The sooner David got out there the better, but he was waiting for Simon to arrive so the Liberal Democrat leader could also say a few words. They never usually made joint statements but this occasion was exceptional enough for that rule to be broken.

In a series of texts David agreed the general message they would deliver to the waiting reporters. Both of them would urge for Nick's privacy to be respected, although David did not hold out much hope the request would be heeded and had already arranged with George for Nick to stay at Dorneywood should the situation get out of hand; the large grounds were closed to the public and only one part of the gardens was visible from the roads that ran around the house.

At five to six Simon arrived, his car making its way slowly past the throng of people amidst the flashing of cameras and shouts of questions.

David stepped outside to greet him, shaking his hand firmly and taking note of the grim, weary set of the other man's face. With the formalities done, David turned to face the press, urging for quiet by raising his hand, then he began to speak.

‘Good evening. As you are all now aware, two days ago Nick Clegg was discovered alive on the remotest of the Cook Islands, Penrhyn. The discovery was made by group of tourists who chartered a flight to the uninhabited island with Air Rarotonga. Nick Clegg arrived back in the UK this afternoon and is currently resting. I would ask that members of the press grant him the privacy he deserves in the coming days. An investigation into the search and rescue operation carried out in 2010 has been launched and a full statement will be released shortly. Thank you.’

David stepped back a little and waited as Simon delivered his own statement; short, to the point, and expressing gratitude Nick was safely back in the UK.

Ignoring the shouted questions from the reporters at his back, David walked with Simon into the house.

‘How is he?’ Simon asked as soon as the door was closed.

‘He's... quiet,’ David said with a frown. ‘Very quiet.’

‘Physically?’ Simon questioned.

‘A little underweight,’ David explained, ‘but not dangerously so. I'm far more worried about his mental state.’

‘It's bound to be difficult for him,’ Simon remarked, moving to a chair and sitting down. ‘Is he awake?’

‘I don't know. I should check on him, he has been asleep since we arrived.’

Simon pulled out his phone as it buzzed the arrival of a flurry of messages. ‘I'd better take care of these. Half the party have been calling since the plane landed.’

As he walked away David heard Simon begin speaking, explaining Nick was all right.

When he reached the bedroom where he had left Nick two hours earlier, David knocked quietly, not wanting to wake Nick if he was still sleeping. There was no reply, so David opened the door and peered inside. Nick was not there.

Stepping fully inside the room, David switched on the overhead light. He made his way to the empty bed and looked around, spying a bundle of cloth on the floor, out of sight of the door, and he walked around to the other side of the bed and looked down.

The clothes Nick had been wearing were lying in a heap on the carpet. Next to them Nick was half-wrapped in the blankets, face buried almost entirely beneath a pillow, wearing nothing but his trousers.

David stared, eyes wandering along Nick's back to his shoulders. Nick looked strong, muscled in a way David had not expected him to be; the leanness of his appearance while dressed hiding the physical fitness so apparent now, even when Nick was relaxed in sleep.

‘Nick,’ David said softly. He did not really want to wake Nick but thought he deserved to know Simon had arrived. Nick did not stir, so David reached down and gently shook him by the shoulder.

‘Nick.’

‘Huh,’ Nick gasped, waking with a jolt and looking out from under the pillow. ‘What?’

‘I thought you would want to know Simon is here,’ David explained quietly, standing upright again as Nick sat up, the blanket falling away to his waist.

‘Be right there,’ Nick said, rolling first one shoulder and then the other. He ran one hand across a faded scar on his upper torso and grabbed for his discarded clothes.

David nodded and left the room so Nick could dress in privacy.

Barefoot, wearing nothing more than his trousers and t-shirt, Nick emerged from the bedroom and made his way to the room where David and Simon were sitting. Simon stood up and walked over, hugging Nick to him as he welcomed him home, and David could not help but notice the look of discomfort on Nick's face at the physical contact; it passed quickly, but David got the impression Nick was deliberately trying to hide it.

‘How are you?’ Simon asked as he let go of Nick and stepped back.

‘Fine. Fine,’ Nick replied, smiling in a way that looked a little forced. He sounded faintly irritated, and David wondered how many times Nick had been asked that particular question over the past two days.

Unable to hold back an involuntary laugh, David saw Nick looking at him over Simon's shoulder, the smile on his face seeming more genuine for a fraction of a second before it disappeared entirely.

‘I can't stay,’ Simon told Nick, drawing his attention away from David. ‘I'm due in Manchester for nine o'clock and I'm already going to be late.’

Nick nodded silently, and David studied him carefully, but if Nick would rather Simon stayed it did not show on his face.

Squeezing Nick on the shoulder, Simon promised to visit the following evening before bidding David a quick farewell and heading for the door. David heard a din of voices coming from beyond the hallway as Simon stepped outside. They faded when the front door closed.

Nick sank onto an armchair and let out a long sigh, rubbing his face wearily.

‘I'm sick of people asking if I'm OK,’ Nick mumbled, looking down at the floor. ‘It's all I've heard for the last two days.’

‘Sorry,’ David said, not knowing what else to say, and surprised at Nick's sudden splurge of words. Nick continued as though David had not spoken.

‘Of course I'm not OK. Everything here is so loud.’

For a few seconds Nick raised his head and looked at David, brow creased, then he stared at the floor again.

‘Sorry. You probably don't want to hear this.’

‘If you want to talk about it,’ David offered. Nick shook his head.

‘No. I am hungry though.’

‘I can cook something. What do you fancy?’ David asked, getting to his feet.

‘Anything but fish,’ Nick replied. ‘I'm sick of fish.’

David laughed, and quickly clamped his hand over his mouth, but then he saw Nick smile and felt reassured. Letting his arm fall back to his side, David started to make his way toward the kitchen.

‘Come and choose something,’ he said, waiting until Nick stood up and began to follow him.

In spite of Nick choosing the meal, when they sat at the table Nick did little more than push the food around his plate, seemingly unenthused, eating barely a third of it before abandoning his cutlery and returning to his earlier silence.

David poured a cup of tea and slid it across the table to where Nick was sitting, watching silently as Nick eyed the cup before him. After a few seconds Nick put his hands around it and picked it up, taking a tentative sip, followed by another, then another.

Closing his eyes, Nick seemed to forget David was there, tilting the cup and draining it in a series of gulps; sighing as he lowered the cup back to the table and wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. When he opened his eyes and saw David looking at him, Nick fiddled with the handle of the cup in embarrassment.

‘Good tea,’ Nick mumbled.

‘So I guessed,’ David replied. He smiled and added, ‘More?’

‘Please.’

Nick passed his empty cup to David and waited while David poured him fresh tea. He drank the second cup slower, watching David self-consciously over the rim as he did so and reminding David of a possessive hound that expected its food to be snatched away.

It was an odd reaction to a cup of tea, David thought, especially when Nick had left his dinner half-eaten; David tried not to stare.

When he was finished, Nick set his cup down.

‘Do you mind,’ he said, toying with his cutlery, ‘if I go back to bed?’

Shaking his head, David replied, ‘Not at all.’

A look of relief spread across Nick's face as he stood up, pushing his chair back and walking swiftly in the direction of the stairs.

Alone, David finished the last of his meal and cleared the plates from the table, frowning as he observed how little Nick had eaten. He scraped the leftovers into the compost caddy and set the plates in the dishwasher, closing the door and leaving it without running the cleaning cycle. It would wait until morning.

While he finished reading his notes from Simon, David turned on the news, listening to the reactions to his and Simon's statements earlier in the evening.

The BBC had dragged out a psychologist, who was currently explaining to the female newsreader how Nick might have been affected by five years of social isolation. David turned from his notes to watch.

Anxiety, depression, panic attacks – none of it sounded good, and some of it was starting to become apparent in Nick's behaviour.

David picked up his phone and dialled a number, making arrangements for a doctor to call the following day under the pretence of wanting Nick's physical condition evaluated; expressing concern over the phone that Nick was underweight and not eating well.

With that done David switched off the television and left his notes unfinished. It had been a long day. David intended to catch up on as much sleep as he could before the Easter recess ended and parliament dominated his time again.

It had been difficult enough to arrange for the time to stay at Chequers until Friday night when he had to catch a flight to Germany – near impossible at such short notice – but he had put his foot down and insisted, not wanting Nick to feel isolated in the large house.

David walked along the ornate hallway toward the master bedroom, noticing as he passed that Nick had left the door to his room open and had once again opted to sleep on the floor between the bed and the window. He resolved to ask Nick if his bed was uncomfortable in the morning, donned his pyjamas, and slid beneath the covers, stretching out his arm to switch off the lamp at his side.

Within a few minutes he was fast asleep.

Waking in the middle of the night was starting to become a frequent thing as David got older, and his doctor had assured him it was perfectly normal. What was not normal was his being woken by a forty-nine-year-old man, who was shaking his shoulder with a hand that was as cold as ice cubes. David flinched away from the chill and blinked up at Nick sleepily.

‘Nick? What's wrong?’

‘I've lost the ocean,’ Nick said, his voice slow and dozy.

‘What?’ David asked, rubbing a hand across his eyes in confusion. Nick did not answer, and David rolled to one side to turn on the light.

Nick was standing next to the bed wearing his trousers, staring vacantly at the other side of the room. Sitting up, David waved a hand in front of Nick's face and waited for a reaction.

When none came he sighed and got out of bed, intending to direct Nick back to his room as gently as he could without waking him. He put a hand on Nick's shoulder and immediately pulled it away again.

‘Nick, you're freezing!’ he exclaimed.

The cry drew no reaction from Nick, who continued to stand glassy-eyed and expressionless. David quickly took hold of his blanket and wrapped it around Nick's shoulders, then he urged Nick carefully toward the door. Nick followed the silent instruction, plodding along in front of David, down the hallway and back to his own room.

Once there David picked Nick's pillows up from the floor and placed them on the bed, then he pushed Nick's sleeping form onto the mattress, gathering up the rest of the blankets and settling them over Nick to warm him further.

Nick shuffled down under the cloth with a murmur until only the top of his head was poking out while David fussed over him, tucking the edges of the blankets as close to Nick's body as they would go.

David rubbed his face as he left the room, closing the door firmly behind himself. He made a mental note to speak to the doctor about the episode of sleep walking and returned to his room before he realised he now had no bed-covers. With a sigh David went to retrieve some more, noticing it was almost three in the morning.

New blanket collected, David settled back down in his bed and stretched his limbs as he made himself comfortable. Lying in the dark he hoped Nick would sleep the rest of the night, or at least that he would remain in his room instead of wandering the house looking for the ocean.

Something about what Nick had said troubled David more than the rest of Nick's behaviour. He could understand the difficulty Nick must be having at being around people again and adjusting to not having to fend for himself, but for Nick to be actively seeking the place where he had spent the past five years, even in sleep, made David feel worried.

Nick had not said he could not find the ocean, but he had lost it, and David had an unshakable sense there was a deeper meaning to those words; that Nick felt, deep down, he had lost something with his return to civilisation.

There was something else along with that, which David could not place, something more tangible than any subconscious revelation Nick might have made about how he was feeling.

As David began to drift off to sleep he turned onto his side, kicking his blanket away slightly as he started to feel a little too warm to be covered by it completely. It was then the thought registered in David's head, seconds before he slipped into unconsciousness: Just how had Nick got so cold in the first place?