From the diary of Carrie Johnson, Britain’s best-loved First Lady
IT’S quite the thing for power couples like Big Dog and I to take a sabbatical. So, after three bloody hard years, we’re having a break from Downing Street.
He’s put a locum in while we recharge our batteries. ‘Will she be able to manage it?’ I said. ‘Fuck no,’ he said. ‘She’ll be a total fucking disaster. Even the Mail will be baying for her head after ten months. I’ve put it on their calendar.
‘Then I come triumphantly back, humbled, willing to serve, and I’m re-elected for a triumphant second term.’ ‘What about the energy crisis?’ I said. ‘It can piss off,’ he replied.
So not every detail of the plan is down. But we need this. We need the rest, we need the break from media scrutiny, we need to give time to our marriage, and more importantly we need the fucking cash.
He’s in talks with the Telegraph, and they’re not getting him for a bargain £275k a year this time. We need real money. There’s also his memoir, which predictably he’s on at me to ghostwrite while he lies on his arse.
‘You were there,’ he said, swigging another of Nadine’s bottles of Pinot. She’d stashed them all over the house. We found 34 and that’s not all. ‘You remember what happened. I’m no good with dates and names and objective facts.
‘So you do the first draft and I’ll come in afterwards, sprinkle a bit of the Boris magic, spice it up, really get stuck into my grudges against Rishi and Gove and that wanker Zahawi, summer bestseller, shitloads of royalties. What’s the problem?’
‘The problem is that it’s my time to shine,’ I explained. ‘To surf the waves of Carrie fever the nation is awash in. To launch my lifestyle brand, do my Vogue cover, all that Michelle Obama shit.’
‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Well, we’ve got a year. We can do both. But first, Rupert’s invited us to his ranch in Australia for a month.’ ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Free at last.’
