*A short story, after the melt Charles Dickens, by Jon. *

Thatcher was dead: to begin with. There could be no doubt about that. Johnson had been to the funeral himself, sat near Osborne who was failing to hold back the tears. She was as dead as a doornail. Or less metaphorically, the 96 football fans who her government smeared and denied justice after Hillsborough.

It was a cold afternoon in early December, and after cancelling another interview, Johnson was heading home for an evening with a good Russian vodka given to him by a close friend. The knocker on the door of Johnson’s temporary accommodation seemed to form a face, the digits 1 and 0 became a winking eye and a nose that seemed to follow the average wage down a graph. And was what was once a letterbox a handbag?

“Boris Johnson” a modulated voice, lowered by media training.

“Yes, mummy?” he gulped.

“Mr Prime Minister sir?” Johnson shook his head. It was a police officer speaking, a short female one that he often saw beside the door.

“We’ve been collecting, Sir”

“I… I… I… er”

“For some of our colleagues down the station, those with families, Sir, some are struggling. Using foodbanks. We’re just passing the hat around, trying to give them a good Christmas.”

“I… I… I… don’t have my wallet, you know. I’ll get you on the way out.”

He went through the door that was opened for him, and snapped to an aide: “get that woman off number 10 detail.”

Stamping up the stairway he glanced at the portraits. None of them looked at him, or did the one in the pearls look as he moved past? He smoothed his hair down and pushed into his flat - it was empty, the current girlfriend and the dog thankfully absent again.

Settling down in one of the armchairs by the TV, he turned it on – flicking through the Sky box for one of those big American series he felt he had to watch in case he was asked about them in press conferences. The gangster ones were alright, actually,

He briefly rested on a BBC Four documentary, that brown portrait swirl backing of an 80s talking head. It was her, she was speaking about the miners strike. He flicked onward, leaving her in the top corner of the guide.

“Boris Johnson,” she said. But when this was recorded she wouldn’t have known him, he was still at Oxford, great days with Dave, Nick and the chaps. “Listen to me.”

He checked his glass like one of the comedy drunk tramps in a film who witness an alien landing. Surely it wasn’t spiked, damn Russians. He pressed the button and thankfully Game of Thrones came on.

“Johnson,” the voice from behind him now. “You are to be visited by three ghosts.

“Piffle,” he said. “This is a trick. Is that you Govey?”

“I am as real as I ever was,” she said. He turned and saw Margaret Thatcher. Almost as he remembered. But around her neck instead of the usual pearls was a rusting chain, pulling her down and stretching across the floor and out of sight.

“You are to be visited by three spirits.”

“I’ve barely had a drop.” he smirked, this would get the apparition on side.

“Shut up. Every word is agony, you must listen for once. Around my neck is my chain, every evil deed you do in life adds a link. It weighs around you in death, for eternity. Mine has more than three million links, for each of the unemployed and more still for the thousands of children of miners left in dead towns without hope. Your chain grows link-by-link day-by-day.”

“This is some fantasy island stuff. Did I have a bad meal? That oven-ready thing tasted a bit off.”

“Three spirits will visit you this very night. They will show you the error of your ways. They will question you and make you question yourself — or you will end up like me. Or Reagan, you should see the length of his chain.”

He stamped out of the room and shouted at his smart speaker to play The Clash. London’s Burning kicked it a high volume. The vision was to be banished.

“I decline to be interviewed by these three ghosts,” he muttered, “It’s not what the public wan