As the main business of PMQs wrapped up and the prime minister was answering time-wasting questions from backbenchers about disabled poodle insurance and hostel accommodation for tiddlywinks addicts, Miller stood to leave. I scrambled to gather my things and chased him along the bench, climbing over the rest of press gallery to keep up with him. He darted out the door and down the hall like a spaniel after a duck. He was just about to start down the stairs when I reached him. I tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention, but as he turned, I tripped over a loose bit of carpet, fell to my knees, and smacked my face into his crotch. He reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me back onto my feet.
“Honestly, mate, you are the clumsiest person I have ever met,” he said.
“You have absolutely no idea.” He was lucky I hadn’t vomited on him yet. I pushed my glasses back onto my face. I felt intolerably dishevelled and, suddenly, couldn’t think of a thing to say. I just stared at him, mesmerised by his eyes, which were a brilliant amber green, the same colour as the ostentatiously oversized jewel on my grandmother’s peridot ring. My heart raced.
“Can I help you, mate?” he said.
“I’m… lost,” I said. I wasn’t. TheSentinel’s parliamentary bureau was up this flight of stairs and down the far end of the corridor. That was never going to fly, so I ad-libbed. “I’m looking for… coffee.”
“Coffee?”
“Yes. I thought you might know where the best coffee is around here.” If I were a more confident chap, this was the point where I’d have asked him if he wanted to join me. In this parallel universe, he would have smiled and said “I’d love to,” and then we would have chatted and laughed together on the way to find the aforementioned coffee. He would have found me amusing, and I would have found him charming. I would have apologised again for the thing with the phone and the thing with my face in his crotch, and he’d have said don’t mention it, and then he’d have asked if I was doing anything later that night. I’d have said, “I am now,” and then I’d have gone home and Veeted my freckle in readiness for the first night of the rest of my life. But I am not, alas, a more confident man.
“No idea, mate. Try Portcullis House,” he said. “Scuse me. I have to go and extract my phone from a hostile KGB operative.”
So,notforgiven, then. Miller disappeared down the stairs. I went in the opposite direction, feeling terribly deflated. I turned my mind to the sketch I needed to write. I was almost at the bureau when I heard someone call my name down the corridor.
“Boche!” It ricocheted down the corridor. I knew exactly who it was. I’d been hearing that voice bellow my name down corridors for most of my life. Torsten Beaumont-Flattery was now a special adviser to Environment Secretary Jemima Carstairs but, once upon a time, he had been the head boy and rugby captain of my school. He was tall, handsome, and built like a brick shithouse. He’d lost none of that athleticism since our days at Petersham College. He jogged up the hallway towards me in a grey woollen suit that was pornographically small on a man so impossibly large. The strength of the stitching was a credit to his tailor.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Torsten corralled me into a small meeting room lined with old leather-bound volumes of Hansard, the parliamentary minutes, and closed the door. I stood on a threadbare patch of carpet in the middle of the room. It smelt of rat urine and that special kind of damp that comes with Grade I heritage listing. Torsten perched on the edge of the wooden desk.
“Feels just like school,” I observed.
“Congratulations on your big scoop today,” he said. He spread his legs wide, unfolding in the way that men with impossibly long legs unfold whenever they have a few square metres of space. If anyone entered the room now, it would look like I was standing between his legs, which would be jolly hard to explain to HR. But as Parliament famously didn’t have any HR and I quite enjoyed the proximity, I wasn’t going to complain.
Torsten leant back on the desk, stretching the fabric of his shirt across his preposterously thick chest. It was a very big dick energy tableau. In fact, his dick could not have been more at the centre of the room if he’d whipped it out, put a wig on it, and called it Your Honour.
“Thank you for trusting me with the story,” I said.
He shrugged, as if mystified by my statement.
“No idea what you’re talking about, Boche.” He flicked his teeth with his tongue.
Torsten knew exactly what I was talking about. He was the source who’d given me the documents that detailed the nuclear power plant plan. He’d also specifically told me it was terribly important no one knew it had come from him and, specifically, to keep his minister’s name a million miles away from the story. I now realised this instruction meant I couldn’t even mention him to him, which meant playing silly games like this. Plausible deniability and all that.
“Your story has caused quite a fuss over at Energy. I hear old Bob Wynn-Jones is on the ropes.”
Torsten let his knees swing in and out, making his thighs bounce. He knew exactly what he was doing. It looked like he’d convinced someone at the Waitrose deli counter to vacuum seal his cock and thighs into an Ermenegildo Zegna suit. Professionally speaking, this was a problematic flex. But then, we weren’t normal colleagues. Torsten Beaumont-Flattery had been playing this game with me for years. He was the college heartthrob. The star of many,manyteenage wanks. He was my first crush. (Unrequited, obviously, as if I need to clarify that fact. That’s the trouble with straight boys these days. Once upon a time they used to beat us up for being gay. Nowadays, they queerbait us into subscribing to their OnlyFans. Torsten was my own personal live-action version of that transaction.)
“How long have you been at theSentinelnow?” Torsten asked.
“Two months.”
“Two months and you might have already caused your first cabinet reshuffle. Very impressive, Boche.”
“Thank you.”
I swallowed, unsure what was coming next. Torsten ran a hand through his hair, then let it rest on the vast, rolling expanse of his inner thigh. We were at school again. I was the younger me—the skinny, campy theatre kid—standing in front of the younger Torsten—the handsome athlete who collected virginities like Pokémon. This was an unhealthy level of power for a political aide to have over me. This could become a problem, professionally.
“Is that all you wanted to see me about?” I asked.
Torsten jumped up from the desk and clapped his hands together.
“Absolutely not,” he said, towering over me. His eyes lit up. “I’ve got something else for you. I can’t give it to you exclusively, but it’s big, and I think you’ll love it.”
“You sound like a GayHoller profile.”
