“I’m not sure, actually,” Torsten said. He flicked his teeth with his tongue. If he were a poker player, this would be his tell.
“Do you want to tell me about these ‘matters,’ or should I write a story about the environment minister sendingtwofuel-guzzling, climate-destroying jets all the way to the Shetland Islands at taxpayers’ expense for a PR stunt, when she could have sent one?”
“Now, play fair, Sunny.” Torsten pretended to look wounded.
The cabin crew appeared at his shoulder. We were going to be late if we didn’t prepare for take-off now, she said. Torsten leant over me, peering out my window. Heat radiated off him. He smelt of citrus and timber. I wanted to lick the vein in his neck.
“It’s OK,” Torsten said, pointing out the window. “He’s coming now.”
Running across the tarmac towards the plane, weighed down by a suitcase, a shoulder bag, and, inexplicably, an oversized airport Toblerone, was Ludo Boche.
“Your seatmate is here,” Torsten said, smiling. “VladPop did the seating plan. He said you’d want to sit together.” He slapped my thigh, in that way that boys-who-do-sports do to other boys-who-do-sports, winked, and disappeared up the aisle.
Oh, for pity’s sake. This was a nightmare. The writers of theSawmovies could not have created a more horrific scenario. There was a heavy thud and clatter from the front of the aircraft as Ludo hit the deck.
“It’s OK. I’m all right.”
Ludo, red-faced, glasses askew, and out of breath, picked himself and his bags off the floor. His Toblerone had taken the full force of the landing and was bent almost at right angles. The cabin crew took his luggage for stowing, and Ludo fixed his glasses. Torsten put an arm around him and ruffled his hair. What the hell was that? I was appalled. But also slightly turned on. Then Ludo spun around to look down the plane and saw the only empty seat was the one next to me. He looked like he would rather have been crushed in the plane’s landing gears than sit there. He trudged down the aisle and threw himself into the seat without making eye contact with me. This was going to be a long flight. Worse, clearly, we were going to be stuck together for the next week, which made sorting out Friday night’s mardy a priority sooner rather than later. But a small plane surrounded by half the British press pack didn’t seem like the right time or place. Until then, and perhaps not even then, it was clear I was going to get the silent treatment. It was two hours to Shetland, but it was going to feel much longer. I slunk down into my seat and looked out the window.
* * *
An hour into the flight, Ludo hadn’t looked up from his laptop except to break off pyramids of chocolate. He wore those noise-cancelling headphones that cost normal people an entire week’s wages and was watching something on his laptop. I buried my face in my work-purposes-only tablet, trying to read through background documents about Yevgeny Safin, his energy company, and the history of Britain’s nuclear energy industry. In reality, I was running my eyes across the same line of text, over and over again. Not reading it. Not taking it in. My mind was busy war-gaming how to approach Ludo.
Ludo, by contrast, did not appear to be having any kind of internal crisis, although how his stomach was handling all that chocolate was beyond me. He was tapping his fingers and bouncing his feet and occasionally, surreptitiously, conducting an invisible orchestra. To say it was distracting would be selling it short. I could not have been more distracted if he were sitting on my lap twisting ringlets in his hair with one hand and wanking me off with the other. It was entirely possible his strategy was to be as annoying as possible during the flight. I was willing to bet that was his level of petty.
I was doing my best to ignore him when suddenly,jazz hands. This was followed by a sheepish sideways glance towards me. Ludo sat on his hands and slunk down in his chair. Were accidental jazz hands even possible? Was this a nervous twitch? I was as curious as a cat with MI5 clearance and nine lives left to burn. When the cabin crew asked Ludo if he wanted a cup of tea, I peered over to see what he was watching.Hamilton.He was watching the stage production of the single best musical ever written. A glorious theatrical smoothie of history, politics, and hip-hop. A wet dream of a production for a political junkie like me. Dav, Nick, and I had gone to see it at the Victoria Palace when I first moved down to London. I’d spent my first pay cheque on the ticket. We were all eating pot noodles for a month, but it was worth every penny.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket, opened Spotify, and put on the original Broadway cast recording of the show. I skipped forward through the tracks, trying to get to the same part Ludo was watching. Twenty minutes later, Ludo’s hands were loose and tapping again, the cast were singing about “the room where it happened,” and I’d just done my own accidental jazz hands.
Ludo hit the space bar on his laptop, pausing the film. He raised his hands to his ears and slowly removed his headphones. Busted. I pulled on my headphone cables, letting the earbuds fall to my lap. Our eyes met for the first time since Ludo had stumbled onto the plane. Ludo’s were a stormy blue ocean behind his glasses. There was disdain on his face. A small twitch caught the top of his left cheek. His eyes narrowed.
“Are you mocking me?”
“What? No!” I was on the back foot. “Of course not.”
“Then what wasthis?”
Jazz hands.
I didn’t know what to say. I plucked an earbud out of my lap and gingerly held it up to Ludo’s ear. His eyebrows raised as he recognised the music. He smirked. It wasn’t a smile; his lips were pursed, and it didn’t light up his face or make his eyes sparkle. It still visibly carried contempt. But then he took the bud from my hand, our fingers brushing lightly, and held it against his ear, as if he were double-checking the evidence. Ludo handed it back, raised his eyebrows, and turned his attention to his laptop. Now seemed like a good time to make peace with him—especially if I wanted to stay sane in the short term.
“I…”
But Ludo’s headphones were back on his head before I could get any further.
Chapter14
Ludo
Why did the universe keep throwing me into the path of this copper-topped pillock? What had I done to deserve being stuck on a remote island with Sunny Miller? A chap with such an enormous chip on his shoulder that he seriously risked spending all week being dive-bombed by seagulls. The fact that he hadn’t even pretended to like me to see what he could get out of my family connections was, frankly, the only thing Sunny had going in his favour. OK, that and the fact he looked like a young, freckled Damian Lewis. I had spent the entire flight up trying to concentrate onHamiltonbut wanting desperately to ask him why, after the scene he’d caused at Maxime’s, he had suddenly unblocked me on GayHoller. When he revealed he was also listening toHamilton, I had nearly relented and asked him. But whatever his reasoning, I didn’t want his answer tempered by the possibility people might overhear, so I left it.
We hit the ground running in Shetland. The plane touched down at Sumburgh Airport at half ten, and by eleven the whole press pack was lying on our bellies in the grass on a windy clifftop overlooking the North Sea, jaws on the floor, staring through binoculars at a colony of fabulous seabirds with brightly coloured beaks.
“He looks like the dude on the Froot Loops packet,” said Rafiq Farouq, the reporter from theGuardian. He and I had buddied up together for our “Welcome to Shetland activity,” birdwatching, which apparently had something to do with new conservation funding.
“You’re thinking of Toucan Sam,” I said. “These chaps are puffins.”
“Sam isn’t a puffin?”
