Ludo seemed surprised to see me. I held out my laptop and presented the packet of crisps I had tucked under my arm.
“Mrs G has restocked,” I said. “Do you fancy a film?”
“I fancy a fucking cup of tea and fucking biscuit,” he said. He waved me in and lifted the kettle to check the weight of it. “I’ll just get some more water.”
Ludo disappeared out of the bedroom door, turning towards the kitchen. Personally, I’d have filled the kettle from the bathroom sink, avoiding Mrs G altogether. Ludo liked to live dangerously. I put my laptop down on the bed and noticed Ludo’s computer was open to whatever he’d been working on. There was text on the screen. There’s no greater test for a reporter than this. Should I look? Should I read it and see what he was working on? What if it was a big story, like an update on Newton Bardon or the fate of Bob Wynn-Jones? What if I’d missed whatever it was Ludo was working on and this was my chance to find out about it and ensure I got the story for theBulletin? Proper unethical. But was it any more unethical than trawling through a celebrity’s rubbish bin looking for receipts for Botox injections or final-demand notices from Dildos-4-U.com? There’s no code of honour between journalists. All is fair. You just mustn’t get caught. That was really the only lesson the industry took from the entire phone hacking scandal. But could I do it? Could I really just lean over and read whatever was on Ludo’s laptop?Gah!Why the bloody hell hadn’t it switched to a password-protected screen saver by now? Frankly, it was negligent. It’s like hewantedme to snoop.
Trust, I thought. He’s deliberately testing me to see whether he can trust me. TheBulletinmight have seen my moral bar sink lower than a Smurf trained in gymnastics could comfortably limbo, but I wasn’t going to fail this test and ruin my entire career. Not when I’d worked so hard this week to save it. If Ludo told his parents I’d read his laptop, my reputation would be toast with every single respectable outlet in the country. I’d be stuck at theBulletinfor the rest of my career. Worse, I’d get stuck writing for magazines people only buy for the crosswords.
I sat on the edge of the bed and actively looked at almost anything else I could find to hold my attention. On the floor, Ludo’s worn clothes were crumpled in a pile. His trousers looked like he’d evaporated out them, his pants still hugging the inside of the gusset. Being caught staring at Ludo’s just-been-worn-all-day underpants was almost as bad as being caught reading his laptop. Some guys would love nothing more than to enter a room and find you face down in their dirty briefs, fudding yourself senseless. I suspected Ludo was not one of those guys. And this was not the time to find out. I adjusted my joggers to keep things kosher, in case Ludo walked in.
Ludo walked in.
“Have you been in that kitchen?” he asked. He shut the bedroom door behind him, put the kettle in its stand, and turned it on to boil. “I could have trekked to the gates of hell for this water and inhaled less sulphur.”
Ludo noticed his open laptop, closed it, and put it on the dresser.
“What shall we watch?” he asked.
While Ludo made the tea, I searched the streaming services for a film.
“Where does the name Ludo come from?” I asked, making small talk to fill the silence. “I’ve never met anyone called Ludo before.”
“I’m named after Ludovic Kennedy,” he said. “Jonty and I are both named after famous journalists. He’s named for Jonathan Dimbleby.”
Ludo noticed his pants on the floor. He left the tea, rolled his clothes into a ball, and threw them inside his case. For some reason, possibly the faultlessly preppy way he dressed—the cashmere jumpers, the crisp white shirts, the arse-hugging chinos—I had imagined he would be neat and tidy. A perfectionist. A kindred spirit with VladPop. But within twenty-four hours of arriving, his room looked like a plane had crash-landed in a field. Based on the evidence, the passengers were all dressed in Ralph Lauren, Rodd & Gunn, and Barbour. Ludo dressed like he was the kind of person who owned a yacht, a horse, and a Labrador but had sent them all to boarding school to get some peace and quiet.
He was stirring the tea.
“And what is the story behind ‘Cabbage98,’ while we’re at it?”
“The ninety-eight is for the year I was born, obviously,” Ludo said. “And of coursebocheis short forcaboche, which meanscabbagein French, but it also means an idiot. It’s what our great-grandpapas called the Germans during the war. Boche, that is. It was a terrific insult, at the time. You probably had to be there.”
Diving into the workings of Ludo’s brain was like slipping into a parallel universe.
“Cabbage was one of my nicknames at school. Not one of the nicer ones. That was me sort of reclaiming it.”
That was probably the most relatable thing Ludo had ever said.
“What about you? Why did your parents call you Sunny?”
“Not parents. Parent. There’s only me mum.” I caught myself slipping into “Lestah” and corrected course. “The way she tells it, she had been struggling to think of a suitable name when a nurse peered into my crib, saw my fat little face, and said I was ‘a little ray of sunshine.’ And that was it. Mum called me Sunshine. It could have been worse. I could have been called Ray.”
“Sunny is short for Sunshine?”
“Yes,” I said. Ludo was wide-eyed. “Are you laughing at me?”
“I most certainly am not! I think it’s fabulous. It’s like Mary Sunshine, the journalist in?—”
“Chicago!” I said. Ludo looked at me like I’d made his day. “I love that movie,” I added.
Ludo passed my tea and sat down cross-legged on the bed, facing me.
“Did you know in stage productions Mary Sunshine is usually played by a man in drag?” he said.
I did.
“Do you like musicals, then?”
