Sunny sat opposite me at the breakfast table, his beautiful face buried in his tablet. You wouldn’t know to look at him just how calculating he was. I felt a twinge of sadness. Mrs Gallacher stood at the stove, the smell of sizzling bacon and frying bread filling the air. Oil splattered loudly in the pan.
“Jesus, would ye get tae fuck,” Mrs Gallacher said, leaping backwards from the stove. “Motherfucker.”
This was fifty per cent meal preparation, fifty per cent cabaret. Breakfast with a free floor show. I took a mouthful of my muesli and yogurt. On the small television in the corner, I could see the beaming face of a man who, this time last week, I was busily vomiting all over. I hadn’t seen Krishnan Varma-Rajan since that morning. I had actively avoided watchingWake Up Britain. Seeing him reminded me of the way he’d tried to use me to get to my father, of how small and stupid that made me feel.
I looked across at Sunny, who last night had as good as revealed he was pulling the same stunt as Krishnan. “Someday, I want to work for a respectable paper,” he’d said. The words had hollowed me out. I tried to shake off the sadness it created inside me, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t slept terribly well at all, going over and over it all in my mind. In the end, I had resolved to be serviceably polite to Sunny while I was stuck with him in Shetland, then jolly well have nothing to do with him beyond what was absolutely necessary after we got back to London on Thursday night. I would be distant and professional. We were colleagues. There was no obligation to be friends. This was self-preservation.
The ticker along the bottom of the television screen suggested energy policy was on the agenda again this morning. An image of the Viking XI flashed up on the screen, leading a short package about yesterday’s announcements. Sunny and I were in the background in a couple of the shots, which was a cheap thrill. When they cut back to the studio, I was surprised to see Environment Minister Jemima Carstairs sitting on the famous yellow couch, exactly where I had been sitting, chatting to Krishnan.
“She’s back in London already,” I said, then kicked myself under the table for starting a conversation. Can’t even stick to a plan for five minutes.
Sunny looked up at the television momentarily, then back at his tablet, where he was reading the papers.
“What page did you get?” he asked, cheerily.
“The spread on four and five,” I said, in clipped tones. TheSentinelhad splashed with reactions from the big oil and gas companies. This was no surprise. When every news organisation gets the same information, as happens at press conferences, it’s the reaction stories that provide the original content that gives readers a reason to buy a particular paper. Even if those reactions are the batshit crazy bile spewed by extremists who would quite happily watch the world burn if they can see how to make a quid out of it. People like theSentinel’s board and shareholders.
“I’m across six and seven,” he said. “They didn’t splash with it. That honour went to two of the Real Housewives of Tottenham Hotspur knocking seven bells out of each other in a car park outside a Chelmsford nightclub.”
To be honest, that did sound more interesting. I said nothing.
“We had the pictures,” Sunny added. He flicked through his tablet and held it out towards me, to show me the front page of the morning’sBulletin.
“FUR FLIES IN SPURS’ BABES BODEGA BRAWL.”
It was accompanied by a dark, grainy photograph of two stilettoed women, each tanned the colour of a desiccated satsuma, one wearing a faux fur bolero jacket, going at each other hammer and tongs like two heavily Botoxed ferrets. I half-heartedly smiled in acknowledgement. Something flashed in Sunny’s eyes, and I could tell he knew he’d messed up. He was wrong-footed and, I thought, nervous.
“Looks like a fairly solid right hook on the one whose knickers you can see,” he observed.
Mrs Gallacher put a bacon butty on the table in front of Sunny.
“Smashing, Mrs G,” he said.
“D’ye want brown sauce or the red shite?”
Sunny opted for the red, and she plonked the squeezy bottle on the table. Sunny put his tablet down, ready to get stuck in. He gave me another sideways glance. I pretended not to notice.
“You boys want anything else?” Mrs Gallacher asked.
We both shook our heads. I said, “No, thank you.”
“Fine, fine. If you’ll excuse me minute, then. Sing out if you need me.” She plucked the tea towel off her shoulder and flopped it onto the kitchen counter, then stepped out the kitchen door. A blast of cold air filled the room momentarily as our landlady disappeared outside. She pulled the door closed behind her and shuffled a few steps up the path. I could still see her clearly through the window. I had just taken another mouthful of breakfast when the unmistakable sound of a tremendous fart reverberated through the building. Sunny, mouth full of bacon butty, struggled not to choke for laughter. I swallowed my muesli, feeling faintly ill.
“That was a real window rattler,” I said, then kicked myself again. My strategy had, quite literally, gone with the wind. Sunny was hitting his chest, trying to dislodge something. He gulped down a mouthful of orange juice to help it slide down his gullet.
“Is it even safe to eat anything prepared in this kitchen?” he asked, croakily.
“Don’t be churlish,” I said. “Dysentery keeps you marvellously thin.” Sunny laughed, and I inwardly cursed myself. So much for distant and professional.
Chapter21
Sunny
The day was off to a weird start. Ludowasoff with me. He sat about as far away from me on the press bus as possible, chatting to Annabelle from the BBC. As the morning progressed, I got the sense he was actively avoiding me, but I needed to focus on the job in hand. The press pack was touring a factory where Shetland locals were employed building wave turbines. The machines, which looked a bit like propeller aeroplanes, were designed to sit in the choppy waters off Shetland, generating renewable energy using the tidal powers of the sea.
“It’s a world-first technology, designed and made right here in Britain,” Torsten Beaumont-Flattery said. This was interesting, but none of us were science and technology writers; we were political journalists. As we walked around the factory, following the company’s founder from point of interest to point of interest, I pulled Torsten aside for a quick word.
“I see Carstairs is back in London,” I said. “What’s the political announcement out of today going to be? I need to brief the newsroom ahead of morning conference.”
