“Brain fade in press conferences is really common. It’s a good idea to write a few questions down on your notepad before things get started, so you always have a prompt.”
Sunny had just mansplained press conferences to a fifth-generation journalist.
“It wasn’t brain fade. I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep very well.”
In fact, I was starting to feel quite light-headed. Over Sunny’s shoulder I could see the other journos spreading out over the hilltop, phones clasped to their ears, calling the information back to their newsrooms. I should have been doing the same.
“That’s my fault,” Sunny said. He had no idea how right he was. “Too many late nights watching movies. I’m sorry.” He also had no idea how wrong he was. I smiled faintly. Sunny said he had to call the newsroom and turned and walked away. I looked down at my phone.
“You’re still coming to the pub tonight, though, right?” Sunny called out. He was standing about three metres from me, one foot balanced on a boulder like an idealised Victorian image of British masculinity and derring-do. “It’s our last night. You don’t want to miss it. You can sleep on the plane.”
I nodded, just to be polite. Sunny smiled and gave two thumbs up, then turned to keep walking along the rocky hilltop. I returned to my phone and named the saved audio file “Saint Fabulous of Lasisi.” I glanced up at the giant turbine above me. The majestic blades spun gracefully, swinging around and around effortlessly, like Margot Fonteyn’s pirouettes inSwan Lake. My eyes landed on the tip of one blade, following it around as it carved a circle in the air. I felt dizzy. I switched my focus to the horizon to steady myself, took two steps, tripped on a rock, and fell to the ground.
Chapter23
Ludo
When I came to, I was lying in the damp grass. I had a thumping headache. There were two blurry figures above me—one with hair that danced and blazed like flames in a hearth, the other with a broad brown face and an aura as gold as the sun.
“Am I dead?” I asked. “Are you Jesus?”
“He’s well enough to make jokes, then,” Sunny said.
“He’s well enough to blaspheme,” added Bimpe Lasisi. “That’s a fine thing, after the Lord saw fit to save your ungrateful white arse.”
Someone called for the minister, and Lasisi hollered back that she was on her way. Her voice boomed across the hilltops with all the authority and lung capacity of someone who’d run a successful comprehensive school in one of London’s most deprived areas for two decades before going into politics. I feared I might be permanently deaf in my right ear.
“Praise be to Jesus, you’re OK,” she said, then made her excuses and disappeared to have her photo taken.
Sunny was crouching over me, his hands firmly pressed into my hip and shoulder. He was still blurry, and I couldn’t bring him into focus. I raised an arm to check for my glasses, correctly diagnosing that I was not, in fact, wearing them.
“Don’t move,” Sunny said. “You’ve had a fall, and you’ve whacked your noggin. Your glasses copped it, I’m afraid.” I pulled my hand away from my face to find blood on my fingertips. “You did a proper job of it, Ludo Ben,” Sunny said.
No one had ever called me that before. I smiled, through the wooziness, at the blur of him, grateful for his kindness.
“Is it bad?” I asked.
“Not too bad. It’ll bruise. You might have a black eye for a few days. What happened?”
I tried to get up to rest on one arm, but Sunny told me to stay where I was.
“Torsten’s gone for the first aid kit. He won’t be a minute. Let’s get you patched up first.”
“Do you think if I pretended I’d broken my leg, Torsten would pick me up and carry me to the bus?”
“Starting to feel better already, then?”
“Sorry, that’s so ungrateful,” I said. “You’ve come to my rescue like a knight in shining armour, and here am I, the damsel in distress, tipping my hat at the nearest meaty squire.”
“Mate, if I thought there was a chance of Torsten throwing one of us over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, I wouldn’t be sitting here looking after you, I’d have flung you over the cliff, and I’d be trying to snap my own femur between two boulders.”
I laughed. It hurt. A gigantic blur came into view, which I took to be Torsten. It was. He wiped my face with cotton pads, mopping up the blood and applying antiseptic. He was so gentle it was almost erotic.
“It’s not too bad,” Torsten said, speaking with the authority of a man who’d patched up many faces on the sidelines of rugby matches over many years. “You won’t need stitches. Just a butterfly plaster. I’ve seen a lot worse.”
He applied the aforementioned butterfly plaster. His enormous fingers, as meaty as the rest of him, were as tender as if he were handling an actual butterfly. Honestly, this man. If I had ovaries, they’d be singing entreaties to him like the sirens sang to Odysseus—and strapping himself to a mast wouldnotbe enough to save him.
“All done,” he said. “You’ll be fine now. Just mind out for concussion. We don’t want a repeat of the school play, do we?”
