Torsten put out a hand and helped me to my feet. My head throbbed with the altitude change.
“Do you need a hand getting back to the bus?” he asked.
“I’ve got him,” Sunny said. To my surprise, Sunny grabbed my arm and put it around his shoulder; then he wrapped his other arm around my waist. “You go deal with that lot.” Sunny nodded towards the rest of the press pack, scattered over the blurry hill like blurry sheep.
* * *
“You cock-blocked me just now, Miller,” I said, when we were sitting on the bus. “I was as good as wrapped up like a baby in Torsten’s arms, and you ripped me out of them, like a nun at an orphanage gate. It’s not on.”
Sunny laughed. My head was still thumping. Being distant and professional, I saw, was no longer an option. Sunny Miller was now my designated nursemaid—and as it turns out, he was good at it. He was being jolly kind, and it sort of made me regret giving him the cold shoulder all day.
“So, you two went to school together?” he asked.
“We did.” I could see Sunny doing the maths in his head, although I wasn’t sure exactly what calculation he was making.
“Here you go,” he said, passing me my glasses. He’d stuck the broken arm back on with sticking plasters from the first aid kit. When I put them on, Sunny’s face came into focus, the white and copper blob of him suddenly a high-definition Technicolor wonder of features and freckles. His brow was furrowed.
“So, what happened at the school play?”
“Bit of bad luck, that’s all,” I explained. “We didLes Misérables. I was Monsieur Thénardier, the landlord. Torsten was my understudy, as it happens.”
“I can’t really see Torsten in a musical, somehow. Unless there’s anIncredible Hulkmusical I don’t know about?”
“Do you want to know what happened or not?”
“I do.”
“Do you know the bit at the end of ‘Master of the House’ when the landlord’s wife, Madame Thénardier, hits her husband over the head with a bottle?”
“Please don’t tell me she hit you with a real bottle.”
“Golly no! That could have killed me. No, I was so into the part that when she hit me with the sugar bottle and I pretended to collapse, I banged my head on the table and knocked myself out cold. They had to carry me off stage.”
“That’s awful.”
“That’s not even the bit Torsten was referring to. When I went back on for my next scene, I was so confused from the concussion that I delivered all my lines in French.”
“Bollocks, you never!” Sunny said, cackling with laughter. “You’re having me on.”
“It gets worse. Confused and completely lost as to where we were in the script, I panicked and sang the ‘Elephant Love Medley.’ Rather well, as it happens, so I was told afterwards. The trouble is, the medley is from Baz Luhrmann’sMoulin Rouge, notLes Misérables.”
Sunny was bent over with laughter, slapping his thigh.
“The rest of the cast was so startled they didn’t know what to do to get the show back on track, so they let me go on until I’d finished the song. They sent Torsten on to play Monsieur Thénardier for the rest of the show. Except he hadn’t bothered to learn his lines, and the only part of the costume that fit him was the hat. So, he went onstage in his dress rugby uniform, with his script in hand, and mechanically read out the lines, like a schoolboy doing a very problematic impersonation of Stephen Hawking.”
“OK, that definitely did not go the way I expected.”
“It didn’t go the way anyone expected. When I saw Uncle Ben in the car park after the show, he said it was ‘an avant-garde triumph’ and the production was immeasurably better for the changes. Five stars, he reckoned.”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Sunny said, still giggling. He dabbed a bit of bandage at my forehead. A sharp pain stabbed through my skull, and I winced. “Sorry, does it hurt? We’ll take you to the doctor when we get back into town and get you some painkillers.” As Sunny’s bright peridot eyes met mine, I could have sworn I saw genuine concern in his expression.
“You’re going to look a right mess at karaoke tonight,” he said.
“Karaoke?”
“At the pub. It’s our final night activity. You can’t get out of it now that I know about your singing talents. Will you sing ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir’ for me?”
I looked at Sunny, bewildered.Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir, as anyMoulin Rougefan knows, means “Do you want to sleep with me tonight?” Although the song is called “Lady Marmalade,” which I was surprised Sunny didn’t know. Unless that was deliberate? He was staring back at me, eyes twinkling, cheeky grin on his cocky freckled face. Had I just been propositioned by my nurse? During my convalescence? Where had this confidence come from? Then it clicked.
