Chapter27
Sunny
On Friday morning I found myself in Vladimir Popov’s constituency office. It was a full-on contrast to his Westminster office, with its stuffed ferrets and strong whiff of empire. His Islington bolthole was painted crisp white, with modern furniture, big windows, and one of those enormous Swiss cheese plants that people went apeshit for during the pandemic. Like Westminster, everything in here was immaculately clean. Like Westminster, it smelt of spices, expensive hair product, and that very particular brand of testosterone you get off entitled rich pricks. I had been shown into VladPop’s office by Mandy, his assistant, and was sitting in the naughty chair, waiting for the man himself to appear.
“He won’t be a minute,” Mandy said, popping her head around the door from the reception area. “He’s just texted to say he’s been held up in Sainsbury’s.”
“Holy crap!”
“Delayed, I should say,” she added. “Chatting to constituents. It happens a lot.”
She probably meant he was chatting to Lord Sainsbury himself, rather than popping into the supermarket to pick up an egg-and-cress sandwich and a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps.
“Cuppa tea?”
“Yes, please,” I said.
“Bag left in?”
How badly had my accent slipped? Did I soundnorthern? Still, good guess, Mandy. “Please,” I said.
She disappeared up the corridor, leaving me alone in VladPop’s office. I leant forward in my seat, sneaking a look at what was in his in tray. A couple of crisp manila folders filled with papers. Probably constituent files. But what if they were the chief whip’s famous dirt files? This file might contain the mother lode ofBulletinfront pages.
From up the corridor I could hear the static white noise of a kettle element heating up water and the clatter of mugs and spoons. I craned my neck to look around the doorway. No one was about. I reached over and gently lifted the corner of the topmost folder with the tip of my pen. I could see the purple logo of a company I’d never heard of before, ZephEnergies Limited. On one level, this didn’t surprise me. Companies write to members of parliament all the time, and given we’d just had a week of energy policy announcements, there was bound to be a flush of letter-writing activity. On another level, VladPop was the chief whip, not the energy minister, and it seemed unlikely that an energy company planned to build a wind farm or a hydroelectric scheme in his Inner London constituency.
I was curious to know what the letter said. I looked around again to check the coast was clear, then lifted the folder open a little more with my pen. As I stood to get a better view, I heard the front door swing open, and panic gripped me. A gust of cool air filled the building, sending papers flying—including the ZephEnergies letter, which swirled down onto the floor behind VladPop’s desk.
“Bloody hell!” the chief whip called out from the entranceway. “Mandy!”
I was in deep trouble if I got caught like this. VladPop would nail me to the door and use my dick as a coat hook. But what to do? The letter could not be safely retrieved. I stared at the piece of paper that had been sitting underneath the ZephEnergies letter, as if it might come up with a plan. It did not. The words “Prometheus Ltd” stared back up at me from the page, laughing at the scrape I’d got myself into. Time slowed down. From the reception I could hear the usually unflappable chief whip, cursing and stomping about, probably picking up scattered papers. That was it! Blame the wind. It wasn’t even a lie. I let the manila folder gently fall closed, sat back down in the chair, and waited for the chief whip to make his entrance.
A moment later, Vladimir Popov appeared in the doorway, arms wide, briefcase in hand.
“Sunshine Augustus Miller!” he said, as if that wasn’t creepy. He popped his case down on his desk. “Come on, bring it in.” Was the chief whip about to hug me? I stood. His arms wrapped around me, slapping my back; then his enormous hands grabbed and shook me by the biceps. He gave an alarmingly toothy smile.
“We. Have.Business,” he said, stretching the words out like he had just ordered a round of margaritas and was ready to gossip with his girlfriends. He released me, walked around the back of his desk, noticed the letter on the floor, picked it up, popped it in the folder, and sat down into his chair.
“But first, I want to hear all about Shetland.The kettle is on, as you young people say.”
He’d lost me.
“I’mnotsure we do say that,” I said. “I’ve never heard anyone say that.”
“Of course you have! All the gays say it. ‘The kettle is on. Let’s make the tea.’”
It clicked.
“Spill the tea,” I said. “The saying is ‘spill the tea.’ No one puts the kettle on.”
“But then how do you make the tea?”
I was saved by Mandy, who walked in with the actual tea. She put it down on a coaster on the end of VladPop’s desk. I thanked her, and she exited the room, closing the door behind her.
“So, tell me, tell me,tell me! Did you hook up with Ludo?”
By this point it was clear I had entered a parallel dimension where professional standards and boundaries did not exist. They don’t exist at Westminster in ourowndimension, but this was some next-level intrusion.
“No, I did not.”
