“It means I better go find a mop and a bucket before someone kills themselves on these stairs,” Sunny said. “And it means next time, I’ll bring three coffees. Just to be safe.”
“I meanthis, Sunny. What doesthismean?”
I could see him pulling away, both physically and emotionally. I felt my heart sink, fearing the worst—that this was a one-off moment, a mistake, a test, perhaps. Something to brush away and forget. Sunny must have read my thoughts on my face. He stepped back from our embrace, but I grabbed his hands in mine.
“Don’t overthink it,” Sunny said. “You’ve got a lot on your plate right now. We don’t have to name whatever this is just yet.”
But my mind was racing, needing to put a pin in this moment, to label it, to define what it was. I couldn’t just leave it there. I needed something to hold on to, something that confirmed this wasn’t a one-off, that this mattered.
“Are you free Saturday night?” I said, in a flash of inspiration.
“Can be.”
“Do you want to come to a thing with me? It’s one of Jonty’s fundraisers. The people will be unbearable bores who’ll probably get massively on your wick, but it’s for the Hazel Dormouse Protection Trust, you see, and they’re?—”
“An endangered species? Yes, I think you might have mentioned it once.”
“Will you come?”
Sunny beamed.
“I’d love to come,” he said, and I felt instant relief.
Then he leant in and kissed me again.
Chapter33
Sunny
It was Tuesday morning, and I was standing outside No. 10 Downing Street in the cool spring air, press pass andBulletinID card swinging around my neck, surrounded by TV cameras and the wider Westminster media scrum. We were all waiting for the knobber inside to sort out his cabinet reshuffle. Reshuffles are drawn-out days with long interludes where nothing happens, which gives you plenty of thinking time. And I was thinking about Ludo Boche.
We were in new and sketchy territory. I had broken the golden rule and got myself involved with another journalist. I had crossed the Rubik’s cube, and there was no going back. (For the record, I know the expression is “cross the Rubicon” but my nanna always used to say Rubik’s cube, and using her old malapropisms makes me feel like she’s still around.)
Although I hadwantedto kiss him, I had notintendedto kiss Ludo. It had just sort of happened. He was so adorably flustered, and there he was, with his bruised face and his glasses still held together with Band-Aids, and, well, his two modes are absolute joy and absolute chaos, and I guess I thought if I kissed him, it might help flick the switch back from chaos to joy. It had worked. But it had flicked a switch inside me too. And if I hadn’t been able to get Ludo out of my mind before, now I could barely think about anything else.
For whatever reason, Ludo hadn’t been posted outside Downing Street. TheSentinelhad sent Ford Goodall, thank goodness, or I might have struggled to get any work done at all. Reshuffles might be long days, but they are also quite good fun. Politicians go through the famous black doorway to learn their fate, faces either stubbornly blank or a rictus, walking like they’ve forgotten how to walk, and come out again either looking smugly self-satisfied or quietly seething.
When the cabinet appointments eventually began, the big winner was Bimpe Lasisi. She went through the door an education minister and came out as home secretary.
“I thank my Lord Jesus for giving me this opportunity to serve,” she said as she walked down Downing Street, dressed for church, to her waiting car. Rafiq Farouq nudged me in the ribs. He leant over to whisper in my ear, so his comments wouldn’t get picked up by the TV microphones.
“Bruv, she thanked Jesus,” he said. “Who she think live in that building, you know what I’m sayin?”
The next to go in was Jemima Carstairs, who entered No. 10 as environment secretary and left as both environment secretaryandenergy secretary. The PM was creating a new mega-department to drive delivery of the UK’s net zero commitments. Vladimir Popov was to remain chief whip. He walked into No. 10 looking like the Terminator, face betraying nothing, and walked out of No. 10 looking like the Terminator, face betraying nothing.
TheBulletinbeing theBulletin, I had an additional responsibility on days like this. It was the other reason I was glad Ludo wasn’t there. When the more notorious, scandal-prone or underperforming ministers came out from their meeting with the prime minister—puffy-eyed or with a face like thunder, at the lowest point of their political careers—it was my job to shout something devastating at them, and to do so loud enough for all the TV cameras to pick up, in the hopes of getting a reaction.
“Did calling the leader of the opposition a MILF cost you your job, Mr Cocksgrew? Is it true you thought ‘hot mic’ was an OnlyFans channel?”
“Do you regret spending taxpayers’ dollars paying illegal immigrants to power-wash your stables, Lord Busted-Flush? Did the PM sack you today, or did he hose you out with the Kärcher?”
“Is it true you were fired for drinking the PM’s wine fridge dry, Mrs Tipple? What’s that tucked under your arm? Is that a nice bottle of Pinot Noir? Does the PM know you’ve got that, Mrs Tipple?”
It’s not an honourable way to make a living, but the best ones always get cut up and used by LBC Radio, Channel Three, andPrivate Eye. Sometimes, if you hit the right note, the BBC might even use one. It’s a cheap thrill, but it is exactly the kind of behaviour that makes the public, not to mention politicians, despise reporters. If I’m honest, I really enjoy it. It’s a chance to tell the politicians what the people really think of them, to hold them to account for poor behaviour and remind them that power is briefly held and shouldn’t be taken for granted.
When it was all over, I leant against the railings next to Rafiq, who was sucking on a vape.
“I heard you been lipsing Ludo Boche.”
