My jaw swung open like a creaky gate.
“Who told you that?”
Rafiq winked, chuffing out vapour like a kettle.
“Good on you, fam,” he said.
“You don’t think it’s a bad idea?” I asked, relieved to have someone to talk to about it. “We only kissed once, but we’ve been flirty messaging ever since, and I’ve said yes to a date on Saturday.”
“Why would that be a bad idea, bruv?”
“Because, well, the only thing we have in common is what we do for a job, and that’s, like, a big reason why we shouldn’t be doing this at all.”
“Is it, bruv?”
“Don’t you think? I mean, I can’t imagine taking him home to meet me mum.”
“Have more faith in your old lady,” Rafiq said. “And in Ludo, for that matter. But what’s the hurry, bruv? You in’t getting hitched just yet. Calm your tits. You in’t had your date yet.”
He had a point.
“So, you think going on a date is OK?”
“Gotta shoot your shot, fam.” Those were the same words he’d used at karaoke. His smile was broad and toothy. There was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. I realised I’d been played.
“No one told you I’d kissed Ludo at all, did they,” I said. “You just guessed.”
Rafiq shrugged, winked at me for the second time in a minute, and sucked back on his vape. I’d just been schooled in grubby tabloid interview techniques by a reporter from theGuardian. How embarrassing.
* * *
On Wednesday, I was back at the Houses of Parliament bureau and, for my sins, covering PMQs. As the new cabinet jostled and jockeyed for the best position on the front bench (a competition won by Bimpe Lasisi, who sat there like the mother of the bride at a wedding), someone slid, very gently, onto the seat beside me. I didn’t need to look up to see who it was. The smell of warm linen made my heart skip. Ludo playfully nudged his shoulder into mine. I gently nudged him back.
“Did I do it right this time?”
“You mean by not launching my phone into the chamber and nearly killing an MP? You’ll be a pro in no time.”
As the pantomime played out in the chamber below, from our perch high above it all, Ludo and I scribbled into our notepads. There was real spirit in the House. A government energised by change but uncertain in its new skin, and an opposition that tasted blood in the water. The prime minister bellowed and decried. Lasisi waved her arms in the air like a Pentecostal minister. The opposition leader shook her head and shouted across the dispatch box. Carstairs waved her order papers in her perfectly manicured hands and cried “Shame!” There was a riot down below, but up in the rafters, among the bat droppings and dead Hansard reporters, sat two journalists from different newspapers who were calmly going about their craft, letting their knees touch under the table.
Chapter34
Ludo
Throughout the week, Sunny and I kept finding excuses to bump into each other. Texting to check if we were going to a particular parliamentary debate, grabbing coffee together over at Portcullis House, sharing a cab to a press conference in Hackney. We snatched moments, kissing in corridors when the coast was clear, eating our lunch together on a bench in Saint James’s Park, sitting by each other in committee meetings and debates. Then, at night, endlessly texting and calling. It was all rather lovely. There was just one rule.
“We can’t ask each other about, or talk about, anything we’re working on,” Sunny said. “We have to keep our personal and professional lives totally separate, or it’ll get messy very quickly.”
“I don’t want it to get messy,” I said.
“Me neither.”
I had taken Friday afternoon off to get my glasses fixed and to visit Uncle Ben in the hospital. Before I left the bureau for the day, Sunny met me in our stairwell for a quick kiss goodbye.
“See you at Maxime’s tomorrow night,” I said.
“I’m looking forward to it. The hazel dormouse will not go extinct on our watch.”
“I think Mother and Father might be there.”
