“I know,” I said. “Are you worried about us going head to head?—”
“I don’t need to know that kind of detail, Ludo. What you do in the privacy of the summer house is your own business.”
“Father! I mean us covering politics. Competing for the same stories.”
“Your mother and I did it. Plenty of couples have done it. Some political reporters are sleeping with members of the cabinet. They manage it.”
I was not entirely comfortable with this conversation. Normally I appreciated my father taking an interest in my life, but the caveat to that, I now realised, was—not my love life.
That’s when Father said the big, awful thing.
“Should I offer him a job?”
I stared at him while I processed what he’d just said. The silence dragged on, and Father felt the need to fill it.
“He’s extremely talented. He has a bright future ahead of him. He could be genuinely outstanding if the right people took him under their wing?—”
“No,” I said. It came out more firmly than I had intended. I apologised. “Sorry, I just don’t think that’s a good idea.” Father looked at me, eyebrows raised in anticipation of further explanation. “If he joins theSentineland it all goes tits up, I’ll still have to work with him every day. I don’t think I could stand it.”
“Fair enough,” Father said. “But I’m telling you now, Ludo, I’ve got my eyes on that young fellow. If he ever suggests he wants to move to the respectable end of Fleet Street, you let me know. I won’t miss out on one of the most promising young reporters of your generation, just to spare your blushes.”
It’s a bit of a gut punch to hear your father openly put work before his own son. In the past, Father prioritising work over me had come in the form of missed ballet recitals and skipped parents’ evenings at Petersham College. They were heartaches at the time, but I could take it. Those parts of my heart had formed calluses. This was the first time my heart itself was a pawn in my father’s plans.
The taxi sailed through the lights at King’s Cross Station and turned down Farringdon Road towards the Smithfield meat markets. It seemed fitting, given my morning’s high had just been butchered like a side of old mutton.
Chapter40
Sunny
Wednesday morning, I was sitting in a dreary coffee shop on the wrong side of London Bridge, with the smiling faces of Leaf and Karma waving good morning to me from my computer screen. They sat in a room of honey-coloured pine walls, light streaming in through a large window, with the Derbyshire forest behind them. It was a stark contrast to the dank café, which I’d only popped into so no one at work knew I was making this call. It smelt of burnt coffee and soggy ham and cheese toasties.
“Summer, come and meet Sunny,” Karma said, beckoning someone off-screen towards the webcam. A fit blonde appeared. She was probably in her mid-twenties, with the kind of clear skin and clear eyes that only a Spartan-like commitment to training, clean eating, and rude good health can generate. She had probably never consumed anything containing an E-number in her entire life. I self-consciously covered the angry-looking spot on my chin. Summer smiled, and her whole face lit up.
“This is our daughter, Summer,” Karma said. “She’s a massage therapist, acupuncturist, and reiki healer.”
We swapped hellos; then Summer bobbed off to go charge someone £100 to either touch them, push needles into them, ornottouch them. (Reiki is essentially just being in a room with someone, hovering your hands a few inches above their body. Which is why you never meet anyone on GayHoller who says, “Wanna come over for some reiki?”)
“What have you managed to find?” I asked, when I finally had Karma all on my own.
“I’ve got a few documents for you.” She popped on a pair of reading glasses.
I was, quite literally, on the edge of my seat. Partly so I didn’t sit on chewing gum. Karma shared her screen, which must have been the first time anyone in human history has successfully achieved that technological feat without ten minutes of faffing about first. A document flashed up with the ZephEnergies logo I recognised from the letter in Vladimir Popov’s office.
“These are purchase orders,” Karma said. I read them on the screen. “This one is for £96,750 for fencing supplies. Cyclone fencing, plain wire, poles, ready-mixed concrete, it’s all here. From a company called Thowden’s.”
“I know them,” I said. “They’re a big construction-and-hardware-type company. They’ve got stores all over the Midlands.”
“This is the trade side of their business, not the retail,” Karma said. “But why is ZephEnergies putting in a massive order for cyclone fencing with Thowden’s?”
“Could be anything,” I said, erring on the side of caution. “They could be building a wind farm somewhere nearby.”
“I thought that too,” Karma said. “Wait until you see this.”
Over the next twenty minutes, Karma showed me documents that clearly indicated ZephEnergies had bought and installed fencing around the Newton Bardon site. The paper trail included delivery addresses, quotes from fencing contractors for installation, and—the real icing on the Party Ring—photographs Leaf had taken of the fence going up.
“Why would ZephEnergies be paying hundreds of thousands of pounds to fence off a massive greenfield site at Newton Bardon, a site we already know was earmarked for the nuclear power plant, if they’d not been given the nod that the contract was theirs already?” I asked.
“You can see why we’re convinced it’s a done deal,” Karma said. “As I say, we can get more documents, but they cost a lot of money.”
