Sunny and I showered together in the tiny summer house en suite, almost until the water ran cold. I turned the big light on so we could find our clothes and get dressed. The room was a disaster zone of shredded papers, dirty plates, and strewn clothes. Sunny packed his laptop into his rucksack, making sure he had his USB stick with the copies of the primary evidence. As we left, I looked around at the mess. I wasn’t sure I could face coming back to clean this up. I turned off the big light, leaving the room illuminated in the soft blue light of my laptop screen.
Chapter52
Sunny
Iwoke to the sound of bus air brakes outside my bedroom window. My arm was dead. I tried to carefully slip it out from under Ludo’s neck without waking him, but the arm really wasn’t cooperating. He looked so cute, with his hair all mussed-up and dried dribble in the corner of his mouth. As I extricated myself from under him, he stirred.
“What time is it?” he said, without opening his eyes.
My alarm went off. It was a quarter past six. I yanked myself free and tried to reach for my phone, but I had no control of my arm anymore. I had to bounce onto my other side and grab it with the wrong hand.
“I think you’ve killed my arm,” I said, turning off the alarm. I opened the BBC app and put on theTodayprogramme.
“Rise and shine, sleepyhead. We’ve got a big day,” I said, kissing Ludo on the forehead.
“Five more minutes.”
“OK, mister. I’m going to go shower before my flatmates steal all the hot water. You sleep. I’ll be ten minutes.”
He reached out a hand and pulled me down to him. I kissed him on the lips, crusty saliva and all. I ran my fingers through the knots of this hair, tucking his unruly curls behind his ear. Then I got up, pulled on some sweatpants, and went to the bathroom.
* * *
Less than fifteen minutes later, freshly showered and feeling far more alive than I had in forever, I opened my bedroom door expecting to find Ludo still fast asleep. He was gone. His pile of clothes was gone; his phone and glasses were gone. The bed was still unmade. I touched it. It was still warm from his body. Perhaps he was downstairs making coffee? From my phone, the lilting voice of Lucy Veeraswamy announced the news headlines.
“It is being reported the government has done a secret deal with renewable energy firm ZephEnergies to build and operate the proposed nuclear power plant at Newton Bardon in Leicestershire.”
What. The. Hell.
“The government had previously said that any proposals for major energy investments would have to go before the new National Investment Committee, but reporting by theSentinelclaims the Leicestershire plant has secretly been given the go-ahead already.”
WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. HELL.
A deep, angry bellow growled out from the pits of my gut. I tried to call Ludo. He didn’t pick up. I threw my phone onto the mattress so hard it bounced off the bed into the wall, cracking the screen. Every doubt I’d ever had about Ludo rushed from the deep recesses of my brain and flooded my body. I fell to my knees. My hands formed fists. I punched the mattress. I punched it, and I punched it, and I punched it. Then I beat the crap out of it with my pillow. When I finally stopped, I was shaking. Still on my knees, the towel fallen from my waist onto the floor, I looked at myself in the mirror. My face was red, my cheeks flooded with tears, my eyes puffy and bloodshot. Snot was streaming from my nose.
“Why did you think you could trust him?” I asked the naked, disfigured creature in the mirror. “This is what you get for breaking the rules. This is what you get for jumping into bed with the likes of Ludo Boche.” I spat the words out with scorn. “You’re a stupid bloody bellend, Sunshine. And you only have yourself to blame.”
I had never been so angry in my life. I had never felt so betrayed in all my life. I had never felt hate quite like the hate I felt in that moment for Ludo Boche. The deceit. The back-stabbing. The cynicism. The contempt. The sheer piss-taking cowardice of running away. I shouldn’t have been surprised. His sort never stuck around to face the music. What a prick.
Chapter53
Ludo
It was the longest taxi ride of my life. I had run out of Sunny’s flat still pulling on my jersey, arm outstretched, trying to flag down just about any vehicle that might conceivably offer me a lift to the hospital. Except a bus. I did not have time for a bus. Mummy had called about thirty seconds after Sunny had gone for his shower. I knew by the tremor in her voice as she said my name that the news was bad.
“It’s your Uncle Ben, sweetheart.” The words would haunt me until the day I died. “We’re at the hospital. You need to come quickly. There isn’t much time.”
* * *
I ran through the corridors of the hospital, trying to follow the instructions Mummy had given me on the phone and asking absolutely anyone in a uniform for directions to Ward D. Completely out of breath, I rounded the corner into the private room to see Uncle Ben unconscious on the bed, surrounded by my mother, my father, and Jonty. Mummy and Jonty had been crying. Their faces were sunken, the colour drained out of them.
“How is he?” I asked, approaching the bed. It was eerily quiet. “Where are all the doctors? The monitors?”
Mummy stood, opened her arms, and flung them around me. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d hugged me.
“I’m sorry, my darling,” she said. “He left us a few minutes ago.”
My legs gave way. The only thing keeping me from the floor was my mother’s arms. I was a dead weight. She let me slump to the hospital linoleum. I heard a blood-curdling noise and realised it was coming out of my body. I was making it, and I had no way of stopping it.
