“My boy. Sunny.”
I shoved a balled-up plastic bag in my mouth to muffle my laughter and peered through the shelves to watch the scene at the counter play out.
“The poofy one?”
“We don’t call them that anymore, Shirl.”
“Right you are. The bender, then?”
Mum sighed. She was giving up. “That’s the one. He’s come home to me, Shirl.”
“Boyfriend dumped him, did he?”
Jesus Christ, Shirl. Be gentle with my heart, will you? A twist of pain pierced my chest as I thought of Ludo, what the back-stabbing bastard had done, and my own stupidity in telling JT the truth about what had happened.
“You wanna be careful, Shirl. Sunny’s packing your box for you. Play nice, or he’ll give you the peach-flavoured yogurts.” Mum turned to find me hiding behind the shelf with my lips stretched around a crumpled blue plastic bag. I froze. She glared at me. I tried to smile, but there was too much plastic in my mouth. I spat it to the floor. Mum rolled her eyes. “Get Shirley’s box, will you, Sunny?” she said. I grabbed Shirley’s box and walked around to the front counter.
“Orright, Shirl?” I said. “Shall I put this in the car for you?” Shirley definitely did not have a car. She barely had teeth.
“Still not wearing underpants then?” she said.
“Touché. How’s young Geordie?”
“Up before the parole board next week. We’re very hopeful.”
“That’s good news for the neighbourhood, then.”
“Cheeky sod.”
“You want me to carry this home for you?” I said, tapping the box with my thumb.
“Yes please, love.”
Chapter62
Ludo
The lawyer, Sarah, had said it could be months before I got the keys to Uncle Ben’s flat. The joke was on her. I’d had keys to Connaught Square for years, letting myself in and out as I pleased. It was different being here now, though, surrounded by Uncle Ben’s things. The smell of his tobacco clinging to the wallpaper and upholstery. The dent in the seat of his favourite armchair. The tumbler of whisky, half-drunk, on the occasional table beside it.
At some point, I was going to have to sort through all this stuff. Not now, though. For now, I just wanted to sit in the happy little bolthole Uncle Ben had created for himself, his retreat from the rest of the world, a little velvet-and-gold-braid-adorned sanctuary. It always felt part palace, part theatre. No one decorated like this anymore. Except the King, possibly, but he had an excuse.
I sank into the chesterfield armchair, pulled out my phone, and composed yet another message to Sunny. He hadn’t replied to a single one of them so far. Not the dozens of messages where I explained what Father had done, when I had begged him to speak to me, explained that I hadn’t stabbed him in the back. Though he had sent flowers to the house when he’d heard about Uncle Ben, the card was addressed to the whole family, and he had not replied to my messages of grief at all. The ones where I had been crying so hard I could barely type, wanting nothing more than to hear his voice, to have his arms around me, to feel his comfort. Nor the ones where, all cried out, I had poured my heart out about the unfairness of life, the emptiness in my heart, the desolation I felt at losing both my godfather and my boyfriend in the same day. He had not replied when I had messaged him about being sacked by theBulletin, nor when I asked whether he wanted me to get Father to give him a job, nor when I asked if he was coming back to London. The message was loud and clear.
I sat in Uncle Ben’s chair and typed out my last-ever message to Sunny Miller. I had done a lot of thinking in the weeks since Uncle Ben’s death. It was time for the curtain to come down on this part of my life. I just needed to tie up a few loose ends, starting with Sunny. I opted for text rather than GayHoller because, you know, standards. I did, however, check GayHoller to see if Sunny was actively using it because, you know, I liked tofeelmy heartbreak. He wasn’t online. But he was still a hundred miles away and therefore, probably, still in Leicester.
I finished my message and hit send without reading it back through. It was like ripping off a Band-Aid. I put my phone down on the arm of the chair, stood, walked to the drinks cabinet, and poured myself a whisky. I drifted over to Uncle Ben’s armchair and clinked my glass against his, against the glass he’d been drinking from the night before he died.
“That’s one big job done,” I told the ghost of him. “Just Father to do next. He might be a bit tougher, mind you. Father’s likely to reply.”
I threw the whisky down the back of my throat and swallowed, like I’d seen people do in the movies, like Paul Newman inCat on a Hot Tin Roof. The air left my lungs, replaced by the burning heat of rocket fuel.
“Christ! Who makes this stuff, NASA?”
I coughed and coughed and coughed.
Chapter63
Sunny
