20 December 1965
Have just seen “Twang!!” Possibly the worst production ever to disgrace the West End. Writer apparently strung out on LSD throughout rehearsals. Director quit before opening night. Songs bore no relationship to the script. Musical director collapsed at interval and didn’t come back. House lights kept going up and down throughout the show. Couldhearthe cast and crew arguing backstage. Take every copy of the script, put them in a hessian sack, weigh it down with two bricks, and fling it into the Thames!
24 November 1991
We lost Freddie Mercury today. Just a day after his statement to the press confirming that he had tested HIV-positive and had AIDS. He said he had wanted everyone to know the truth, that he hoped everyone would join him, the doctors, and the gay community in the fight against this terrible disease. The world has lost a musical legend. When I think of his bravery, I cry. He spoke for all of us. His hopes are my hopes. Vale, Freddie.
Visited Michael in the hospital today. Sat with him for four hours until the nurses turfed me out. He’s in and out of consciousness and angers quickly when he’s awake. No sign of improvement. Put in a good word for him, will you please, Freddie. He’s a good man. He needs friends in high places right now.
One minute I was laughing, the next I was in floods of tears. There was enough here for a dozen books. I felt a pang of regret that Uncle Ben had never written a memoir of his remarkable life. It would have been a bestseller. I wondered why he never had.
My phone chimed with a notification. Mummy. It was eight o’clock, and she, Father, and Jonty were waiting around the corner at Le Gavroche. She wanted to know if I was still coming or whether they should order. I was just about to leave to join them when a thought struck me. I dug through the box and found one last diary, flicking through to the correct date.
28 August 1998
Welcome to the world, Ludovic Benjamin Barker-Boche. Your Uncle Ben already loves you very much. I held you in my arms today, fresh from the oven. A burbling mass of pudgy flesh, whisps of black hair caked to your head, and the bluest eyes God has ever seen fit to bless upon a little boy. You gripped my finger with your tiny hand and spoke directly to my heart. I am honoured that your wonderful parents, just children themselves, to my mind—whip smart but still feckless—asked me to be your godfather. A thousand times yes, my dear little soul.
I promise you this, Ludovic: every day for the rest of my life—which may not be long, I grant you, with the booze and smokes and bacchanalia—will be dedicated to making sure you want for nothing, so that your life may be even more blessed than mine. And my life has been truly blessed. May you know good health and happiness. May you know success. May you know love, dear boy. May you have the wisdom to see how rare true love is, the good judgement to recognise it when you find it, and the sense to hold on to it for dear life—and to fight for it when it’s slipping through your fingers. And may you know this: You can always rely on your Uncle Ben—whether you need a warm heart, a firm shoulder, or a wise head. I cannot wait to watch you grow up. My heart is full today—truly full—for the first time since we lost Michael.
I caught sight of myself in the wardrobe mirror. I was a blubbing mess. I washed my face, turned off the lights, and pulled the front door shut behind me. As I cut through Hyde Park to get to the restaurant, I knew one day I would use those diaries to write the story of Uncle Ben’s life, so everyone would know just how amazing he was, and how fully he lived.
Chapter67
Sunny
Spoiler alert: When I woke up at eight that morning, I did not message Ludo. Mostly because Summer pulled me into a wrinklies’ yoga class, where I was younger than the average age by at least fifty years and, embarrassingly, about ninety per cent less flexible. Are metal hips double-jointed or something? By the time I’d had breakfast, I just wanted to get back to my computer. I was changing strategy and tackling the layering from the bottom up rather than the top down. I went searching for information on Carstairs and her husband, Dirk Windhoek. An hour or two passed, but I’d discovered nothing. Then I remembered you could buy people’s internet histories and, on a whim, typed in the name of my old “friend” and confidant Vladimir Popov.
“Only twenty quid to see everything he’s ever googled?” I muttered to myself.
It was worth the splash of cash. A bargain. But I wasn’t quite prepared for what I found.
“Bloody hell. It’s the mother lode.”
I called through to the other room for Karma to come take a look at my computer. My heart was racing like a greyhound after a rabbit.
“Look at this. Popov’s internet history. It’s like a breadcrumb trail. The names of all the companies, the investors—it’s all here.”
She sat on the edge of the chair, reading glasses low on her nose, scanning the screen. As I reread it along with her, I realised Popov had been using me as a part of this scheme. I was nothing more than a useful stooge. I had been to VladPop what Torsten was to Carstairs. But where she’d used Torsten to find out information, VladPop had used me to disseminate it in the press. I felt like a proper mug. And I wanted nothing more than to take the bastard down.
“How could he be so indiscreet?” Karma asked.
“I reckon he was looking for dirt on the others, in case it all went tits up.”
Karma smiled, her face as happy as the one on the buddha I’d been using as a paperweight.
“This is our Rosetta Stone,” she said. “You’ve found the key to the entire paper trail.”
She threw her arms around me in a rib-cracking hug, her flip-flopped feet stamping up and down in excitement.
“You clever,cleverboy!”
I laughed. A full-bellied, full-throated, uncontrollable laugh. The kind of laugh they make incontinence commercials about. Karma laughed, too, and I feared I might now actually beinan incontinence commercial. She sank back into her office chair.
“We’ve got them,” she said. “We’ve got the lot of them.”
“I need to cross-reference everything, and I have a few more searches to do now to tie it all up in a neat bow. The question is, then what do we do with the information?”
“You’re the journalist, Sunny. You tell me.”
