“Noooo, I’m certainly not ready to fill Uncle Ben’s shoes. No, Wilhelmina Post is going to be theSentinel’s new theatre critic. She’ll be magnificent. I’m joiningStageas a junior reporter. It’s well-read and respected, but it’s also somewhere I can learn my craft. Earn my stripes. Work my way up.”
I kissed him, then. Firmly. Passionately.
“I’m so proud of you.” I slid down into the bed and pulled Ludo closer to me, our bodies pressed together under the covers.
“Is that what you call it?” Ludo said, squeezing me through my underpants. “In that case, I look forward to making you jolly proud indeed.” Then he kissed me. He kissed my lips, and my jaw, and my neck. He followed the line of my freckles across my shoulders, then pushed me onto my back and kissed his way across my chest to my hardening nipples. He kissed his way down the midline of my stomach, to the place where the freckles disappeared beneath the hair. His mass of black curls vanished beneath the bedclothes, and Ludo kept on kissing.
Chapter74
Ludo
“Stop here please, mate,” Sunny said. The cabby pulled over to the side of the road outside a row of mostly boarded-up shops. A splash of graffiti on a closed shop grille declared that “Derek Jones has warts on his knob.”
“Very public-spirited to let everyone know,” I said to Sunny, pointing.
“Welcome to the Wickwar Estate.” He winked and climbed out of the cab in search of a newspaper. We hadn’t passed a newsagent all morning. Karma and Leaf had dropped us off at their local train station, which was too small to have a shop, so we hadn’t seen theSentinelyet. By the time I’d paid the cabby, Sunny was coming out of the shop with three copies of the paper in his hands, head down, staring at the front page. He took a couple of steps, then stopped, his face swirling with emotions. He looked like a tough kid, in his hoodie and grey sweatpants, trying not to cry. Probably because that’s exactly what he was.
“Your firstSentinelbyline,” I said, wrapping my arm around his back and pulling him into me. I kissed him on the side of the face. “I’m sure it’ll be the first of many.”
“Not like this one. This one’s special.” He held the paper up so I could read it.
Under the headline were the words “By Sunny Miller and Ludo Boche.”
“One for the scrapbook, I reckon?” he said, finally looking up to meet my eyes. His smile was as broad as the British Midlands. My God, he was adorable. I went to kiss him, but he put a hand to my chest to stop me.
“Are you trying to get us stabbed?” he said. “You’re on the Wickwar now, mate.”
“You didn’t tell me I’d need my Kevlar vest, or I’d have come more prepared.”
Sunny looked at me, one eyebrow cocked.
“Prepared? Yeah, you’re a regular Boy Scout. You’re literally wearing a pair of my underpants right now.”
“Someone may as well wear them,” I said, theatrically sweeping a hand in the direction of Sunny’s dick print.
“Touché,” he said. He folded the papers in half and put them under his arm. “You ready to meet Hurricane Stacey?”
* * *
I confess, I’d had hopes of sneaking a peek at Sunny’s childhood bedroom. No such luck. We met his mum at the local food bank instead. She was busy when we arrived, a whirlwind of activity, so I got to see her in action for a few minutes. It was jolly impressive. A tight ginger ponytail bobbed around in her wake as she sent customers off with boxes of groceries, a lashing of banter, and a warm smile.
“What are you doing down here on a Friday, Mum?”
“I done a swap with?—”
“Wendy from number thirty-three?” Sunny said. “Does she ever actually turn up for her shift?”
“She’s taken Shirley down the ospiccle again. Only her leg has gone purple now, right up to her flaps. Wendy said the left lip’s swollen up to the size of a grapefruit. Reckons it looks like a Muppet eating its own face. Who’s this then?”
Sunny stood a little taller, which pleased me somehow, and took a breath—because someone had to, and it clearly wasn’t going to be Stacey—before introducing me.
“Mum, this is Ludo.”
“The one you come up here shouting and moaning about?” she said.
“Er—”
“And then spent two weeks moping about the house mooning over and stalking on social media between crywanks?”
