“I’d have been disappointed if she hadn’t,” said Olivia .“How about this? We’ll set up the interview with Sally, which we can do in a room here. You could give a statement outside your place, but say there’ll be no questions.”
“I don’t want to be scripted.”
“I know, but they’ll need to at least know the bullet points of what you’re going to say. They need to know what they’re dealing with, Eddie, so they can protect you.”
“Fine. Give me half an hour to pull something together. I just want to get this done.”
“At least Patrick didn’t print the photos that identified Milo as well.”
“Of course not. He wouldn’t do something like that. Milo’s innocent in all this.”
As soon as he’d left Derek’s house, he’d gone straight to Olivia and told her everything about his relationship with Milo, with a few exceptions. From the press reports it looked like nobody knew how they’d met. If it hadn’t been for their getting together at the hotel, there would have been no photographic evidence of them together at all.
“Right, let me sort things out at this end. Write what you want to cover and email it directly to me. I’ll make sure they know it’s just an FYI, and speak to Sally. Give me an hour and I’ll call you back with a timeline.”
“Thank you. I’ll get on it now.”
He hung up the phone and picked up his laptop from the sofa, before grabbing a soft drink from the fridge and sitting at the dining table. How much did he want to say at this point? He would need to confirm that he was gay. Did he want to bring his dad into this, as the reason why he’d been in the closet for so long? Was it right to do that to his memory? He wasn’t sure, so he could leave the closet question for when Sally grilled him, which she would do. Even with pre-approved questions, she would not let him off with vague answers.
He did a brain dump of everything he wanted to say, and after fifteen minutes, he felt lighter for it. Much of it was unusable, even for the Sally interview, but at least he now had something to work with. He saved the document, as that was something he’d want to read again one day. After copying everything over to a fresh document, he cut out what was unusable, which was what he really thought about his dad, his preferences in the bedroom, and the early part of his relationship with Milo. There were some things the public didn’t need to know about their deputy prime minister. Before he’d finished, Olivia was calling him back.
“That was quick,” he said, answering the call.
“We’ve got another problem.”
“Do I want to hear this?” he asked, pinching the bridge of his nose, and closing his eyes.
“It’s Milo. They know who he is.”
CHAPTER 17
MILO
His bedroom door burst open, startling him.
“Jesus, Kieran. You frightened the shit out of me.”
“It would have been better if you were shagging a married man.”
“What are you –”
He grabbed his phone and opened the news app. His own face was staring back at him, with the headline “Deputy PM’s Secret Gay Lover.” Milo’s first instinct was to call Edward, but he’d be dealing with his side of things. He could call Derek, who’d given Milo his number and told him to call anytime if he needed to talk to someone who knew how all this shit worked– and by “shit,” he meant politics.
“I see you’re not even going to deny it,” said Kieran, his arms folded across his chest, with a scowl.
With his tattoos and piercings, you’d think he’d look intimidating, but Milo knew him too well. It was hard for him to keep a straight face. The only thing Milo had to do was get out of here. If the press knew who he was, then they’d know where he lived soon, if they didn’t already, and he wasn’t bringing that to his flatmates’ door.
“How long has this been going on?”
“Five months.”
“Five months!” Kieran shrieked.
“What’s going on?” asked Hassan, appearing in the doorway. He looked like he was dead on his feet.
“Milo is Chivington’s secret fuckboy.”
“What?”
