Twenty minutes later, he was sitting in the chair opposite me in my father’s study, hair damp, wearing a fluffy white robe. I was in one exactly like it, but with tea stains down the front.
“Were you actually christened Petey Boy?” I asked.
He smiled. “It’s Peter, obviously. But my gran calls me Petey Boy, so it’s what I like to be called. You can just call me Petey, if you like.”
“Are you close with your gran?”
“Spent every afternoon after school with her, either at her place in Tower Hamlets or at their market stall in Petticoat Lane.”
“Oh, so your grandparents are proper East Enders, then?”
Petey Boy’s whole face lit up. “Gran’s brothers used to knock around with the Krays. You don’t get more East End than that!”
He seemed inordinately proud of this link to London’s most notorious gangsters. In the fifties and sixties, the Krays were responsible for armed robberies, money laundering, arson, violent assaults, and even murder. Still, Buckford Hall’s Long Gallery was lined with portraits of men whose crime sheets wouldn’t have looked so very different. I remembered Jonty saying Petey Boy’s family were hugely successful, and suddenly I wondered in what field.
“If you’re planning to nick the silver, you should know none of it is real,” I said. “The real stuff is in storage. Indira insisted. Come to think of it, you might be the reason why.”
Petey laughed, and I enjoyed knowing it was because of something I’d said. It was a shot of endorphins, and I wanted more of it. His eyes locked onto mine, and he kicked out his foot across the coffee table to playfully nudge my knee.
“Why does Jonty call you Dub-Dub? That’s what I want to know.”
I sighed. “Oh, it’s a stupid nickname. From school. I hate it. It’s because of the twoWs in my name.”
“In William Buckford? I thought you went to one of the best schools in the country. Didn’t they teach you how to count?”
I laughed. “Buckford is only the title. TheWis for Winters.”
“So, you’re William Winters?” Petey Boy sipped at his tea.
“Actually, I’m William Stanley Leaf Richard George Winters-de Valois-Winters. If we’re getting technical about it.”
Petey Boy frowned. “Leaf?”
“It’s my godfather’s name.”
“AndtwoWinters?”
“Across five hundred years, you pick up a lot of valuable surnames. You don’t simply let the good ones go. Generations of scheming mamas worked so terribly hard to acquire them.”
“Should we be worried you seem to have picked up the same one twice?”
“I’ll have you know the Winterses are where we get our prominent chins. We have to circle one back into the gene pool every two hundred years or so to top up the old jawline.”
Petey Boy laughed, and it was beautiful. He wriggled in his armchair, and the movement loosened his robe a little, letting me glimpse the milky skin of his chest. It took me a moment to remember where I was.
“So, have you always been a reality TV show producer?”
Petey shook his head. “First gig.”
I listened while he told me about his years working onWake Up Britain, fascinated by a world about which I knew nothing.
“Five years was enough,” he said. “I was sick of the segue sandwich. It was a joy to hand in my notice.”
“Is the catering no good at Channel Three?”
“No, I mean writing the presenters’ links. Give me any two subjects, totally unrelated—make them as stupid as you like—and I’ll write the segue for you.”
“Oh, this is fun.” I sat upright and loosened my robe to get the blood flowing and the old noodle noodling. “Got it. I bet you can’t link former Welsh rugby full back Leigh Halfpenny and Britain’s most endangered mammal, the hazel dormouse.”
