That was what I’d thought. “So you were at the funeral of our patron then?”
Alex looked genuinely offended. “Certainly not. I wouldn’t skip out on old Hilary for a work do. What kind of chap do you think I am?”
“No, I mean Hilary was—”
“Luc,” interrupted Rhys Jones Bowen sternly, “this isn’t the time to be badgering Alex about his dead friend. We’ve just lost our patron—which is very sad but also very worrying. And I really think we need to be talking about that.”
Ordinarily, Dr. Fairclough paid zero attention to the non-insect-related parts of running CRAPP. But at the end of the day she was an academic, which meant that the one thing she couldbring herself to care about as much as her research wasfundingher research. “I agree,” she said. “This leaves the future of the Coleoptera Research and Protection Project uncertain. I do not like the future of the Coleoptera Research and Protection Project being uncertain.”
“By uncertain”—there was no sign of Barbara Clench’s mocktail at this point—“do you mean we might lose our jobs?”
“Oh, I hope not,” piped up Alex. “What would I do with my weekends?”
Dr. Fairclough used her second blink. “I understand that this is a shock, but I need you all to retain a sense of proportion. Our jobs are far less important than long-term soil aeration.”
“Of course,” said Barbara Clench with a level of sarcasm I was jealous of and everyone else was oblivious to. “Let me rephrase. What is the likelihood that the earl’s death will lead to C.R.A.P.P.”—Barbara always saidSee Arr Ay Pee Pee, and always said it so you could hear every dot—“having to end its vital work and also lead, secondarily, to us all losing our jobs?”
“Unknown,” replied Dr. Fairclough.
And probably, if it had been left up to her, the call would have been over, which would have sucked for the slim majority of us who needed to work for a living. “Okay,” I put in quickly, “but can you speculate?”
Dr. Fairclough was still radiating end-meeting energy. “Logically, there are three possibilities. Either he has provided for us in his will and we can continue as normal, or his heir will provide for us and we can continue mostly as normal. Or they will not, and our research will cease and the species we protect will go into an irrevocable decline, leading ultimately to the complete collapse of agriculture and the extinction of the human species.”
“Shit,” I cried.
“Yes.” Dr. Fairclough gave a brisk nod. “The stakes are, in fact,existential.”
“No, I mean—”
Spud had spent the call doing puppy things in the pen and around my feet, but now he was doing the very specific kind of puppy thing which I’d learned came just before he did the puppy thing that we on no account wanted our puppy to do indoors.
I leapt to my feet. “I need to take my dog outside.”
If there was any response, I didn’t hear it because I’d jumped up quickly enough to yank my headphones out of the computer. With the wire trailing behind me, I scooped Spud up, wrestled open the patio doors, and plonked him in the designated shitting area.
He looked up at me in some confusion.
“You know what to do,” I told him. “You were doing it yesterday with Oliver repeatedly. Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten or that this is weird.”
Spud kept looking at me like I’d lost my mind.
I sighed. “Just poo, will you? I’m in a meeting.”
“Ruff.” Spud thumped his tail on the ground happily.
“Look, if you don’t go in the next thirty seconds, I’ll have to take you back inside.”
“He’s not got a watch.” A small, familiar, deeply irritating voice drifted over the garden fence. It was followed by a small, familiar, deeply irritating face. Both belonged to Next Door’s Kid. “Also, you’re talking to a dog. Dickhead.”
In my heart of hearts, I knew it was beneath me to trade insults with an eleven-year-old. “Better than talking to you,” I said. “Bum-face.”
“That’s not a real swear.”
“Well, you’re not a real…” Fuck. I’d already fucked it.
“Not a real what?” asked Next Door’s Kid, even more smugly than his normal baseline of smugness, which was, let’s be clear, unbearable.
“A real…” Every second that passed without my coming up with a creatively devastating answer was just confirming his assessment of my dickheadedness. “A real bum-face.”
