“Well hinted,” I told him. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“That’d be smashing.”
“I’ll have one too.” That was Barbara Clench, lurking in the corner like, well, like a woman whose office had been transformed into a hot-desking area in which she no longer had space to hot-desk. “As you’re making.”
So I turned round and went straight back out of the office. Since working from home had become a thing, we’d downsized CRAPP HQ, which meant the bottom floor of the building was now beinglet to a start-up called ERECTUS, who, as far as I could tell, were building an app they couldn’t describe to disrupt an industry they couldn’t identify.
Technically the kitchen and toilets were a shared space, although in practice ERECTUS had felt fully entitled to slap their messaging over everything, which meant I was left making tea under a big poster declaring itself, or possibly the organisation it represented, to beThe Next Step in Digital Evolution.
It could have been worse. It could have been sepsis.
I was just plonking teabags into mugs, several of which carried now-discarded ERECTUS slogans, and trying to decide whether I wanted to drink out ofInnovate, Iterate, IndiscriminateorThe Future of Tomorrow, Yesterday, when an explosive va-va-vooming made me look out the window.
What a twat, I thought, as an ecologically ruinous vintage motorbike roared past. Followed byI wonder where that twat’s goingas it stopped a little way up our road underneath the reddening leaves of an oak tree.
The amount of time I’d been at CRAPP, I should really have known better than to ask the second question. Because the rider, who was sixty-five if he was a day and had apparently decided to prioritise preserving his ash-grey mohawk over wearing a helmet, was heading straight for our front door.
An optimistic part of me that had yet to wither in the cold light of experience hoped he was here for ERECTUS. A hope that was fleetingly buoyed up when the door was answered by Horse, of Horse and Todd, ERECTUS’s cofounders and, as far as I could tell, only employees. Then Horse said, “No,” a single syllable he somehow managed to utter in an annoying way. Followed by “Bug people are upstairs.” Which meant that this was the new Earl of Spitalhamstead, and, if I didn’t move quickly, the first person he met at CRAPP would be Alex.
I moved quickly.
I did not move quickly enough.
“—sorry, old bean,” Alex was saying. “Can’t slot you in right now. Got rather an important visitor coming.”
“Alex,” I near-yelled, over the shoulder of the man who was almost certainly the very important visitor. “I think this might, in fact, be the very important visitor.”
Alex scrutinised the very important visitor sceptically. I found this particularly galling because Alex never looked at things sceptically. I’d once told him they took the wordgullibleout of the dictionary, and not only had he checked, but he’d spent the rest of the day scouring bookshops for an updated edition. “Seems unlikely, Luc,” he told me. “Chap seems like a fearful oik.”
“Pride myself on it,” said the very important visitor, in the voice of someone trying terribly hard not to sound terribly posh.
“See?” Alex gave me a triumphant nod. “Oiked by his own petard.”
Right now, I could try and explain the situation to Alex or I could ignore him. And ignoring him was definitely the path of least resistance. To be fair, compared with explaining things to Alex, tunnelling through a brick wall using only my tongue would have been the path of least resistance. “This way,” I said to the very important visitor, hoping to steer him into the meeting room which was also the hot-desking area which was also Barbara Clench’s former office.
“What are you doing?” cried Alex. “You can’t just let anyone in off the street. What will the earl think?”
“He’ll think you’re a prick,” said the earl.
Alex drew back, genuinely affronted. “I’ll thank you not to put words in the mouth of a peer of the realm.”
Whether it was a mercy or an absolute kick in the balls that Rhys Jones Bowen chose this moment to come out and check on us, I couldn’t say.
“Hello,” he said. “What’s going on out here then?”
“I’m pretty sure,” I replied at full stop-Alex-getting-a-word-in-edgeways speed, “that this is the new Earl of Spitalhamstead.”
Rhys Jones Bowen’s eyes widened. “Ooh. You look very cool for an earl.”
“Thanks,” said the earl, sticking his hand out. “Saint.”
“That’s very kind of you.” Rhys Jones Bowen took the hand and shook it warmly. “But I’m just a friendly sort of person.”
“Name,” said the Earl of Spitalhamstead, who apparently went by Saint and was allergic to sentences.
Rhys Jones Bowen made a misplaced sound of comprehension. “Ahhhh. Rhys Jones Bowen. What’s yours?”
“Saint,” said Saint.
