Chapter 27
Petey
William looked broken, like the newspaper article was more than he could take.
“Any chance your father’s popped another spliff in that drawer,” I asked, half hoping to lighten the mood a little, half hoping a spliff might actually be on offer.
“Given there was only one in the drawer and we already smoked it, that’s one of those questions with no good answer,” he said. “A no means disappointment, but a yes means we’ll never truly be able to sleep comfortably in here ever again.”
William moved to the makeshift drinks cabinet on the bookshelf and poured us each a sloe gin—no ice, no mixer.
“This’ll help,” he said, and knocked his back so fast it couldn’t have touched his tongue. I took a sip of mine, winced, then did the same. It burnt all the way down, but as the warmth radiated out from my belly, I felt some of the tension leave muscles I didn’t know I’d been clenching.
“I need to get my laptop,” I said, heading for the stairs.
I still hadn’t worked up a presentation for Indira with my best idea for a TV show. I really needed to be working on it.
“Petey, this is going to follow us around,” William said, staring out the porthole window. “The last time I was in the papers—”
William paused. I couldn’t tell if he was deciding whether to tell me something, or whether he was swallowing his emotions.
I sat down in the armchair, facing him.
“I was down in London for the reading of my father’s will,” he said slowly. “I was a wreck. My father and brother had been killed three weeks earlier—I’d been in London then, too, as you know. The place is cursed for me. Every time I go there, something dreadful happens.”
Was that what his hatred of London was all about?
A tragic coincidence? A silly superstition?
I couldn’t wrap my head around it. A photo like that wouldn’t have kept me up at night.
It would have horrified my parents, but that was all the more reason to revel in the notoriety.
William and I lived in completely different worlds.
“The accident had been all over the papers. A baron and his heir dying in a plane crash. I get that it’s news.
But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was so deep in grief.
I’d just inherited all this and been told my father’s affairs were an absolute mess and there was no money.
I’d had to give up my rugby career to move home and deal with it all. My mother was inconsolable.”
His hand started to shake, and he put his glass down on the coffee table, slumping into his armchair.
“Some friends, Jonty among them, took me to Annabel’s and got me drunk.
I was in a devil-may-care mood. It was probably the cocaine.
Possibly too many hours on the trot in Jonty’s company.
So when this couple approached me, bought me a few drinks, and asked me home, I thought, sod it.
Why not? Isn’t this what normal people do?
I can be normal. This is what young men are supposed to do when they’re in London, right?
My parents were always saying to live in the moment.
So we left the club. Got as far as a park bench in Berkeley Square. You know the rest.”
He kicked the newspaper off the coffee table and onto the floor.
“I’m sorry that happened,” I said. I could tell he had been suffering, that this moment had haunted him all this time.
“Listen,” William said, leaning forward and grabbing my hands in his. His eyes were bright with enthusiasm. “Why don’t you stay?”
“What?” Had I blacked out for a second?
“I’m telling you, London’s going to be a nightmare.
You don’t want to go back down there, what with the press chasing us.
Why don’t you stay here at Buckford after filming finishes?
After all, Sunny and Ludo are coming up.
And now your parents. Everyone thinks we’re getting married anyway, so staying would be the most natural thing in the world. I can protect you from the paparazzi.”
Something clenched in my chest—not anger, not yet. It was the word protect. The way he said it so naturally, like it was obvious I needed protecting. Like it was his job. Like he knew best what was good for me. I knew that tone. I’d grown up with it. I pulled my hands back from his.
“I don’t need your protection, William.”
“But if I can shield you from the worst excesses of the press, why wouldn’t you let me help?”
I stood, anger now rising.
“When the time is right for you to come riding in on your white horse to rescue me, my lord, you’ll know about it. I don’t need a hero.”
William got to his feet, his face pleading.
“Petey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“I can look after myself. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.”
“I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. Come to bed. We can cuddle until you fall asleep.”
I shook my head. “I’ve got to finish my pitch deck for Indira. She’s expecting me to present to her in two days.”
He grabbed hold of this like a life ring. “Great! Let me help you. Which idea are you going with? We can talk it through.”
“No,” I said, and it came out of my mouth more forcefully than I intended—but I was absolutely raging. “I need to do this by myself.”
The next morning, despite having stayed up half the night, I still didn’t have a big idea I loved enough to present to Indira.
I had less than forty-eight hours to go.
I walked into the Old Coach House to find her bouncing around like she was in an aerobics class, two lit cigarettes in her mouth and a spare tucked behind her ear.
She was wearing the same trainers, black leggings, and oversized chunky knit jumper as yesterday.
In her hand, she held a corrugated paper coffee cup.
There were at least four empties on the desk. Even for her, she looked really unwell.
“Have you been to bed?” I asked.
Indira picked up the show’s rule book and threw it at me. I caught it against my chest.
“We’re fucked,” she said, out of one side of her mouth.
“Why? What’s happened?”
She pointed at the rule book I was busily trying to straighten out.
“That thing. Is. Fucked.”
“OK,” I said. I was carefully trying to assess the situation. If Indira had a problem, I needed to find a solution. “How can I help?”
“Read page forty-seven.”
I turned the page and started to read it.
“Not out loud, for fuck’s sake. What is this, a kindergarten?”
I slid into a chair in front of one of the computers, eyes not leaving the page.
It was the section on deciding the winner.
According to the rules, only a married couple could win the prize money—the point being that marriage was the definition of success in the Regency era.
We couldn’t have bachelors or spinsters walking away with the loot.
In the event the show ended with more than one married couple, all the remaining cast would be invited to vote in a secret ballot.
If no couple got more than fifty per cent of the vote in the first ballot, then the couple with the fewest votes would be eliminated until there was only one couple left.
“Do you see it?” Indira said, arms flailing, ash falling like the last days of Pompeii. “Of course you can fucking see it. You’re a bright kid.”
I wasn’t sure I could see it. But Indira praising my abilities was like a shot of whatever they give horses to win races, direct into my arm—and I was determined to see it.
“It’s a bit… dull,” I said.
“Dull? It’s apocalyptically anticlimactic. A secret fucking ballot? In Regency England?”
Phew, I’d landed on it.
“I presume we tart it up, though, right? Get Dorinda seriously glammed up. Give her a central role. Every cast member has to confess on camera how they’re voting and why as they cast their ballot.”
“Boring! I need visuals.”
“Visuals. Right.”
“Drama.”
“Got it.”
The cigarettes came out of Indira’s mouth, clutched in her birdlike claws.
“I need tension. I need the audience at home so on the edge of their seats, so unable to tear themselves away, that bladders are exploding all over Britain. I need living rooms across the country showered in piss and blood. And as they’re getting wheeled into an ambulance, I need them turning to their families shouting, Fuck me, that was good television!
I cannot serve the people of Britain a secret… fucking… ballot.”
The cigarettes were straight back in the mouth, glowing as brightly as the fire in the belly of Mount Etna.
“So, we’re looking for—”
Indira huffed smoke out of her lungs. “A different way to end the series. Yes.”
I could work with this. This was what I was here to do, after all. I might not have landed on a big idea for my own show yet, but I could at least prove my problem-solving talents with this one.
“So we’re looking for something era appropriate, with great visuals, and with solid tension.”
“Piss and blood, Petey Boy. Piss and blood.”
Indira really did not look or sound well.
“Why don’t you go have a lie-down, and I’ll come back with some options this afternoon?”
“Sleep is for pussies. I want options now.”
I sat back in my chair, trying to think of Regency-appropriate competitions—my fingers fidgeting with a biro.
“Something with horses?” I suggested. “A race?”
Indira shook her head. “Insurance.”
“A card game of some sort?” I tapped the pen against the desk.
“Too many rules to explain. It loses the audience.”
“Card cutting, then? Highest card wins.”
“How can we build tension with that?”
I leapt out of my seat. “A billiards match!”
Indira was silent for a moment.
“Great atmospherics,” she said. She seemed to be warming to the idea. “Plenty of rising tension. Wait, is billiards the one with all the red balls?”
“No, that’s snooker. Billiards has three balls.”
“OK, boring,” Indira declared.
I slumped back down into my chair, picking at the plug in the end of the biro until it popped out.
Indira stubbed out her cigarettes. “Visually, you want to see shot after shot of balls being sunk, until there’s one left and everything hangs on what happens next. The audience should be able to understand what’s happening intuitively.”
I put the nib between my teeth and plucked it free, leaving me with a long hollow tube. I spat the nib onto the desk and remembered a story William had told me.
“Of course, real ‘era appropriate’ would be a duel.” I laughed.
Indira’s eyes expanded like they were going supernova. “Could we?”
“Oh God, Indira. No!”
She was pacing around the Old Coach House. “What about paintball guns?”
Before I could reply, she was screaming into her walkie-talkie. “I need the props department, now! And get me the phone number for an armourer.”