Chapter 29 Connor #2
And they’re not the only witless wonders having their loud, sweary say on the subject of Champ’s “obvious” guilt; next we have the anti-colonialists, incensed because the Lamberts’ special song about their adored pet—“Land of Cute and Furry”—is one that takes its tune from the famous “Land of Hope and Glory.” Depressingly, that musical national treasure is now viewed by a certain subsection of society as a paean of praise for the exploitative cruelty of colonialism—and the very same idiocy that led our “enemies within,” as I like to call them, to form that misguided view now drives them to extend their condemnation to include lovely Champ.
I kid you not: I’ve seen commenters claim that of course Champ must have half chewed off Tess Gavey’s arm because what else would you expect the pet dog of conscience-less colonizer sympathizers to do?
And after Sally Lambert’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Ree, told the world that her mother never reads a newspaper or watches the news, and would have no clue what the word colonialism even meant, did such comments stop or increase? Take a wild guess.
All of the above, my friends, is not the bad joke it deserves to be.
Instead, it’s the predicament in which we find ourselves after twenty-seven years of first a Labor government, and then a version of the Tories that’s been indistinguishable from Labor, destroying this once-great country.
And what delectable choices do we have on offer when we go to the ballot box on 4 July?
Rishi Sunak, who wants himself and his wife to be able to hang on to their billions but doesn’t care if his socialist-in-disguise cronies tax away any financial cushion you or I might have managed to secure for ourselves?
No, thank you. Sir Keir Starmer, who has recently presented to the British public a manifesto more left-wing than any it has ever previously been offered?
It’s enough to make anyone want to go on the run, frankly.
And yes, I do think the huge groundswell of support for Champ Lambert and his family has a lot to do with the desire of so many of us to get the hell out of Broken Britain and away from those who would break it further and beyond repair.
Let’s face it: Very few of us are able to think straight these days, though some among us are more aware of their prejudices than others.
Either way, I’m glad the Lamberts have fled in an attempt to save their dog.
Good luck to them in their attempt to defy the regime.
I hope they end up somewhere freer and more civilized than where I find myself stuck, and I only wish they’d taken me with them.
***
These next bits are all conversations between the Lamberts.
I don’t know where they come from, but presumably around the time Sarah Sergeant turned up with her Bonnie plan.
As with some of the free-floating bits I stuck in before, this is Sally Lambert narrating in first-person again.
(Large, I’m more and more convinced Sally wrote this manuscript and at a certain point changed her sections to third person so that it felt less like she wrote it.)
***
Why am I convinced that the next words out of Ree’s mouth are going to horrify me?
“And?” I prompt, wishing I could turn and run in the opposite direction, but I can’t. I’m hemmed in, in a small room. Well, it’s not small, actually, but any room feels tiny when you’re aching to escape.
“She’s got a Welsh terrier, a bitch. As in female dog, not a bitch like Tess Gavey. She’s called Bonnie. She’s nearly fifteen years old.”
“And fading fast, according to Sarah,” says Corinne.
“And…they’re here?” I say. “Now?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To speak to you. To us.” Corinne speaks slowly and gently, as if she’s tending to a delicate wound.
Is that how she sees me? What she’s saying—what they’re all saying—makes sense on one level but, more fundamentally, clashes so profoundly with my understanding of the world that I can’t extract any sort of stable meaning from it.
Something about this is so, so wrong.
“If this woman’s here to see me, that means she knows I’m here, that we’re here, with Champ,” I say. “And…I’m guessing she knows why?”
“Mum, it’s really nothing to worry about.” Ree puts her hand on my shoulder. “Sarah’s a hundred percent on our side, and no one who isn’t has the slightest clue where we are, I promise.”
“But what’s this Sarah Sergeant woman doing here with her Welsh terrier? Who is she? What does she want?”
“No, Bonnie isn’t here,” says Corinne. “Bonnie’s too old and weak to travel.”
“I don’t want to hear about dogs who aren’t okay,” I say. Is this the best she can come up with, trying to make me sad about someone else being maybe about to lose their furry baby? Am I supposed to feel less alone?
“Mum,” Ree says. “Stop panic-babbling and listen. Sarah Sergeant just wants to speak to you, okay? She wants to talk to you about an idea. You don’t have to agree.”
“How does she know, though?” I look at Corinne. “Is she one of the people you pay to do things?”
A look passes between Ree and Corinne, who gives a firm nod. Ree looks at Toby next. He nods too, though less decisively.
What the hell is going on? A fraction of a second later, Mark asks that exact question. He’s clueless like me.
“All right, we’re doing this.” Ree pumps her fists in the air.
“Do not panic or overreact, okay, Mum? Everything is fine. Everything’s under control.
And try to remember, when you’re tempted to freak out, that if all this online stuff hadn’t happened, Sarah Sergeant wouldn’t have been able to reach out to us and—”
“All what online stuff?” says Mark.
“Okay, so…” Ree takes a deep breath. “You know Tess Gavey started to post about her terrible bite and how it was this awful aggressive dog that did it? And you know I didn’t just take that lying down?
Right, well… I mean, it’d take too long to explain exactly what happened, but basically we went viral.
I did a post with ‘#GoneDog #TheFurryFugitive’ in it—”
“And I shared it on my story,” says Tobes.
“What story?” I feel as if I’m drowning.
“Mum, seriously, don’t bother getting bogged down in all of that,” says Ree. “Focus on the main point, which is: Champ went viral.”
“What?” I wail.
“No, that’s a good thing,” says Tobes. “It doesn’t mean he’s ill. It means he got very famous very quickly, in a way that, I’m not gonna lie, most of us only dream of and have no hope of achieving. So, props to you, Champy.”
Champ stretches out his hind legs.
“Well, and to me for coming up with those amazing hashtags for the campaign,” says Ree.
“Campaign?” I whisper, horrified by each new piece of information I hear.
How could they have done this to me? How?
My family who claim to love me and care about me, who I thought would help me to protect Champ…
and Corinne, who promised to help too. Don’t they get it?
I want Champ to be as unknown, as unfamous, as possible; that’s the only way he stays safe.
Do these stupid traitors not understand what hiding means?
This isn’t my fault. None of this is down to me failing to make it incredibly clear what I wanted.
“Okay, look,” says Ree. “Mum? Stay with me, please.” She arranges herself on the floor in front of me—cross-legged, hands clasped together, bright smile spread across her face like a net wide enough to catch any possible objections.
This is how I try to look when I’m pitching to a potential client at work—Here’s why we’re the very best team to host your wedding.
“I didn’t think of it as a campaign at first,” says Ree.
“I had no idea anything I posted would go viral, and even when it started to happen, I assumed it’d be a just-people-my-age-who-know-me-or-have-heard-of-me kind of viral—big enough to ensure Tess Gavey has no friends in the Cambridgeshire region for the rest of her life, but not… what it turned into.”
Another look passes between her and Tobes. The silent debate is easy to follow: Should we tell Mum the full extent? The actual numbers? No. She doesn’t need to know. It would only send her into proper hysterics.
“I only started to think of…what we were dealing with as a potentially useful campaign once I saw how many people believed in Champ’s innocence. It’s thousands, Mum.”
Thousands. That might mean only 2,000 or as many as 50,000, and maybe even more.
Must not ask. I can’t believe this is happening, and the worst part is that, unlike the police who are after Champ, this isn’t something I can run away from.
Soon there might be millions of people talking about Champ on the internet, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop them.
I feel a blast of pity for my naive former self: the one who wondered how Vicky could have gotten our burner phone numbers, or gotten in touch with Ree and Tobes in the first place. For all I knew, hundreds of thousands of strangers might have messaged my children to ask how they could contact me.
“Now, remember,” says Ree. “None of these people have a clue where we are or where Champ is, so security has not been compromised. All anyone knows is that we’ve left Swaffham Tilney and why.
That doesn’t put us at risk of anything.
I haven’t told a single person that we’re here… Well, until Sarah Sergeant—”
“—who could have told anybody, couldn’t she?” I finish the sentence in a clipped, tight voice, too scared and angry to worry about upsetting my family for once.
“No, Sally, definitely not,” says Corinne. “You don’t need to worry about that. Sarah’s solid, trust me. We wouldn’t have risked—”
“Corinne devised a whole…security procedure.” Toby talks over her.
“What are people saying about me?” Mark asks. “I don’t want to be viral. I don’t want to be talked about by half the world, thank you very much.”
“Don’t worry, Dad; no one’s interested in you,” says Ree.