Chapter 2 #2
Krishnan Varma-Rajan had deep-brown eyes that sparkled when he smiled.
You could see why they put this man on breakfast television.
He was bewitchingly handsome. After he came out a few years ago, one of the papers ran a story claiming the NHS had run out of antidepressants, such was the effect on Britain’s housewives.
Overnight he went from being Britain’s most eligible bachelor to Britain’s most eligible gay bachelor.
Rumour had it the unsolicited underwear arriving in the Wake Up Britain postbag switched from Victoria’s Secret to FIST overnight.
He’d been knocked out cold marching in last year’s London Pride when an overzealous autograph hunter threw a dildo at his head.
It was all over Twitter. He was off air for a week, waiting for the circular bruise from the suction cup to fade from his forehead.
In other words, Krishnan Varma-Rajan was undisputed gay royalty, and he wanted a private word with me.
“And we’re on in five, four…” a dismembered voice informed me from somewhere.
Sally and Krishnan sat up straighter, so I did the same.
The next five minutes were a blur, as two of British television’s most beloved faces asked me a range of serious questions about surprise nuclear power plants, Belarusian oligarchs, and government energy policy while I tried not to vomit live on national television.
“One last question,” Krishnan said. “The government is committed to reaching net zero by 2050. Doesn’t nuclear need to be a part of the conversation if we’re to make that deadline?”
“The problem here isn’t necessarily the nuclear, it’s the conversation,” I said, surprising myself with how intelligent I sounded.
There was a brain in there somewhere, among the cocktail recipes, West End musical lyrics, and rutting honey badgers.
“The problem is that the energy secretary hasn’t been having a conversation with the people of Leicester.
They’re going to wake up to find a nuclear power plant being built in their backyard, and it’ll be too late to do anything about it. ”
“Would they want to do anything about it?” Krishnan asked.
“Leicester is a deprived part of the country with high levels of unemployment. They might welcome the jobs.” Krishnan sounded like my father: Sorry your town now has a half-life of two million years, but at least you bludgers will finally feel the dignity of work.
“They might,” I said. Although I wasn’t terribly certain how many unemployed nuclear scientists there were just hanging about in Leicester.
“But the point is, if this is such good news for the people of Leicester, why is the government being secretive about it instead of shouting it from the rooftops?”
Before I knew it, Sally and Krishnan were thanking me for coming in, and it was all over. Sally turned to a different camera and began reading from the autocue.
“When is a King Edward not a King Edward?” she asked the audience at home.
“When it’s a King George the Seventh. Gloucestershire farmer Ted Sykes has grown a potato that bears more than a passing resemblance to the new king, who’ll be crowned next month at Westminster Abbey.
Farmer Ted will be here after the break to show us one not-so-humble spud. See you in a bit.”
“And we’re out,” the dismembered voice announced.
Sally thanked me again for coming in and kissed me on both cheeks.
Krishnan, his hand gently touching the back of my arm, indicated I should come with him.
We stopped at the side of the set, and he adjusted the knob on his microphone’s battery pack so that all the lights on it went out.
I tried to do the same to mine, but I was nervous and there were several knobs and, somewhere between my brain and my fingers, something short-circuited.
“Allow me,” Krishnan said. He put a hand on my shoulder to turn me around slightly and disappeared behind me to fiddle with the battery pack.
Was this flirting? It gave him a marvellous view of the ballet butt.
Naturally, I leant forward to accentuate the fall of the curve—because, apparently, I flirt like an alley cat.
It seemed to be having the desired effect.
If Krishnan stayed back there much longer, he’d have to sign a consent form.
My heart quickened. A chorus line of butterflies danced the grand jeté in my stomach.
I heard the click of the knob, and Krishnan’s hands guided me back around to meet his face.
“I wanted to ask you…” Krishnan said. He was a good six inches taller than me, so I was forced to look up to meet those ravishing eyes.
He leant his face close to mine. It felt intimate.
His cologne, all spice and musk and manliness, hung in the air between us.
I was suddenly very conscious of my breath, which must have smelt like a Caffè Nero dumpster.
“Yes?” I asked, already imagining our future together—the cottage in the Cotswolds, the two corgis, the groundskeeper with arms like Christmas hams.
“I was just wondering whether your dad mentioned anything to you about my proposal for a regular column in the Sentinel?”
There it was. Bewitched by the prettiest face on British television, I hadn’t even seen it coming this time.
The butterflies in my stomach must have been equally blindsided, because they jetéd into overdrive.
I threw up, spewing coffee and contempt all down the front of television’s most eligible totty.
It was a spectacular and complete disgorgement. I really, really got it all out. The bad TV coffee, the imagined corgis and the house in the Cotswolds, the anticipated lifetime of invitations to BAFTA after-parties, the insane belief anyone would be interested in me for me. I expelled it all.