Chapter 5
Sunny
I threw my notepad down on the green leather bench of the House of Commons press gallery in disgust. I had arrived way too early for Prime Minister’s Questions.
But, like a condemned man shouting at the executioner to bloody get on with it, I just wanted the whole event to be over with.
I flopped down onto the bench, sending my notepad somersaulting into the air and onto the floor.
The long, padded benches in the House, including the one in the press gallery, had been designed by a useless knobber.
Every time you sat down, it sent a wave of air billowing along the length of them.
I picked up my notepad and put it on the narrow benchtop desk that reporters had been writing at for nearly two centuries.
The press gallery sits high above the heads of the MPs, up in the rafters with the bats, the cobwebs, and the ghost of Margaret Thatcher.
David Cameron, when he was prime minister, once said the Palace of Westminster reminded him of school, which tells you everything you need to know both about him and about what’s wrong with this place.
My school had to close the playground because they found asbestos in the sandpit and had no money to remove it.
Cameron’s school looked like Hogwarts. There was a stink of privilege on a good two-thirds of the MPs.
On the other hand, the leader of the opposition was a single mother from Stockport with a mouth like a dockworker and a right hook to match, so there were at least a few top sorts knocking around who understood real people.
The hum of activity in the House of Commons was starting to grow.
Members were finding their places ahead of the prime minister’s arrival.
The leader of the opposition had taken her seat.
I scanned the government front bench. Bob Wynn-Jones, the energy secretary—very much the man of the hour—was nowhere to be seen.
If he was smart, he was making himself scarce. My phone vibrated.
Davinder has renamed your group Otter Rewilding.
Our group chat had been called “The Brent Boys” for months, mostly on account of us all living in the London Borough of Brent.
But, also, because one of Petey’s one-night stands had mistaken their exchange of body fluids for a commercial transaction and had left ￡200 on the bedside table on his way out the door.
That led to both Petey and Jumaane seriously considering trying their hands (and the rest of themselves) at sex work.
The dots danced on my screen until a message flashed up.
Davinder: Otters of Brent, we must rewild. You are hereby summoned to a boys’ night out this Friday.
The messages began to flow into the chat.
Petey Boy: Gassed for it!!!
Jumaane: Yaaaaaasssssss! Agenda?
Davinder: Drag at the Duncan then Hades for dancing?
Stavros: Can we legally call ourselves otters when Sunny doesn’t have a single hair on his chest and you’ve invited Jumaane, who is bald from the eyebrows down?
Jumaane: Rude.
Davinder: You’re the one with the law degree, Stav. You tell us.
Stavros: Jumanji, I’m concerned you might have violated the Trades Descriptions Act 1968. For legal reasons, exactly how bald is your bussy?
Jumaane: No one likes finding hair in their food, Stavros.
Petey Boy: Mad disagree! A hairy bum is bare peng, Jumanji.
Petey, for some reason unbeknown to any of us, sometimes liked to talk like a London roadman.
He grew up in a detached house in middle-class Pinner and worked as a producer at Channel Three, but something short-circuited in his brain when he moved into a share house in Stonebridge.
He was like one of those people who woke up from a head injury to find they suddenly drawled their vowels like a heavily intoxicated Texan.
Davinder: This is not merely a social gathering. Our first order of business is finding everyone a husband!
Dav was the only one of the five of us who actually had a boyfriend. He had been with Nick, a radio DJ, since the second year of uni. Apparently, this meant he had a lot of time to dedicate to finding boyfriends for the rest of us.
Sunny: Does Nick know you’re looking to upgrade?
Davinder: Not a husband for me, husbands for you loveless saddos.
Stavros: Give Nick my number anyway. Nick is hot.
Petey Boy: Def. Nick is FIT!
Nick: Nick is here, by the way.
I was just typing my own appreciation for the hotness of my best friend’s boyfriend when some absolute knobber plonked themselves down heavily on the bench beside me.
The impact sent a burst of air rippling through the leather padding, lifting my bum several inches off the seat.
The shock of it loosened my grip on my phone, sending it flying out of my hands.
My phone arced through the air and over the carved wooden barrier and went sailing down into the chamber.
It was one of those moments where time slowed down, yet I could not react quickly enough to avoid disaster—like those dreams where you’re trying to run but your legs are leaden and you can’t move, even though Piers Morgan is right behind you.
“No, no, no, no, no!” I said, too loudly.
I jumped to my feet and looked down in time to see my phone slap hard against the besuited and athletic chest of Vladimir Popov—the government chief whip and a notorious sadomasochist. I was a dead man walking.
Popov looked down at my phone, now on the ground.
It was in one piece, but that was little comfort.
The chief whip’s head turned skywards. His steely gaze locked onto me.
“Sorry!” I mouthed, my hands clutching the sides of my face in a gesture of supplication and apology that suggested if he wanted me to snap my own neck right now, I’d be happy to do so.
Popov bent down and picked up my phone. The screen, I noticed, was still unlocked.
Popov began scrolling through the messages.
“Oh, that’s not good,” a voice said beside me, as if reading my mind.
I turned. In my panic, I hadn’t even checked to see who it was who had just ruined my life.
I was greeted by a disobedient mop of dark curls.
It was that excitable puppet off the telly.
It was Ludo Boche. This overprivileged bellend was haunting my day like the Ghost of Journalism Past. He’d already ruined my morning twice, and now he’d returned to have a crack at my afternoon.
“I wouldn’t want old VladPop reading my DMs,” Ludo added. “Nothing too saucy in there, I hope? His dirt file is so big he literally keeps it on its own server.”
I hate people who use literally when they mean metaphorically.
Red flag. I returned my gaze to the cold-hearted political killer who was currently reading whatever banter Dav, Nick, Stav, Jumaane, and Petey were enjoying.
I shuddered at the thought. We had just been talking about Jumaane’s waxed arsehole.
As he scrolled, Popov’s shoulders bounced up and down in what I guessed was amusement.
I could hear the (presumably metaphorical) dirt file server whirring into action.
Could he really just do this? Was there no way to stop him reading my private group chat?
“He’s typing,” Ludo said. Holy crap, he was right.
“This is all your fault,” I said.
“My fault?” Ludo turned to me, pushed his round-framed glasses up onto his nose, and swept his curly fringe back with his hand. “How’s this my fault?”
“How is this not your fault?”
“All I did was sit down.”
“You didn’t. You threw yourself down like a sack of potatoes and turned the rest of us into a game of press gallery whack-a-mole.”
“No one told me the seat was booby-trapped!” His arms entered the electrocuted-puppet mode I recognised from Wake Up Britain.
“Why didn’t you use your brain?” I said, somewhat unfairly.
“Why didn’t you hold on to your phone tighter?” he said, somewhat fairly. I didn’t really have an answer to that.
“Look, I’m sorry!” he said, saving me from a fight I wanted to have but couldn’t feasibly win. “It’s my first time here. I’m Ludovic Boche. From the Sentinel. I’m new.”
He held out his hand, a bit gingerly, as if I might take the opportunity to pull his arm right out of the socket or fling him bodily into the chamber.
I looked at his hand, considering whether to shake it or wave my hand over it to see if I could find the strings.
When I shook it, his hand was soft but the grip was firm.
His skin was olive against my pale hand.
I lifted my gaze to meet his and lost myself in his eyes for a moment.
They were a vivid blue. Deep like ink, but sparkly like sapphires.
“Sunny Miller,” I said, suddenly aware I’d been shaking his hand for an uncomfortably long time without saying anything. “The Bulletin,” I added.
“Oh, the Bulletin…” he said. I could see on his face he was trawling his brain for something nice to say about the paper but coming up short. “Nice phone hacking” wouldn’t really cut it. Although it would be accurate.
“Yes,” I said, letting my hand slide out of his. “And before you ask, no. I can’t get you the phone number of yesterday’s page-three girl.”
“Shame,” he said. “What about the number of the bloke with the big balls on page five?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. Then I was annoyed with myself for laughing.
This bellend had ruined my day three times now.
Still, it seemed wise to be charitable. In an industry as small as the print media, it was never a good idea to make enemies of another reporter.
Careers took people in all kinds of directions, and you never knew when someone might become your colleague, your boss, or your key to promotion.
It was another reason why it was also a terrible idea to sleep with any of them.
“Congratulations on your big scoop,” I said. It hurt to say it.
Ludo smiled and thanked me. Several other journos plonked themselves down onto the bench, taking their places for PMQs.
I nodded hello to those I knew. Ludo introduced himself to those he didn’t.
As he leant across to shake hands along the row of reporters, I found myself staring at his arse.
For a skinny lad, it was Instagrammably phat.
I had to force myself to look away before my name got added to some kind of list of people they warn new staffers about.
The atmosphere in the House had changed.
The prime minister had entered the chamber and taken his seat.
The speaker rose to make an announcement, and the volume settled to a low, respectful murmur.
I looked down at Popov, who craned his neck around to catch sight of me.
He made a series of hand signals that I took to mean “Meet me in the lobby outside the chamber after PMQs.” I sensed there was going to be a high price for this little accident.
I nodded at the chief whip and sat back down.
Ludo was already hunched over his notepad, one hand jotting something down in the laziest shorthand I’d ever seen, the other trying to sweep his disobedient hair behind his ear.
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. The muscles of his jawline tightened and relaxed.
He had a small constellation of moles on his neck and cheek. Proper sexy.
The leader of the opposition got to her feet to ask the first question. I put the nib of my pen against the fresh white page of my notepad.
“Was the prime minister aware of plans to build a nuclear power plant at Newton Bardon in Leicestershire?” she asked. “When did he become aware of the plans, and when was he planning to tell the rest of us?”
The government benches burst into sham outrage, and opposition MPs bellowed cries of “shame.” The great pantomime of democracy had begun. The opposition leader had asked the big question of the day, and everyone wanted to hear the answer.
* * *
As PMQs dragged on and question after question hinged on what the opposition was now calling the “grubby backroom deal” to build a new nuclear power plant in my hometown, the shine on Ludo’s pretty boy looks tarnished.
I started to get angry. This story could have been my big break.
It had genuine national significance—something to get me noticed up and down Fleet Street.
Something, at the very least, to get JT off my back.
I couldn’t believe none of my contacts back home had tipped me off.
If I couldn’t land an exclusive like this one, maybe JT was right.
It also pissed me off that an old friend of Ludo’s father, or someone who used to bugger him senseless in the rowing shed at Eton, had more than likely dropped the story to him.
This gold-gilded whalluper was living my dream, and it had all been handed to him on a plate.
I had plenty of good reasons to hate him.
It was going to take much more than an adorable, mutinous boy band fringe and eyes you could drown in to convince me otherwise.