Chapter 12
Ludo
I sat on the bench outside Miss Tuppence’s Ballet School, teaching done for the day.
My sunglasses were firmly on. In one hand I held a hair-of-the-dog glass of champagne, in the other, my phone.
I flicked through GayHoller. It had been a deathly long morning.
There had been some pursed lips and hushed comments of disapproval from parents of kids in every age group, from the tots to the teens.
“You’re hung-over, Mr Boche,” one mother said, holding her hands over her daughter’s ears.
“And yet, here I am. Looking fabulous and giving a BAFTA-worthy performance as an upstanding dance educator.”
“These children are seven years old.”
“And as long as they’re not hung-over, I don’t see the problem.”
In truth, I had done everything I could to not be hung-over.
When I got home at two, I’d consumed enough electrolytes to reboot a dead Romanian powerlifter.
The problem was I’d had a terrible sleep.
Try as I might, I had been unable to get my argument with Sunny Miller out of my mind.
I still couldn’t. As I sat in the meek April sunshine, saccharine fizz tickling my nose, I kept going over and over everything Sunny had said, everything I’d said, trying to play it differently.
In some versions, I put the boot in harder, giving him a good verbal kicking.
In others, I avoided the fight altogether.
I kept my mouth shut. Or I took a different tone, tried a more reasoned argument, talked through the issues like an adult.
But I kept landing back at angry, so I resolved to have nothing whatsoever to do with him.
I quaffed my bubbles and returned my attention to my phone.
That’s when I noticed Sunny Miller had unblocked me on GayHoller.
“Well, that’s confusing,” I muttered.