Chapter 32
Ludo
The last place I felt like being was the office, but Father had insisted my punishment stood.
Fortunately, that frightful bore Bob Wynn-Jones resigned at eight o’clock on Sunday morning.
It had been inevitable. It was a welcome distraction.
It made for a busy shift in the Sentinel’s Westminster bureau, but despite being incredibly tired, having a face that was more purple than pink and a phone full of missed calls from an unknown number, and being incredibly distracted by Uncle Ben’s situation, I was confident I had everything under control.
Until, that is, the prime minister went ahead and announced that rather than just replacing his energy secretary, he would be holding a general cabinet reshuffle on the coming Tuesday.
All hell broke loose. It had roughly the same effect as slipping amphetamines into the water supply of an old folks’ home.
Suddenly, sleepy Sunday Westminster was buzzing with frantic energy.
Ford Goodall, our political editor and a man whose personality would be greatly improved by amphetamines in the water supply, came into the office on his day off to write the lead stories and the analysis pieces on the reshuffle.
That left me to cover the Wynn-Jones resignation itself.
I began working the phones, calling Wynn-Jones’s political enemies, looking for any gossip I could get, before moving on to his allies.
I’d just been hung up on, yet again, when someone knocked on the bureau door.
Ford covered the mouthpiece of his phone.
“Come in,” he called.
The door opened, and there stood Sunny Miller, wearing sneakers and a slouchy grey tracksuit that had “lazy Sunday” written all over it. Not literally, you understand. That was the general vibe. What on earth was he doing here? He looked sheepish.
“I thought you might need coffee,” he said, producing a small cardboard tray with two small takeaway coffee cups. It looked remarkably like an olive branch. “Can I come in?”
Ford was on the phone, working his contacts, so I didn’t think that was a good idea. Whatever was about to be said, Ford didn’t need to hear it.
“How about I come out?” I suggested. I nodded to Ford and pointed at the door, indicating I was going out for a minute. He nodded back and waved goodbye to Sunny without breaking off from his phone call.
The corridor was busy with reporters bustling to and fro, half of them looking hung-over and ropeable that they’d been called in, the other half looking thrilled to have got out of ferrying their kids to football matches or horse riding lessons or whatever familial horrors Sunday usually entailed.
Sunny plucked a coffee out of the tray and passed it to me.
Our fingers touched as the paper cup slid from his hand into mine, sending a little charge through me.
“Thanks,” I said. I suggested we go for a walk, rather than loiter outside the bureau.
“I’m sorry about your uncle Ben,” he said. I tried to smile. “Any news from the hospital?”
“Nothing yet today. Mummy is going in after lunch. She’ll update us afterwards.”
Sunny nodded, his expression uncertain.
After a few paces I felt his hand on my elbow. We stopped on a threadbare bit of carpet, and he pulled me gently around to face him.
“I’m sorry,” Sunny said. “About the text. It was me who was bang out of order. I just—”
“You weren’t to know what was going on.”
“I tried to call you last night.”
My heart skipped. Sunny’s hand was hot against my elbow. His peridot eyes looked sad, tired, intense.
“That was you?” I smiled, my mind racing with what this meant.
“I wanted to apologise. And I thought you might need to talk.”
“Jolly thoughtful of you,” I said. “Sorry. My phone was on silent and, um, I knocked myself out with half a Valium to get some sleep.”
Inviting me to meet his friends, digging up my phone number for late-night emotional support, bringing me surprise coffee?
My quickening pulse pounded through the bruise at my temple.
We ambled slowly along the hallway towards the Victoria Tower, which is the stately mock-Gothic home of the vellum parchments on which Government Acts are still written (because we’re English and we can’t rush these things).
It would have been romantic, if it didn’t smell of damp and dead rodents, and if one of us wasn’t dressed like an ad for Box Menswear.
“Have you been called in because of the reshuffle?” I asked.
“No, I just thought you might need coffee. You haven’t had much sleep.”
“You came all the way from Willesden Green just to bring me coffee?”
He nodded. “I did.”
“You’re so sweet. Insane, but very sweet.” My heart was racing now, my fingers jittery around the cup. At the end of the corridor, I led Sunny down the coiling stairs to the floor below, which was when I slipped, sending my coffee flying over my shoulder like it had been fired out of a trebuchet.
“It’s OK! I’m OK,” I said.
“I’m not.”
I turned around to see the front of Sunny’s joggers covered in coffee.
“Buggery bollocks! I am so sorry.” Flustered, I began brushing at his sweatpants with my hands, as if that might get the coffee out.
“That’s my crotch, Ludo,” Sunny said. “Again.”
I nearly died.
“Oh… bugger me sideways! Ruddy hell! I am so, so sorry.”
“Hey, don’t mention it,” he said. He was a couple of steps higher than me, making him monstrously tall.
I was still staring at his coffee-stained groin.
Sunny put a finger under my chin, gently tilting my head until our eyes met.
The tenderness of the gesture made my knees weak.
Outside, the sun must have come out from behind a cloud.
As the light in the stairwell brightened, fracturing through the stained glass, we were showered in saffron, vermilion, emerald, and cobalt.
It was like standing inside a child’s kaleidoscope.
“I thought something like this might happen,” Sunny said, letting his hand drop from my chin. “So, I factored it into my planning.”
He plucked the second coffee out of the tray and handed it to me.
“This is yours too,” he said.
Water began to well in my eyes.
“Hey, it’s OK,” he said. “It’s just coffee. Trust me, these joggers have been stained by much worse.”
I laughed, sending the tears crashing over the barrier and down my cheeks.
“You’re gross,” I said.
“I wasn’t being gross. If you made that gross, that’s on you.”
Sunny wiped my tears, his fingers cradling my jaw as his thumb swept tenderly over the wet cheek of the non-bruised side of my face.
There was a slight tremble in Sunny’s fingertips.
Our eyes met. I nuzzled my head into his hand, letting him know it was OK, that I wanted this too.
His eyes sparkled, and the corners of his blush-pink lips quivered, ever so slightly.
I took the two steps up towards him. The kaleidoscope turned.
We were bathed in gold, ruby, and sapphire, but I was drowning in peridot.
Sunny’s fingers slid up into my hair, pulling my face closer to his.
I heard him drop the cardboard coffee tray on the floor.
His hand found my waist. Then, suddenly, we were kissing.
Sunny’s lips were soft and gentle at first, then firmer, more passionate, but always deliberate, searching, savouring.
He cradled my face with both hands, and between kisses, he breathed in deeply, like he was trying to draw in the whole moment, to take it inside him, make it a part of him.
Like this was something that he had yearned for, ached for.
Like he wanted to remember every second of it, in case it never happened again.
At least I hoped that’s how he felt, because that’s how it felt for me.
I had wrapped my arm around him, settling my hand in the small of his back, holding his hips close to mine, as we kissed longer and deeper.
And all the while I had this bally coffee cup in my other hand.
I reached out to rest it on the windowsill, to free myself to hold Sunny as completely as he was holding me.
Eyes closed, returning every caress of the tongue and the lips, I struggled to find the sill.
Once. Twice. Three times, I missed. Sod it.
I gave up, dropping the cup. It could fend for itself.
I heard it land on the stone step, the coffee splashing and gushing down the stairs.
I didn’t care. I wrapped my arm around Sunny’s back and held him tightly.
Then his mouth tightened and his shoulders began to bounce up and down.
He let his hands slide down to my waist. We opened our eyes.
My glasses were terribly smudged, but I could see that he was smiling broadly.
“You’re a menace to society, you know that?” Sunny said. He was laughing.
“Sorry,” I said. “That was a waste of coffee.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he said. Sunny pulled me into a hug, enveloping me in his arms, holding me tightly.
It felt safe, reassuring, solid. I looped my arms around his back and nuzzled into his neck, kissing the soft, freckled skin of his hairline, feeling the warmth of his body wrapped in mine, inhaling the smell of him—the intoxicating wood and citrus aromas of his cologne, and, if I was honest, a thick smell of coffee.
“What does this mean?” I said, finally.
Sunny pulled away ever so slightly. Enough to let our eyes meet. We considered each other for a moment. Outside, the sun must have gone back behind a cloud, because the colours of the stained glass began to mute and dull.
“It means I better go find a mop and a bucket before someone kills themselves on these stairs,” Sunny said. “And it means next time, I’ll bring three coffees. Just to be safe.”
“I mean this, Sunny. What does this mean?”
I could see him pulling away, both physically and emotionally.
I felt my heart sink, fearing the worst—that this was a one-off moment, a mistake, a test, perhaps.
Something to brush away and forget. Sunny must have read my thoughts on my face.
He stepped back from our embrace, but I grabbed his hands in mine.
“Don’t overthink it,” Sunny said. “You’ve got a lot on your plate right now. We don’t have to name whatever this is just yet.”
But my mind was racing, needing to put a pin in this moment, to label it, to define what it was. I couldn’t just leave it there. I needed something to hold on to, something that confirmed this wasn’t a one-off, that this mattered.
“Are you free Saturday night?” I said, in a flash of inspiration.
“Can be.”
“Do you want to come to a thing with me? It’s one of Jonty’s fundraisers. The people will be unbearable bores who’ll probably get massively on your wick, but it’s for the Hazel Dormouse Protection Trust, you see, and they’re—”
“An endangered species? Yes, I think you might have mentioned it once.”
“Will you come?”
Sunny beamed.
“I’d love to come,” he said, and I felt instant relief.
Then he leant in and kissed me again.