Chapter 33 Sunny
Sunny
We were in new and sketchy territory. I had broken the golden rule and got myself involved with another journalist. I had crossed the Rubik’s cube, and there was no going back.
(For the record, I know the expression is “cross the Rubicon” but my nanna always used to say Rubik’s cube, and using her old malapropisms makes me feel like she’s still around.)
Although I had wanted to kiss him, I had not intended to kiss Ludo.
It had just sort of happened. He was so adorably flustered, and there he was, with his bruised face and his glasses still held together with Band-Aids, and, well, his two modes are absolute joy and absolute chaos, and I guess I thought if I kissed him, it might help flick the switch back from chaos to joy.
It had worked. But it had flicked a switch inside me too.
And if I hadn’t been able to get Ludo out of my mind before, now I could barely think about anything else.
For whatever reason, Ludo hadn’t been posted outside Downing Street.
The Sentinel had sent Ford Goodall, thank goodness, or I might have struggled to get any work done at all.
Reshuffles might be long days, but they are also quite good fun.
Politicians go through the famous black doorway to learn their fate, faces either stubbornly blank or a rictus, walking like they’ve forgotten how to walk, and come out again either looking smugly self-satisfied or quietly seething.
When the cabinet appointments eventually began, the big winner was Bimpe Lasisi. She went through the door an education minister and came out as home secretary.
“I thank my Lord Jesus for giving me this opportunity to serve,” she said as she walked down Downing Street, dressed for church, to her waiting car. Rafiq Farouq nudged me in the ribs. He leant over to whisper in my ear, so his comments wouldn’t get picked up by the TV microphones.
“Bruv, she thanked Jesus,” he said. “Who she think live in that building, you know what I’m sayin?”
The next to go in was Jemima Carstairs, who entered No.
10 as environment secretary and left as both environment secretary and energy secretary.
The PM was creating a new mega-department to drive delivery of the UK’s net zero commitments.
Vladimir Popov was to remain chief whip.
He walked into No. 10 looking like the Terminator, face betraying nothing, and walked out of No.
10 looking like the Terminator, face betraying nothing.
The Bulletin being the Bulletin, I had an additional responsibility on days like this.
It was the other reason I was glad Ludo wasn’t there.
When the more notorious, scandal-prone or underperforming ministers came out from their meeting with the prime minister—puffy-eyed or with a face like thunder, at the lowest point of their political careers—it was my job to shout something devastating at them, and to do so loud enough for all the TV cameras to pick up, in the hopes of getting a reaction.
“Did calling the leader of the opposition a MILF cost you your job, Mr Cocksgrew? Is it true you thought ‘hot mic’ was an OnlyFans channel?”
“Do you regret spending taxpayers’ dollars paying illegal immigrants to power-wash your stables, Lord Busted-Flush? Did the PM sack you today, or did he hose you out with the K?rcher?”
“Is it true you were fired for drinking the PM’s wine fridge dry, Mrs Tipple? What’s that tucked under your arm? Is that a nice bottle of Pinot Noir? Does the PM know you’ve got that, Mrs Tipple?”
It’s not an honourable way to make a living, but the best ones always get cut up and used by LBC Radio, Channel Three, and Private Eye.
Sometimes, if you hit the right note, the BBC might even use one.
It’s a cheap thrill, but it is exactly the kind of behaviour that makes the public, not to mention politicians, despise reporters.
If I’m honest, I really enjoy it. It’s a chance to tell the politicians what the people really think of them, to hold them to account for poor behaviour and remind them that power is briefly held and shouldn’t be taken for granted.
When it was all over, I leant against the railings next to Rafiq, who was sucking on a vape.
“I heard you been lipsing Ludo Boche.”
My jaw swung open like a creaky gate.
“Who told you that?”
Rafiq winked, chuffing out vapour like a kettle.
“Good on you, fam,” he said.
“You don’t think it’s a bad idea?” I asked, relieved to have someone to talk to about it. “We only kissed once, but we’ve been flirty messaging ever since, and I’ve said yes to a date on Saturday.”
“Why would that be a bad idea, bruv?”
“Because, well, the only thing we have in common is what we do for a job, and that’s, like, a big reason why we shouldn’t be doing this at all.”
“Is it, bruv?”
“Don’t you think? I mean, I can’t imagine taking him home to meet me mum.”
“Have more faith in your old lady,” Rafiq said. “And in Ludo, for that matter. But what’s the hurry, bruv? You in’t getting hitched just yet. Calm your tits. You in’t had your date yet.”
He had a point.
“So, you think going on a date is OK?”
“Gotta shoot your shot, fam.” Those were the same words he’d used at karaoke. His smile was broad and toothy. There was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. I realised I’d been played.
“No one told you I’d kissed Ludo at all, did they,” I said. “You just guessed.”
Rafiq shrugged, winked at me for the second time in a minute, and sucked back on his vape. I’d just been schooled in grubby tabloid interview techniques by a reporter from the Guardian. How embarrassing.
* * *
On Wednesday, I was back at the Houses of Parliament bureau and, for my sins, covering PMQs.
As the new cabinet jostled and jockeyed for the best position on the front bench (a competition won by Bimpe Lasisi, who sat there like the mother of the bride at a wedding), someone slid, very gently, onto the seat beside me.
I didn’t need to look up to see who it was.
The smell of warm linen made my heart skip.
Ludo playfully nudged his shoulder into mine. I gently nudged him back.
“Did I do it right this time?”
“You mean by not launching my phone into the chamber and nearly killing an MP? You’ll be a pro in no time.”
As the pantomime played out in the chamber below, from our perch high above it all, Ludo and I scribbled into our notepads.
There was real spirit in the House. A government energised by change but uncertain in its new skin, and an opposition that tasted blood in the water.
The prime minister bellowed and decried.
Lasisi waved her arms in the air like a Pentecostal minister.
The opposition leader shook her head and shouted across the dispatch box.
Carstairs waved her order papers in her perfectly manicured hands and cried “Shame!” There was a riot down below, but up in the rafters, among the bat droppings and dead Hansard reporters, sat two journalists from different newspapers who were calmly going about their craft, letting their knees touch under the table.