Chapter 35 Sunny
Sunny
Having successfully navigated Maxime’s elevator and Jonty’s door list, I found myself unsuccessfully looking for Ludo among the noisy partygoers and the swirling waitstaff offering trays of drinks and canapés.
There must have been several hundred people, all dressed in their glad rags like they were off to the opera.
I felt slightly underdone in my rolled-up white shirtsleeves and skinny black tie, chosen to match my black skinny jeans.
The Converse trainers were definitely a mistake.
Ludo hadn’t told me to dress like we were off to a wedding.
This was a fundraiser for a rodent. I had thought the place would be filled with the kind of people who make jam from their own allotment, not the kind of people who bulldoze allotments to build skyscrapers.
At least the crowd wasn’t too Westminstery.
I hadn’t spotted any MPs, just Torsten Beaumont-Flattery, and I guessed he was only there because he knew Jonty from school.
He was standing in a corner, deep in conversation with a tall blond man I didn’t recognise.
I found myself in front of a display of information about the hazel dormouse, pretending I found the literature absorbing.
I was just about to ask a waiter for a pen to fix some of the grammar when a pair of hands clasped over my eyes and voice from behind me said “Guess who?”
“Noted Hollywood chameleon Meryl Streep?”
Ludo let his hands drop, and I turned around to face him.
By this point I was expecting to see him wearing a tuxedo, looking like Timothée Chalamet auditioning for the part of James Bond, but in fact, he was dressed almost identically to me, only in black leather shoes and chinos.
Not even a jumper. On closer inspection, he looked slightly dishevelled.
I kissed him on the cheek, unsure what the correct etiquette was for greeting each other at a public event, given our unclear relationship status.
Let’s be honest, mostly I just didn’t want Ludo’s parents’ first impression of me to involve interrupting a snog with their son.
“I couldn’t find you,” I said.
“I know, I’m sorry. Bit of an accident. Jersey’s a write-off, I’m afraid. Unless you know the secret to getting espresso martini out of cashmere?”
“Funnily enough, they didn’t cover that at the school I went to. Might be why Ofsted marked us down so hard. Although the knife violence might also have had something to do with it, to be fair.”
Ludo paused, clearly tossing up whether I was being serious before deciding the safest bet was to plough on.
“So, I was in the gents, drying my shirt under the hand dryer. I hope you weren’t too bored.”
“Did you know the French call the hazel dormouse the rat-d’or?” I said, showing off my freshly acquired knowledge. “And in Suffolk they call them sleep-meece, which is proper cute and makes me really like the people of Suffolk.”
“Golly, you were bored. I’m so sorry.”
“Who’s that talking to Beaumont-Flattery?” I asked, pointing at the tall blond gentleman in his mid-fifties. Ludo looked around, locating his high school crush with instant, laser-like accuracy that was either adorable or cause for concern.
“That’s Dirk Windhoek. Carstairs’s husband. Do you want to meet him?”
I declined. I wasn’t ready to give up having Ludo all to myself tonight just yet.
“Golly, you haven’t even got a drink. What appalling hosts. I’m sorry. Let me—”
Ludo’s arms were starting to move like a puppet’s.
I grabbed his hand before he could run away from me and told him to stop apologising.
He pushed his glasses up onto his nose, and anticipating the second half of his trademark twitch, I pulled him closer and pushed his hair behind his ear for him. It bounced back out. I tried again.
“It’s totally ungovernable, I’m afraid,” he said. “There’s a knack to it.” He showed me how it was done, twisting the curl and popping it behind his ear.
“See?” he said. It bounced back out again. I giggled.
“I see.” I reached for the unruly curl, twisted it, and brushed it behind his ear. It held firm. He grinned. I pecked him on the lips. He tasted like coffee and alcohol. I grabbed his hand and held it.
“Shall we get a drink and make small talk with some of these dormouse people?” I suggested.
Ludo nodded, although I imagined we were both more enthusiastic about the first part of the plan than the second.
By the time we found a waiter and had scored a couple of glasses of champagne, Ludo’s curls were on the loose again.
* * *
Half an hour later Ludo and I found ourselves chatting to a couple who looked exactly like the kind of people I’d expected to find at an event for an obscure endangered rodent.
Where most of the crowd were suited and booted, Leaf and Karma were tie-dyed and flip-flopped.
I had sort of gravitated towards them out of journalistic instinct.
They were clearly the most interesting people in the room.
As it turned out, I didn’t know the half of it.
As it also turned out, they came from my neck of the woods.
“Do I detect a slight Leicester accent there, Sunny?” Leaf asked. He said my name the way my mum says my name, with two soft o’s and an eh on the end, and it made me warm to him immediately. I told him it was.
“Grew up on the Wickwar Estate,” I said, my childhood accent returning to soak my vowels and rinse away my practised way of speaking.
“We run a retreat just outside Melbourne,” Karma said.
“Australia?” Ludo asked, a little slow on the uptake.
“Derbyshire,” Leaf explained. “Just up the road from Leicester.” Ludo blushed. I lightly rubbed his back, letting him know it was OK. He leant back into my hand, so I held it there, pressed into him, the heat of his body against my fingers.
“We do reiki, spiritual healing, chakra balancing, qigong, pranic and crystal healing. You name it, really,” Karma continued.
“I do yoga, actually,” I said, chipping in what little relevant personal experience I had.
(I didn’t volunteer that I did my yoga in a room of naked gay men.
I felt that might give the wrong impression.
Although, to be fair, that wrong impression was exactly why Jumaane and I had joined in the first place.) We chatted about the retreat for a while; then, like a moth drawn irresistibly to a flame, I asked Leaf and Karma what they made of the near miss with the nuclear power plant that had nearly been built less than ten miles down the road.
“What do you mean, near miss?” Karma said. “It’s still going ahead.”
Ludo and I exchanged glances.
“And it’s totally unnecessary,” Leaf added. “We don’t need it. We should be going renewable. Wind, small-scale hydro, heat pumps, solar. But the politicians will prioritise the big end of town, not the planet.”
“But the nuclear plant deal is off,” I said.
“Only the Belarusian deal,” Leaf said. “It’s still going ahead. Just with a different company.”
“You sound very certain,” Ludo said. “The government hasn’t even legislated for the committee that will approve the projects yet.”
“You think Carstairs is going to wait for some committee?” Leaf said. “No, this is a done deal.”
Ludo straightened up, and I let my hand fall from his back.
“Are you sure?” I said. My heart was racing. If Leaf and Karma were right, this was big news indeed. “Do you have any evidence?”
Leaf nodded. “The government is about to do a deal with a company called ZephEnergies Limited. Their website says they’re a renewables company, but that’s just greenwashing.”
ZephEnergies Limited. I’d seen that name in the file in Vladimir Popov’s constituency office.
I cursed myself for not having read what the letter said.
I’d been too panicked, too rushed. I looked at Ludo.
His eyes were on (metaphorical) stalks. If what Leaf was saying was true, it was explosive—which is not a word to use lightly when you’re talking about nuclear power plants.
“You’ve seen paperwork?” Ludo asked. “You’ve got copies?”
“Goodness yes,” Leaf said.
“Where’d you get them?” I asked. Leaf said nothing. He pointed at Karma, who was smiling and blushing in equal measure.
“I dabble on the dark web,” she said.
I looked at Ludo. His eyes had turned a piercing ice blue. He nodded. We both knew what we had. A massive story—if the evidence stacked up.
Through the sound system came a posh voice I took to be Jonty Boche, welcoming guests to the fundraiser and reminding everyone to pop their business cards into the bowl on the bar for a chance to win “the rat-d’or prize.
” The formal part of the event was kicking off.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and handed it to Karma.
“Can we get your number?” I asked.
* * *
After the speeches, several free glasses of champagne, and a good hour of patient small talk with random guests, there was still no sign of Ludo’s parents anywhere.
Had I got off scot-free? We escaped to what we thought was a suitably private and darkened corner.
Massive tactical error. Meeting Hugo and Beverley Barker-Boche would have been intimidating even in the ideal circumstances.
Meeting them when you’ve got their son pressed against the wall of a nightclub, one hand up his shirt and your tongue down his throat, was, let’s just say, not the classiest first impression I had ever made.
Hugo cleared his throat. I looked up, saw the editor of one of the nation’s most respected daily newspapers, and stopped groping his son.
I jumped back. Ludo shoved his glasses back on.
We straightened ourselves and stood upright like we were two of the von Trapp children, ready for inspection.
OK, problematic analogy, but that’s the gist.
“Friend of yours?” Hugo asked. Ludo fiddled fruitlessly with the long curls of his fringe, trying to mash them into place behind his ear.
“Are you going to introduce us, sweetheart?” Beverley said, playing good cop to Hugo’s bad cop. Ludo seemed stunned into silence. I didn’t know what to say.
“Hello, Sunny,” Hugo said. “Sunny Miller, this is my wife, Beverley. The mother of the young man whose entire face you’ve just had inside your mouth.
Beverley, this is Sunny Miller of the Bulletin and, most recently, our son’s tonsils.
Sunny’s currently enjoying five minutes of notoriety for standing outside Downing Street during this week’s reshuffle and shouting ‘The PM changes your briefs more often than you do’ at old Tubby Kerslake. ”
I swallowed a laugh. I still found it hilarious.
“That was you!” Beverley shrieked. “I say! Well done.”
“Deeply unfair. Tubby is a first-rate chap,” Hugo said, his face stern. “Known him since school.”
Of course he had.
“Second-rate minister, though, you have to admit,” Beverley said. Hugo’s face did not admit any such thing. I put out my hand and shook Beverley’s and Hugo’s in turn.
“Good to see you, Hugo,” I said. “Lovely to meet you, Mrs Boche.”
“Barker-Boche,” Hugo corrected.
“Call me Beverley, please.” She was still playing the good cop.
Maybe she was just a genuinely nice person?
From her demeanour, you’d never guess she produced a TV show that attracted six million viewers each Monday night and had brought down entire governments with its investigations.
Beverley wielded her power more subtly than her husband. At least in a nightclub scenario.
“Sorry about that,” I said, pointing my thumb over my shoulder towards the scene of the kissing crime. “I’m… from the Midlands.”
Beverley laughed a full-throated laugh, and I was relieved my joke had landed. Mums always love me. She leant in conspiratorially.
“Well, I’m from Hampshire, and unless things have changed in the last thirty years, we snog in nightclubs down there too. Only don’t tell my mother.”
Hugo seemed less impressed.
“Nothing to say for yourself, Ludo?”
Ludo said nothing for himself.
“So, how long has this”—Hugo waggled a finger back and forth between us—“been going on?”
I wasn’t sure whether Hugo just didn’t like me or whether he was also worried I’d compromise his son, that perhaps I was just getting close to him to try to steal leads on stories.
It was precisely why journos shouldn’t date other journos.
I could smell the sense of professional competition on him.
I didn’t know how to reply. Why was Ludo not speaking?
Had he been cryogenically frozen in situ?
“I bet it was Shetland,” Beverley said. “Ludo came back from that trip a completely different young man from the one who went up there. Didn’t I say to you, Hugo, I said I think Ludo’s met someone special.”
Hugo grunted.
“Ludo, why don’t you bring Sunny over for dinner next Friday night?” Beverley said. “With any luck Uncle Ben will be out of hospital by then, and we can have a double celebration.”
The word celebration felt premature, a little too serious, a little bit too big. The situation was spinning out of our control.
“It’s already a double celebration, Beverley,” Hugo said. “It’s the night before the coronation, remember.”
I looked at Ludo. The decision was up to him. He smiled from ear to ear.
“I’d love to,” I said, and with all my heart I meant it.
“Any special dietary requirements?” Hugo sneered. “Nut allergy? Vegan, perhaps?”
“I’m just an old-fashioned red meat–eating republican.”
Beverley laughed. Hugo’s eyes boggled. I felt Ludo’s fingers dig into my back.
A few minutes later, party arrangements confirmed, Hugo and Beverley wandered off to make small talk about the rat-d’or with rich folk.
I placed my hands on Ludo’s hips and guided him back to our spot against the wall.
His shirt was untucked, and I slid my fingers up onto the soft skin of his waist. It sent electricity through me, touching this smooth, hidden flesh.
“Now, where were we?” I went to kiss him, but Ludo pulled away, putting a finger to my lips.
“Shall we… go?” he said.
I couldn’t say yes quickly enough.
As we waited for the lift, I saw a large glass goldfish bowl filled with business cards, with a sign that said, “Leave your card for a chance to win our rat-d’or prize!
” The prize was a weekend away at the Pranayama Retreat, Melbourne.
I pulled a battered old business card from my wallet and tossed it in.
I was feeling lucky. The elevator dinged.
I put my arm around Ludo and waited for the doors to slide open.