Chapter 50
Sunny
The weekend was tense while we waited for news from Summer, Leaf, and Karma. On Saturday afternoon, almost twenty-fours into Operation Atomic Kitten (a name Ludo point-blank refused to use but I thought was five-stars-very-clever), we finally got a text.
Karma: All mostly going to plan. Not really a hiccup, just a surprise. T & S seem to have a deep and genuine spiritual connection.
Well, yes, I thought. Put single naked He-Man and single vegan She-Ra in a confined space for a weekend and give them nothing but fluffy white towels and essential oils to play with, and some kind of deep connection does seem like the logical outcome.
Karma: S says T’s an old soul who feels things very deeply. He’s holding on to a lot of trauma from past lives. She’s determined to help him discover a new inner peace.
Imagine hanging on to trauma from past lives.
It was bad enough dealing with the crap that happened to us in this one.
Like dealing with a father who bought a one-way bus ticket to fuck-knows-wheresville before I was even born, or being the queer ginger smart-arse in a community where being just one of those things is enough to get you lamped on a daily basis.
Sunny: Any news on the Newton Bardon plant?
It was only a slightly impatient message.
Karma: Nothing specific. But T’s soul is clearly troubled about it.
Twenty-four hours later, Karma messaged again.
Karma: Long reiki session this morning to promote healing and guide the flow of T’s life force energy. He has decided to pay to stay a couple more days to complete a gonging course and crystal healing. He is so receptive to therapy.
This was bloody agony.
Karma: T & S forming a beautiful bond. What a blessing it is to witness two souls that clearly recognise each other from a past life reunite like this. We feel he was meant to find us.
It was like watching one of those TV shows where they build up the big reveal, then cut to an ad break. I was ready to jump on a train to Derbyshire and strangle Karma with my bare hands, and I didn’t care how it buggered up my chakras.
Karma: Nothing else to report.
The good news was that we now had a couple more days up our sleeves for Summer to find out the information we needed. Assuming Summer was still on our team, which I was starting to feel unsure about. I needed a backup plan. It was time to deploy another time-honoured tabloid trick.
* * *
Bin day was a Tuesday in the part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea where Jemima Carstairs and Dirk Windhoek lived.
Which was how I found myself parked up just off Gloucester Road in Jumaane’s battered and cold Vauxhall Astra on a drizzly Monday night, working my way through a box of Tesco Express Krispy Kremes, waiting for the lights to go off in the Carstairs-Windhoek household.
It was one in the morning before the windows finally plunged into darkness and I got my chance to go dumpster-diving in search of incriminating documents.
Half an hour after lights out, dressed in latex gloves and an old black hoodie, I was in full cat burglar mode, trying to silently get the lid off the first bin.
It was an old-school metal trash can. Who even owned one of these except Oscar the Grouch?
I found chicken bones, potato peelings, and plastic wrappers, but no documents.
I abandoned it, leaving the bin on the side and the lid off so it would look like foxes had done the damage.
The second bin was filled with recycling, but no papers.
My last chance was a black bin liner, top tied in a knot, resting against the fence.
When I picked it up, it was suspiciously light—and squishy like a pillow.
I tore a little hole in the side. It was filled with shredded paper.
“Bingo.”