Chapter 8 #3
“Making progress?” he asked casually.
I looked a smidge to my left. His crotch was beside my face. The outline of what was in his shorts would be obvious from space.
I cleared my throat a second time and bent down further to peer determinedly at my screen. “Yup, got through some thorny bits,” I said. “Hortensia should be pleased with the edits. Think I’ll be ahead of the deadline too.”
I dared to dart a look back over my shoulder. Still there. Neither of us mentioned that Ollie seemed to be sporting a semi, which I could have sketched in thorough detail through the gossamer fabric of his running shorts.
“Your shoulders are tight,” Ollie said in his low gravitas voice. “Do you want me to rub them?”
Oh, God, I wanted him to break me in half. But no, he was an ex for a reason. This domestic routine may have been lovely – a parody of how well we had got along when we lived together – we had never been this nice to each other.
I was about to answer when there was another crash. Oh, thank God! The cats. I jumped up and nearly hit Ollie in the dick with my shoulder as I did. “Gotta go see what they’ve broken now!” I said and departed the room.
That night, Nigella rang and gave some much-needed good news. “Jed’s been taken off life support and is breathing unaided!”
“Sweet baby Jesus, what a relief,” I said. Ollie came in from the kitchen, where he was making … something … involving salmon and looked inquisitively at me. “Jed,” I mouthed.
He gave a thumbs up and walked back into the kitchen.
“Yes, he’s obviously not out of the woods yet, but the immediate danger has passed. There are all sorts that can go wrong, and we won’t know about long-term damage until he’s more stable,” she added.
“I’m so glad he’ll be okay.” Truth be told, I’d completely forgotten about Jed, but no one needed to know what a selfish prick I was.
“Have the police made any progress yet?”
She gave a disgruntled sigh. “Not a lick, in my opinion. Roz said they’ve spoken to Doris but it’s not like they’ve been going door-to-door.”
“Do you not think they are taking it seriously?”
“It seems to me they’re treating it as some sort of robbery gone wrong,” she said.
There was a noise from the kitchen. Ollie swore loudly, and a pair of little furry fluffballs both scarpered into the room across the hall. “Cats!” he yelled.
“Who’s there with you?” Nigella asked a little too casually. “I spoke to Verity today – congratulated her on a very well-worded statement – and she said you were at her house in Surrey.”
“Just, um, Ollie,” I said equally as casually.
I could hear her eyebrows going up from here. “Oh, shut up. He’s my friend.”
“Your friend who dumped you for a twenty-two-year-old rather than try and properly work on your problems.”
“That wasn’t what … Nigella,” I asked, “everything okay with your relationship?”
She scoffed. “Of course, Matteo came back as soon as he heard about Jed.”
There was a very pregnant pause as I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.
“Uh-huh. Okay, well, my ear is always available to be talked off if there is something.”
“Not at all changing the subject,” she said, obviously, changing the subject.
“But the number of reporters at your place has thinned out. There was only a couple today. I think – barring any disasters – you’ll be all clear to come back by the weekend.
All these copycat leaks have taken the focus off us and poor Guy.
Did you see what that Northern Irish MP has been getting up to?
Honestly, I can’t work out how it’s pleasurable, but if the washing machine isn’t going to electrocute him, who are we to judge? ”
Ollie came into the room holding a bowl of food in each hand.
“Gotta go. Dinner is served.” I hung up.
He handed me a bowl and turned on the TV to watch the news. I plonked down beside him on the sofa and drew up my feet to sit cross-legged to better hold steady my bowl of salmon on a bed of … “Is this barley?” I asked. “It’s delicious.”
“Great recipe I found on a shredding diet website.”
I rolled my eyes. Ollie caught me and gave my knee a slap. “Oi, you liked it until I said it was healthy.”
I smirked at him and took an extra big bite to show my appreciation.
Fiona Bruce was telling us about the updates in ‘TruthGate’ and said their reporters had been back to the place of the first leak to check the ramifications.
“Four days is barely long enough to judge the effects,” Ollie said, frowning. “Hey, look, it’s your village.”
I groaned as the Fox and Lamprey came up on screen. The reporter was speaking, and then Riz appeared. He was sitting casually on a bench on the village green, looking relaxed in an open-necked linen shirt, his hair gently tousled in the breeze.
“He’s the one you said was getting hitched to the Aberdonian bloke who did your kitchen, right?” Ollie asked. I nodded and hoped he didn’t need any further clarification on how I knew Simon.
I turned the volume up to properly hear the interview. “… But you’re twenty points behind,” the reporter was saying to him. “Labour have never won this seat; your chances of winning are slim-to-none.”
Riz smiled. “Look, I’m not saying the Tory party brought this on themselves, but they have fostered a culture of disunity in the country. We now have people crowing about which party has more leaks about their MPs. This culture comes from the top.”
“That sounds like victim blaming?” the reporter asked.
“I’m merely saying that sometimes the people who have been complaining the loudest have the most responsibility to take.”
Both Ollie and I turned to each other, frowning. “That’s an odd route to take,” I said.
Ollie shrugged. “He’s Labour, they are snakes.”
I rolled my eyes. “I forgot you were Thatcherite to the core.”
“Am not. I’m not pro-Tory. I’m anti-Labour. If there was a viable alternative—”
“The Lib Dems—”
“Pfft,” Ollie snorted.
“The Greens?”
“May as well use my ballot paper to wipe my arse with for all the good it’d do to vote for them.”
“Of course,” I scoffed. “You’re politically homeless.”
“I am! I’m fiscally conservative but socially liberal.”
“You were against Scottish independence,” I reminded him. He’d been furious that he couldn’t vote as he was registered in London.
“So were most of Dumfries!” he said. “I’m proud to be Scottish. In my heart, I wanted an independent Scotland, but my head said no. Too much of a risk.”
“You also want trickle-down effect, benefit cuts, a flat tax rate, and zero checks and balances on the City, not to mention free trade deals with any and every tinpot dictatorship,” I needled him in the way we used to bicker over politics.
“Yeah,” he said through a mouthful of salmon. “But I’m also pro-LGBT rights – and not only gay marriage but the proper stuff that doesn’t affect me as a middle-class white guy – mental health services, AIDS research, homeless shelters for queer youth, trans healthcare.”
I gave him props for finally listening to me talk about all those problems over the years. “Okay, fine.”
“I’m very woke these days. I’m up on all the issues.
I read up all about how Black history isn’t taught in schools, and it blew my mind how we get brainwashed into thinking the British Empire was such a great thing and ignore the slavery and the genocide.
” He turned to me with a big grin on his annoying face.
“I’ve got some great articles on the topic I could share with you if you want to know more about it. ”
I pulled a face. “You did not just comment on how woke you are.”
He was still smirking.
I looked back at the TV. “Wonder why he did that interview?” I asked the room.
Ollie shrugged. “Probably saw an opportunity to make a name for himself. He’s not going to win the seat even though Frobisher has now withdrawn – Lib Dems will take it, but he needs the top dogs at Labour to see he made a fight of it and tried his best, so they’ll give him a seat he can win when the next general election comes about. ”
I turned my nose up. Ollie noticed. “Politics ain’t a clean business, babe.”
I stared at Riz’s handsome face on the TV as he continued to drive his point home. “Ain’t that the truth?”
The next morning did indeed turn out to be hotter than the last. From midday onwards, I had simply given up trying to do anything and instead lain on the floor in the main living room with the curtains drawn and the windows open, and tried not to die from the heat.
Kenny was having the same issue. He was sitting on the tiled floor in the kitchen, huffing to himself in his sleep.
Ollie had caught an early train into London but was due back soon.
He’d said his case was in the morning. I pictured him strutting around Temple in his gown and wig.
It took my mind back to the time on, maybe it was our third or fourth date, when I’d been given the grand tour of the Temple grounds, which had turned into an extremely hot session in Ollie’s tiny office, where we had to try not to knock over his desk while we went at it with people in rooms on either side.
“Don’t make a sound,” he’d pleaded with me as I’d got close.
His eyes bulged, terrified that I was about to scream the place down, but more concerned with the fact that he was about to blow his own load.
The door slammed, and I heard his whistling as he came in. A pair of shoes appeared in my eyeline. “Is the floor comfortable?” he asked, grinning at me as I raised my eyes to meet his.
“Hot air rises,” I answered. “The floor is the only place I can bear to be.”
He laughed and took off his jacket. “I can assure you this house is ten degrees cooler than London and about twenty degrees cooler than the courtroom I’ve been in.
I thought at one stage I was going to faint.
” I looked up at him and saw a thick dark patch of sweat down the back of his shirt. It was clinging to his skin.
“You should have gone naked under your bar gown,” I said.