“Ah, codswallop! Safe as houses out there. The BBC were there for badger’s sake. Nothing will happen with the Beeb looking on. Brrr, bit chilly though, don’t you think? Maybe they could do with some tea.”
It was my experience that most situations could be improved with tea.
*****
Barclay
“Er, Barclay, have you got the television on, old chap?” Martin, my press officer, asked through the loudspeaker on my phone as I finished knotting my tie.
“I’ve turned everything off for the moment,” I said as I adjusted the knot and shrugged on my jacket. The bloody press were relentless. How the hell they got hold of plans that weren’t due to be announced for another month, I had no idea. Until I had all the guarantees in place for the unions, I wasn’t ready for the UK to know it was going to be transferred to one hundred percent clean energy in under a year. Nobody trusted nuclear fusion (or this government) enough for that at the moment. But the promise of a zero-carbon, combustion-free source of energy, with no greenhouse gas or hazardous radioactive waste was huge, and we had to take advantage of the fact that it had been developed by a company in the UK.
“I thinkmaybeyou should take a look . . .” Martin paused for a moment. “Do you, by any chance, know a short, slightly-unhinged looking, bizarrely dressed young lady with pink hair?”
I snatched up the remote and flicked onto the BBC. There, outside my house, in full technicolour glory, was Kira Murphy balancing a huge tray of mugs and pushing her way into the crowd of reporters.
“Okay peeps!” she shouted. “I know you’re all gasping, but one at a time. I put milk in all of them I’m afraid, but there’s sugar here if you need it. Now, Laura Kuenssberg, you get an extra strong one, love. Never seen anyone work so hard what with all these elections. All I could find were a couple of packets of digestives. I didn’t want to bring out the Jammie Dodgers out in case I started a riot.”
“Jesus Christ,” I murmured weakly. The live streaming of Kira in my front garden suddenly cut to an earlier clip of her giving an actualspeechon my front step. Why the hell was she banging on about genital warts? Then, another clip of Kira smiling and telling everyone that she’s a ‘family friend’ of the Lucases – for some reason, best only known to her deranged mind, she’d chosen to add in a saucy wink at that juncture. She may as well have told them all she was my dirty fuck buddy.
Martin, the bastard, was laughing.
“This is not funny, Martin.” I snatched up the phone, turning off loudspeaker before putting it to my ear.
“Fine filly, if you like that sort of thing. Good teeth.” Martin had a habit of describing human females in equine terms. I tried to ignore his buffoonery most of the time given that he was the genius he was when it came to controlling the media, but hearing him describe Kira like a horse at Newmarket made my anger ratchet up a notch. “But a bit of a loose cannon though, wouldn’t you say? What on earth is she doing at your house?”
“She’s Henry’s bloody doctor,” I told him, and he stopped laughing.
“Doctor?”
“Well she’s not actually his doctor now because . . .” I sighed, “. . . look, it’s complicated. But she’s helping Henry so I’ve been willing to put up with her.”
Martin cleared his throat. “That’s great, old chap,” he said, his tone now less brash than before. He was one of the few people to know about how ill Henry had been and what had happened over the last few months. “And it doesn’t have to be a complete cock up press-wise. We can–”
I started jogging down the stairs so I didn’t hear the rest of Martin’s thoughts. As I made it to the bottom, the front door opened to reveal Kira with an empty tray, flanked by a harassed-looking Sam. Of course she didn’t just open it a crack to sneak through and protect my privacy as much as possible. Noooo, she swung it open as wide as it would go, leaving it that way as she beamed up at me, shouting “Yo!” for the second time that morning. The cameras went crazy as I strode over to the door, skirted Kira, then slammed it shut.
Perfect, just perfect.
“What were you thinking?” I snapped as I turned her away from the door she was so fond of opening, and gave her a light shove towards the kitchen. She just grinned, put the tray down on a side table, linked her arm through mine, and walked with me into the kitchen like we were the best of friends about to enjoy a lovely brunch together. Once there, she released me, skipped over to the kettle, filled it up and flicked it on again. I was so angry I could feel the heat creeping up my neck.
“I can make you a tea, but I’m afraid your fancy coffee machine has foxed me.”
I flicked a glance over to my built-in, grinding-its-own-beans coffee maker and blinked at the chaos surrounding it. Its innards were strewn all over the granite work surface. She’d disembowelled the only thing in my kitchen that I actually used. I took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of my nose.
“What would possess you to take cups of tea to all of those vultures outside my front door?” I said through gritted teeth. I could feel my eyelid twitching in suppressed fury.
“Um, your eyes look awee bitserial-killery,” she told me. “Are you sure you’re alright? Bad news this morning?”
“I amtryingto sort out a bloody huge mess and deal with the press at the same time! What’s leaked overnight is having massive repercussions globally. I have theworld’smedia on my doorstep. I do not need you waltzing out there, half dressed, offering them all tea like MrsfuckingDoyle.”
“Oh!” she smiled at me – fuckingsmiledat me. My head was about to explode. “You likeFather Tedtoo, do you?”
I leaned against the counter and dropped my head into my hands for a moment.
“Is that all you got from what I just said?” I asked the granite surface.
“Oh, come on. All this press stuff doesn’t matter. Who cares what they take their snaps of?”
“Kira, you talked about genital warts out there.Genital warts. I don’t think I even have the words to–”
