2
There was big business afoot in Westminster, and everywhere was rumbling with some level of subdued discontent about the process of the first piece of enormous, unprecedented legislation that would start disentangling British law from European. Some people wanted it to work faster, others wanted reassurance that the whole thing was proceeding according to parliamentary process and others questioned why the hell we were doing it in the first fucking place. The only thing all of these various camps had in common were fewer clues as to what they were doing than a colour-blind monkey attempting to defuse an armed Trident warhead. Everywhere you looked there was a ‘constitutional expert’ holding forth in front of a television camera, insofar as anyone could be said to be an expert on our country’s constitution. Where other countries had written constitutions, Britain had a collection of various and randomly acquired documents – including the Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta and so on – that were organised roughly along the lines of the cardboard box/makeshift oubliette where I stuffed my tax documents.
From my perspective, it was a good thing, because everything was a mess, and people were always willing to talk about a mess, if only to get things off their chests. The down side was that everyone was saying the same thing – that it was a mess, that nobody had the first clue about what they were doing, and why hadn’t the idiots in charge actually done something instead of spewing bluster in the general direction of Brussels or pissing off to Tuscany for two weeks to get snockered on cheap Barolo and stuff their faces with Italian cheese?
“Everyone’s flailing,” I told Cerys, when I met her in Costa Coffee. “Nobody knows exactly what’s going on, but everyone’s really annoyed about it.”
“So write about that,” she said, through a mouthful of almond croissant. She was wearing a scarf over her pin-curled hair and had yet to put on her Miss Whiplash make-up – the dark red lip and cat eye liner. Without it she looked all of about seventeen years old.
“No, I need something specific,” I said. “General irritation doesn’t work as a lede.” I lifted the lid on the teapot and squeezed the teabag viciously against the side of the pot. They said it was English Breakfast, but it still looked anaemic to me.
Cerys gave me a long look over the rim of her coffee cup. “You look different.”
“Do I?”
“Yep. Better. More relaxed.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Ah.”
“Ah?”
“I had sex with someone.”
“Thank Christ,” she said, and quickly covered her hand with her mouth. “Sorry. I’m not being horrible, but I’m just saying; I think you needed it.”
“I did. Very much.”
The only complaint I had with sex that good was that there hadn’t been enough of it. I could have cheerfully gone several more rounds, even with that cheap carpet wearing holes in my knees. I couldn’t stop thinking about his hard, slender thighs and the way their muscles had flexed as he pushed himself into my mouth.
“So?” she said.
“So what?”
“So who was it?”
“Nuh uh,” I said. “If you’re not kissing and telling then neither am I.”
“I don’t kiss,” said Cerys. “And the kind of things I could tell would make the Profumo Affair look like a wet weekend in Lowestoft.”
“See? Not fair. My lips are sealed.”
“How is it not fair? We’re talking about two different things,” she said. “I’m quite willing to talk about my personal life, but this isn’t personal. It’s professional. You, on the other hand, are talking about your personal life.”
I shook my head, playing coy. “Still saying nothing.”
“Suit yourself,” said Cerys.
“Fine,” I said, unable to keep it to myself any longer. “I got facefucked under a shadow cabinet minister’s desk.”
She carefully swallowed her mouthful of latte. I felt strangely satisfied that I could still make a Westminster dominatrix almost spit-take.
“And?” she said.
“It was amazing,” I said. “And big. Thick. Long. Gorgeous.”
Cerys stifled a laugh. “Derek Waterhouse.”
“Shh. And no. How do you figure that out?”
“Gay shadow cabinet member,” she said. “Gorgeous. Big cock. There’s only one who answers to that description and the other night you were looking at him like you were tearing all his clothes off in your head and hatefucking him right up against the bar.”
I bit my lip to conceal my stupid grin. “It wasn’t a hatefuck. It was just…well…just a fuck. A really, really good fuck. There was kissing. And giggling. Oh, and he gave me rug burn.”
Cerys made saucer eyes at me. “Are you mad?”
“No.”
“This is the man you said ruined your career,” she said. “And now you’re getting giddy over rug burn?”
“I’m not getting giddy,” I said. “It was just sex. Great sex.”
“With the man who got you caught up in a spin-cycle, left you wondering if you were losing your mind and is the reason why you’re running around trying to find content for a politics blog that has a readership smaller than the population of Westminster.”
I winced. “Um…ow.”
She sighed. “I’m not trying to hurt you, Toby,” she said. “I’m just trying to warn you. Don’t you have a bit too much baggage with him?”
“Maybe.” I said, jabbing at my phone to Google the population of Westminster. Oh. Two hundred and fifty thousand, or thereabouts. “And okay, maybe it does have a smaller readership, but they’re devoted.”
Cerys picked up her bag from the chair beside her. “Be careful.”
“I always am,” I said, one eye on my email. There was a message from an unknown address.
“I gotta go,” she said. “I haven’t even put my face on and I’ve got a sensory deprivation at two o’clock.”
I glanced up from the phone. “Hang on. If it’s sensory deprivation then why does he care if you’re wearing make-up?”
“He sees me before I put the gimp mask on him,” she said. “And I’ve got to cornstarch the bloody thing and everything.”
“Cornstarch?”
“It’s non-toxic,” said Cerys, like that explained everything. “They used to use talc on the inside of the rubbers, but now they’re saying it gives you cancer.” She leaned over and pecked me on the cheek. “Bye bye.”
“Yeah, bye.” I checked that my malware protection was running and opened the email.
For a moment I wasn’t sure why or how I’d got this. Was there a Tony Green whose email was only one letter different from mine? Had I accidentally received an email by typo?
This was a leak.
This was a Health Department leak of a policy so rotten, cynical and downright cold that I was actually surprised it hadn’t made it into the last election manifesto, a now infamous document in which the government had promised to bring back foxhunting, take food from the mouths of underprivileged children and tax the shit out of Alzheimer’s patients. It was a dick-move deluxe, the Dementia Tax, Part Two.
This was solid fucking gold.
There were tight regulations concerning care homes for the elderly. For example, even five centimetres could be the difference between a bedroom being suitable for a resident or not, which sounds like a piece of footling red tape but was actually there to prevent unscrupulous care home owners from housing grandmothers like battery chickens. And there were unscrupulous owners out there. The care of the elderly was – like almost everything these days – a business, and wherever there were business interests there were always a gaggle of cartoonish Dickens villains complaining loudly about regulations stifling commerce.
Well, the Mr Bumbles of the world could rejoice, because this was basically a bullet pointed list of the ways in which the Department of Health was going to yawn, stretch and nonchalantly scratch its armpits while all those annoying checks and balances – the ones that ensured old people were treated with a modicum of human dignity – slid quietly into the big dustbin labelled EU REGULATIONS.
I took up my laptop and started writing. I didn’t stop until I had a blog post and a spec article for the Guardian, and it was only while I was running a second spell check that a text message made me tear my eyes away from the screen.
It was Derek.
–u busy?
A bit, yes. I took a deep breath and emailed the article. no, I texted back. why?
My heart started to race in that way it always did when I’d just sent something off. My phone shivered in my hand.
–dinner? i know a place near covent garden. does a superior pollo cacciatore.
I texted ok, although by now my nerves were screaming. I thought I’d been doing very well, pouring my will-he-won’t-he-call anxiety into work, but now it was all catching up with me at once, but now I was experiencing a sort of cascading neuroses effect. Terror, joy, lust, acute social anxiety; it was all going on.
Another text. unless you’re a vegetarian?
I texted back no, packed the laptop and headed out.
Derek was waiting for me in a little Italian place in Bedford Street. It was just the right time of day; everyone was too busy rushing home to think about food. The pavements were heaving and hellish, but the restaurant itself was underground, a tiny brick vault made cosy with artful lighting and the warm smell of pizza dough. He was sitting in a small recessed archway at the back, and he got to his feet when he saw me.
“Hello, you,” he said, kissing me politely on the corner of the mouth. “Beginning to think you’d got lost.”
“I walked,” I said, taking a seat. “It was a nightmare, but it was still better than the Tube.”
He poured me a glass of Valpolicella and I took several oversized swallows before I realised I should probably slow down. God, it was weird being with him like this. I knew him as a member of parliament, but now I knew just enough of the taste, smell and texture of him to leave me hungry for more. That thigh hanging over the edge of the banquette. Had I really left my finger marks in its flesh the other night?
His eyes were perfectly golden, his upper lip already stained with wine. My stomach growled: I was starving.
“You look nice,” he said.
“I don’t,” I said. “But thanks for trying.”
“Nonsense. You look edible.”
I smiled. No, I grinned. Oh God. Cerys was right; I was getting giddy, but it was impossible not to. For the last forty-eight hours my head had been full of him, analysing every kiss and every squeeze, lingering over the shade of his hair and the weight of his cock in my hand. And now that he was here in front of me he felt like a mirage, like something I’d wanted for so long that he could just as well be a figment of my overworked imagination.
“Well,” I said, clearing my throat. “This is…um…”
He smothered a grin. “Awkward?”
“No. Nice.” He arched an eyebrow and I started to laugh. “Okay, a bit awkward. Although still nice.”
Derek took a sip of his wine. His eyelashes were gold-tipped under the warm lighting. “I had a great time the other night,” he said.
“I know you did. You came in my mouth, remember?” What in the name of Jesus fancy, tap-dancing Christ was wrong with me? Why did I keep saying these terrible things? “Actually I’m surprised you thought I might have been a vegetarian.”
I stopped myself, before I went full bow-chicka-wow and said something about stuffing my face with meat. This was what happened when you spent too much time on pornography; it started with the erosion of all social filters and progressed until you were unable to relate to any form of real sex. Before you knew it you’d be ordering pizza and then feeling dismayed when the delivery guy didn’t immediately oil up and bend you over the nearest table.
“You have a dirty, dirty mind,” said Derek.
He had no idea. “Occupational hazard.”
“I love it,” he said, as a waiter came by and dropped off a dish of amuse-bouches. Olives, foccacia and balsamic vinegar. “Nobody would suspect it, to look at you.”
I quickly skewered an olive with a cocktail stick. “How do you mean?”
“You look very serious, with those big brown eyes. Intense. High-minded, even.”
“I’m not intense,” I said, swallowing and reaching for the bread. “I’m just hungry.” I chewed carefully, narrowly resisting the urge to stuff the whole chunk into my face at once. I’d meant to get a late lunch at Costa, but I’d been so caught up with work that I’d forgotten to eat. “And I can be both.”
“Hungry and intense?”
“No. Dirty-minded and high-minded. They’re not mutually exclusive. Look at James Joyce. He was pretty high-minded, but did you ever read his love letters to Nora?”
“Oh,” said Derek. “You mean the farty ones?”
“Exactly. Man was a freak.”
Derek reached for the olives. “That’s the joy of an old school Catholic education,” he said. “If you grow up being told that you’ll burn in a lake of fire forever if you so much as even think about touching your happy bits then it’s no wonder you turn out sexually weird.”
“You sound like someone who knows.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t quite full on Portrait of the Artist when I was at school, although obviously the whole Church is still not at a great place with the gays. One of the reasons I bailed, actually. That and the whole not-believing-in-God-thing, which I’m told is a bit of an obstacle to being a practising Catholic.”
I laughed. “Yeah. I can see how that might be a bit of a problem.”
“What about you?”
“God? Me? No.” I took a mouthful of water, conscious that in this state I could get drunk very, very quickly. “No such obstacle if you’re Jewish. We make excellent atheists. Even the most perfunctory glance at our history leaves you wondering what kind of God lets those things happen to his Chosen People. And also begs the question, what the fuck does this guy do to people he doesn’t like?”
“Blood,” said Derek. “Boils. Frogs. Darkness. Death of the Firstborn. Old Testament shit.”
“See? How can you win with a God like that?”
“You can’t. He’s no more reasonable than the Catholic version, who apparently has nothing better to do than shit bricks about people touching their own genitals.” He laughed. “Oh dear. Aren’t you not supposed to talk about politics and religion at the dinner table?”
“No,” I said. “But I seem to remember there’s a footnote in Emily Post that says it’s acceptable if you actually work in politics.”
“Ah.”
“And also if you’ve had your penis in the mouth of the person you’re dining with it’s pretty much ‘fuck it, go nuts.’”
“She said that, did she? Emily?”
“What? ‘Fuck it. Go nuts’? Oh yes. That’s a direct quote from the first edition. I know because I’ve got it cross-stitched on a throw pillow at home.”
It was scary how much I enjoyed making him laugh. And he had a very sexy laugh, a sort of throaty baritone gurgle.
“So,” I said, determined to find out something about him. “You went to Catholic school?”
“Down in Hove,” he said. “Grew up in Brighton.”
“Oh, nice.”
“Yeah,” said Derek. “One of the best places in the world to grow up gay. Everyone was so supportive and friendly. It was great.”
“Your parents?”
“Also great. Well, for as long as they were around.” He sobered a little. “Dad was a smoker, I’m afraid. Died of lung cancer when I was just finishing up my A-Levels…”
“…oh, I’m sorry…”
“…yeah, it was rough.” He sighed. “Although I look back and can’t believe how resilient I was back then. When you’re eighteen it’s like ‘Oh well, Dad’s dead, can’t do a thing about that.’ I don’t think you have the mental capacity to really deal with it at that age.”
“No,” I said. “You literally don’t have the hardware. I’m sure I read somewhere that your frontal lobes don’t finish developing until your late twenties.”
“So I’m told. I think I was in my mid-twenties when it finally occurred to me that he wasn’t coming back, ever. Seven years worth of guilt, all at once. I looked back and thought I’d been this weird, cold monster child…” He took a sip of his wine. “Which I probably was. But it was very different from the way that loss feels as an adult. When I lost my mother a couple of years ago…well, that was fucking devastating.”
His voice almost broke, and I reached across the table and took his hand.
“See?” he said, quickly plastering a smile on his lips. “This is why Emily Post was full of shit. How can religion or politics be a more touchy subject than dead parents, for God’s sake?”
I squeezed his fingers. “I’m so sorry.”
He wiped the corner of his eye and smiled. “Thank you. You’re very sweet.”
“I’m really not.”
“You are. You’re far too nice for this business. And far too nice for the likes of me.”
“Oh God. Is this the Fifty Shades of Grey bit?” I said.
He blinked. “The what now?”
“You know. The bit where you tell me that you’re dark and moody and full of secrets and that I should stay away from you?”
Derek shook his head. “If you say so. I didn’t read it. I think I watched about ten minutes of the film then I got bored and went off in search of some actual pornography to wank to. Did you read it?”
“Unfortunately,” I said. “I found the whole thing about as erotic as having my teeth scraped, although I admit my idea of sexy might be a bit skewed. I seem to remember that summer I was writing a tentacle porn trilogy.” The words were already out of my mouth when the waiter walked over. And he heard them. There was no question that he’d heard them. “Hi,” I said. “This is a normal conversation we’re having.”
Derek looked like he was about to fall off his chair. The waiter struggled to keep a straight face.
“I’ll try the cacciatore, please,” I said.
Derek got a grip of himself. “Saltimbocca. Green salad. Thank you.”
“Okay,” said the waiter. “Have fun.”
He hurried away. I heard him laughing as the kitchen door swung shut.
“You’re not having the chicken?” I asked.
Derek shook his head. “Had it, loved it, want something different. And don’t change the subject; I need to hear a whole lot more about your tentacle porn opus.”
“You really don’t.”
“I do,” he said, topping off my glass. “I’m intrigued. Always wondered what the appeal was.”
“I think it’s a number of things,” I said. “It’s one of those fantasies that never gets tarnished by attempting to act it out in real life and being disappointed. Because there’s no way you’re ever going to find yourself penetrated in every orifice by the multiple, lubricated members of a horny tentacle beast.”
Derek leaned forward, his long fingers curling around the stem of his wine glass. “Go on,” he said, his foot nudging mine under the table.
“And the tentacles are sensitive. And mobile, so you’re going to have suction sensations going on here and there, and there’s no reason that the tentacles can’t sprout smaller tentacles inside you that go off and pay special attention to your prostate and things.” He was staring now, but for some reason I couldn’t stop talking. “Also I think the sheer abandon of it is appealing. You’re being remorselessly fucked in every single hole by some alien entity that’s only curious about how much pleasure it can give you.”
Derek blinked and took a large swallow of wine. “Why am I aroused right now?” he said.
“I know. It’s weird, but people get off on it.”
“You are a freak,” he said, leaning even closer. “And I want you inside me.”
I pushed my knee between his beneath the table. “Tonight?” I said, all the blood rushing from my head at the thought of having him underneath me, thighs open, lips parted in a long, throaty moan.
“Can’t,” he said, in a plaintive tone. “Three line whip.”
“That’s not nearly as much fun as it sounds, is it?”
“Nope. If I miss the vote I’ll be disciplined, and not in the sexy way.” He sighed and pushed his fingers into the gaps between mine. “Listen, Toby – I really, really want to see you again. Preferably when we’re alone. And naked.”
“I want that, too.” He had no idea how much. Every time I closed my eyes I could still taste him.
My phone blooped. It didn’t usually bloop; it usually shivered discreetly, more often than not to alert me that someone a lot wittier than me was saying amusing things on Twitter. “Hang on,” I said, and fished it out of my pocket. As I did so I vaguely remembered that I still had Fitbit notifications turned on and hoped I hadn’t just interrupted a highly charged moment to be told merely that my battery was low, but no. I hadn’t. The Guardian had emailed me back.
“Oh my God. The Guardian’s running with my story,” I said.
“What story?”
“Elder care. EU regulations, and how they’re planning on letting them slide so that residential facilities can charge the earth while nonchalantly pushing grandma out on an ice floe…wait.” It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots here. “Was this you?”
Derek looked blank. “Was what me?”
“A leak,” I said. “From the Department of Health. Ends up in my email inbox. Me, with my sad little blog that no bugger reads. How does a thing like that happen, I wonder?”
He shrugged. “You tell me, my lovely. How would I be leaking from inside Richmond House? You’ve seen the chipboard ghetto that passes for a shadow minister’s office.”
“True,” I said, conceding the point too easily. It was hard to be that suspicious when you still had a half-chub. “You should replace that awful Velcro carpet. I’ve still got scabs on my knees.”
Derek raised both eyebrows and sat back. “I have no idea how you can make a word as unappealing as ‘scabs’ heavy with erotic possibilities, but there you go. Your porn must be something quite spectacular. What name do you write under?”
I laughed. “Oh no. I’m not telling you that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“Fine,” he said. “You’ll tell me eventually.”
“You’re very sure of yourself.”
“Uh, hello? Politician,” he said. “We’re basically licensed megalomaniacs.”
I wanted to ask him again if he had anything to do with the leak, and tell him that I didn’t want or need any special favours, but then our food arrived. And after dinner there was simply no more time.
“I wish I could stay longer,” he said, as we kissed goodbye in the basement entrance just outside the restaurant.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
“More like a raging case of blue balls,” said Derek, and pulled me close for another lingering hug. His lips brushed my earlobe. “God, I need to go to bed with you as soon as humanly possible.”
“When?”
He pulled away and kissed me on the mouth. “Soon,” he said, squeezing my fingers. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? I wish I could stay but–”
“–three line whip. I know.”
“I’ll call you.”
“Promise?”
He grinned and kissed me one more time. “Try and stop me.”