Chapter 60: Best Laid Plans

Before David Beckham had finished his smug little speech, the small red-haired angel was firing at him and the bullets were spattering back off a transparent wall. ‘Bulletproof neopropylene,’ he said. ‘I’m not a complete idiot. Now, as you can imagine, you are covered by a variety of my men who are out of your sight but who will kill you as soon as I ask them to, so please put down your weapons.’ One of the other angels took another shot at the clear plastic wall and crumpled instantly, riddled with bullets. That left eight of us. ‘Please don’t do that again,’ said David Beckham. ‘Honestly, we’d rather not kill you.’

‘Why?’

‘We’re not barbarians, Miss Park, whatever your so-called-friends have tried to make you believe. We do not enjoy killing, and we do not, or most of us do not, think if humans as irrelevant or worthless. All we wish is to return, after long millions of years, to our birthright. If you remembered seeing, and walking, but you had been paralysed and blinded for fifty years, would you not yearn for you sight and your legs? Is it not natural? It would not mean you hate the blind. Now, put down your weapons.’

‘What if we refuse?’

‘We will shoot you all,' and here he raised his voice to speak to his unseen companions, 'WITH TRANQUILLISERS.’

‘But…’

David Beckham nodded, a dull shot barked, and another angel fell, this time with less in the way of sickening finality. ‘I really do not want to do it,’ he said. ‘It’s messy, undignified and unnecessary. So, please?’ We put down our guns. ‘Knives too, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Especially you, Red. Now walk away from them, and round there, and towards me, and you see that door in the neopolypropylene, yes there, come through that and join me.’ When she was ten feet from him, the red-haired girl leapt at David only to thud off another invisible wall. David smiled, ‘It really is incredible stuff,’ he said, ‘Non-glare. The French have some outstandingly good scientists, and some of them are even human.’ I was at the back of the group, and as I walked forward, an almost invisible door was swung shut behind the others but in front of me by a grey-jacketed man who had suddenly appeared. The door was the only relatively visible piece of the cage.

‘How did you know we were here?’ said the red-haired girl, staring at Johnny. ‘How were you waiting for us?’

David laughed. ‘Isn’t it obvious? I’m sorry, precious angels, but you surely knew from very early on that we had spies in your camp? You surely knew as soon as Centrepoint? Well done, Johnny. You’ve done a sterling job.’

Johnny Depp stood with a stunned expression, open-mouthed, but also not quite part of the group, who were all close enough to touch each other, but none of whom was close enough, quite, to touch him. I sensed the angels tense, instinctively preparing to tear him apart. Johnny said,

‘He’s lying. It’s a lie.’

‘But why would I lie, Johnny? You can join us now, can’t you, because we said that’s what would happen at this point! Because we are your true friends, aren’t we? All you need to do is, oh, wait, I see, I’ve clumsily mentioned this just AFTER I put you in the bullet-proof box where we can’t protect you. What a mistake! I could get that door opened, but how would you get to it in time with Red in the way!’ David Beckham smiled and walked to the clear wall where he stood face to face with Johnny Depp, and said, ‘I suppose I must have subconsciously have been thinking that your usefulness to the Master is over now, and that…’ He tailed off, and shrugged. There was a violent flurry, a set of movements I couldn’t follow, at the end of which two angels were nursing themselves while two others held down Johnny and the red-haired girl had her foot pressed on his throat.

‘This isn’t true, Red,’ he gargled. ‘None of this is true!’

‘None of it?’ said David Beckham. ‘Not even the part where we contacted you and Vanessa and told you that if you joined us you would finally be able to be together for all time, rather than being constantly separated by death? And you both officially scorned us, but our people saw you weaken, because you are weak, and so we met up with you privately and explained that as soon as the Gates of Hell are open, all this fighting will be over, and it will be just you and Vanessa forever, and all we asked you to do was get as close to the Chosen One as you possibly could, and tell us of the Teacher’s plans for thwarting us. And here you are, and we were waiting.’
Johnny Depp turned his eyes to me and he said, ‘This is a lie, Mary Sue. You know it is. He’s trying to divide us.’

‘Hmm,’ said David Beckham. ‘But didn’t he get very close to you? Didn’t he?’

He had done, but he said there was nothing in it, really, except it had been hard to… And there had been… I looked at him lying there, and how had David Beckham known about this? Johnny saw what I was thinking, and he looked at me with a betrayed face, then he twisted his eyes back up: ‘You know me, Red!’ he said. He was trying to speak calmly, but there was desperation in his eyes. ‘Think! Why would he be saying this while I’m in here? It would have been easy for me to go in last and stay outside the box.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose so,’ said David Beckham. ‘If we’d told you as much about our plans as you told us about theirs. You’re a traitor, and although we’ve used you because we didn’t want to risk any action that might have harmed Mary Sue, we really don’t like traitors. So you stay in the box.’

‘It’s not true. Think, Mary Sue! You were in their house, you know what they’re like! They’re liars, don’t sink to their level! You know they’re liars! They're trying to divide us!’

‘I have no reason to lie any more, Johnny. We’ve won. We’ve got the Chosen One, and she’s safe at last, safe from your precious Teacher. Although she always was safe once the Teacher decided you were the one he could trust to kill her if it became necessary.’ It took a moment for this to register, and then I looked at Johnny on the floor, and then I looked at David Beckham. ‘Oh, come now,’ said David. ‘Surely you realised that the Teacher would have ordered someone to kill you if everything went wrong? To stop the Gate opening? Surely you didn’t think he would take any risk? Johnny was the man, but I dare say that when he didn’t do it, one of the other bright sparks, Red maybe, would have taken matters into their own hands. Wouldn’t you, Red? Just like she’s taken control of the situation now. She’s a warrior. Warriors kill their enemies, and Johnny is most assuredly that, my dears.’ He flicked his eyes upwards, and ran his hands through his hair with a gentle smile. ‘He has led you to the end of all your hopes. It’s time for him to die.’

‘No!’ said a calm, high voice behind me, and Miss Smallbone stepped out from behind a gleaming console, and felled my grey-jacketed guard with a touch of her hand to his side that left him writhing in pain. ‘You are lying. Johnny Depp is not a traitor!’ Her voice was calm, but I was close enough to see that her hands were trembling and her knuckles were white.

WEEKEND TWELVE

Well, well, well. It's literally been a journey. I have done Monday's chapter. It does not resolve everything. That is all I am prepared to reveal at this point.

Now, some housekeeping: I have really enjoyed doing this, ludicrous impracticality aside. I have a strong sense that there will be a sort-of-sequel, by which I mean another story of this type, rather than a continuation of the same story. The likelihood is that this will not happen immediately, but will happen soon. Because you do not want to be checking an unchanging website all the time, waiting, waiting, waiting, be still your beating heart, etc., I will be creating a Mary Sue distribution list, and sending out an email when things start moving again. For you to be on this list, you will have to email me. I promise I will not try to sell you viagra, whatever that is.

It's been a while since I rounded up information from Google Analytics: Japan looks set to beat Canada in what has been a very even battle. It is hard to fully grasp America's place in the grand scheme of things, since I was there for a while and going onto the site, but even if I remove New York, the States definitely have moved into second place. Australia has been respectable, I finally got some South American visitors (who took one look and ran for the hills), but Africa has been utterly absent. Utterly. This might not bother you, but Africa is the land of my fathers.

For no easily explicable reason, I had a visitor-spike on Friday 26th October. These visitors did not come from a new referrer or anything. Or maybe it was one visitor reading everything but doing so late and over the course of a day, from a computer that seemed like a different computer to Analytics every time it logged on. That is the best explanation I can come up with.

Traffic sources - mainly returners, and lots via sites of frequent-commenter-Marie. Of the interesting search terms that brought people, here are some:
"french are crazy"
'i had sex with you"
"blast furnace expression anglaise"
david beckham+maid
david tennant swimming
demon hierarchy
does ewan mcgregor wear a wig?
rich prostitute
nuclear bomb head in paper bag
there is nothing special about me
shagging
what dont you get from meat

Stay strong, people.

Chapter 59: It's Time for the Denouement

I won’t bore you with the details of how we all stumbled out of bed, hung over and dreadful, stinking and smelling of spent or frustrated lust. Or of how Kylie had been up for two hours making the most amazing breakfast ever served to condemned men, which I took one look at and knew I couldn’t touch. Or of how Freddie Flintoff wandered through the house finding the designated soldiers and expeditionaries and giving us all a little black pill, and how we swallowed them and suddenly felt completely fine, and how we then ate, drank coffee and laughed about last night, and how Katharine and David-Mitchell-the-novelist thought no one could see what they were doing under the table. I won’t bother you with the tedious business of getting suited up with hi-tech weapons, of how we dressed our look-alikes and sent them in blacked-out cars to a meeting at Whitehall which we hoped would fool the enemy, at least for a bit, or of how the incursion team took a tunnel to three streets away where we emerging from a manhole and straight through the floors of three specially-adapted white vans which took us to a small facility in the flats to the east of London’s East End. I won’t explain how we circumvented air traffic control in our pair of stealth-adapted helicopters, or how Miss Smallbone told us to enter French airspace through a gap in their radar coverage that was invisible to their maps and computer systems, and which Miss Smallbone had prepared many years ago, just in case, because you never know what might come in useful further down the line. I will also not go through all the things David Tennant said on the flight, recapitulating exactly what it was we were doing and why. It was pretty complicated, and there’s no point in bothering with you with precisely how the Teacher finally realised that the demons’ plan in taking military control of France was nothing to do with expansionism – that was all just a distraction while they gained control of the whizzo new European particle supercollider, which they were sure could produce, if properly managed, a small black hole. I don’t understand the science, so there would be no point in even beginning to describe why that would be a bad thing, and that there is no such thing, really, as a ‘small’ black hole, and that it would still be the end of everything we know. But, according to one reading of the prophecies, it might also open the Gate to Hell (a bad thing), so long as the Master and the Chosen One were present to manage it. I will not repeat all my arguments, which were vigorous, that I should absolutely not be there, for this very reason, or the counter-arguments, which ran along the lines of: the Chosen One, says another reading of the prophecy, won’t help the Master, but will destroy both him and the Gate to Hell, and thus save the world forever. I won’t go on about how I resisted, even now, when the others asked me to tell them about the Teacher, or how I felt when David Tennant looked at me approvingly when I did so. I won’t describe how we did have plans for blasting our way into the supercollider facility if it was necessary, but how we didn’t have to use those plans because we managed to land unseen in a forest. Or how we trekked for an hour to the perimeter and we disabled the guards, how some of us took their uniforms and how we broke into the main building, which looked like one of those cool new tube stations on the Jubilee Line extension, which seemed rather small for such an apocalyptic showdown, but then when we went inside I gasped because it was just the pimple on the surface, and the underground halls of the supercollider seemed to go on forever with lots of white-suited scientists in little golf-carts. I won’t go on about the strange sense I had all the time that we were being followed. I won’t describe how we wasted twenty minutes walking the wrong direction because Jeremy Clarkson held the map the wrong way, or how Jeremy’s wife laughed at him, or how a guard heard her and there was a fight during which the guard was killed, but so was Jeremy Clarkson, with his wife crying and Jeremy saying, ‘Oh no! Ow, no, don’t try and help me, I’m definitely dying. No, darling, don’t worry about me dying to save your life after you just, no!, don’t cry, I’m joking!, it’s a funny story really, think of it like that and look after the kids and tell them how brave I was, yes!, laugh, that’s better!, ow, it’s got cold, hasn’t it?, and why is everyone talking so quietly, and, oh, I love you and… Oh…’ Or how we eventually found our way to the holy of holies, although by this time, as per our plan, we had split up into two groups, and I was in a group with Johnny Depp and David Tennant was in the other group. I won’t describe any of these things because they are basically irrelevant compared to the fact that, as we peered around the corner into the last deep hole, with huge pipes gleaming in the background, David Beckham was standing there waiting for us, saying, ‘Hello, Mary Sue. We have been waiting for you and your little friends. You really didn’t have to do all that skulking. It was inevitable you’d arrive here, that’s the thing about prophecies. And now, it’s time for the denouement.’

Chapter 58: In the Orchard II: (Silver)

My friend Morgan is chubby and not unpleasant to look at. He’s averagely funny, but he doesn’t worry about it or try hard, and he laughs with genuine enjoyment at people who care more about things like that. He’s a banker, and he does fine. He has sandy hair, which has always been thin, so I don’t think it’s getting thinner. Girls like him, but they don’t really fancy him unless they are drunk. But for some reason, if they are drunk, Morgan becomes irresistible. No one can explain why this is, it just is, and whenever he’s with us on a night out, one of the most enjoyable bits of the evening is the moment where strange girls start coming over and throwing themselves at him. (We, his close friends, have been mainly inoculated by years and years of contact, but we all had our moments.) Sometimes Morgan has a girlfriend, but usually he doesn’t because it’s hard to have a girlfriend if wherever you go the most beautiful girls in the room start stroking your arm and slipping their numbers into your pocket as if you are film star taking a break from the movies to be a Formula One driver and qualify as a paediatrician.

I sat in the front of the minivan-taxi from Pin Head to Mayfair. Johnny Depp was in the back row with Jeremy Clarkson’s wife, and in the middle row Morgan was sandwiched between Kylie Minogue and the little red-haired angel who drove me to Luton airport what seemed like a lifetime ago. Kylie mumbled, so she had to practically touch Morgan’s ear with her mouth, ‘I can’t believe I normally date larrikins like dancers and models, etc., if bankers are all like you. You are so much more bonza than all those raw prawns, don’t you agree?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Morgan. ‘I’m pretty boring when you get to know me.’

‘You’re so funny,’ said Kylie.

‘I’m really not. I can’t believe you are millions of years old.’

‘That’s not very gallant, you dingo.’

‘I’m sorry, I just meant…’

‘I don’t mind, you pelican. I was just kidding. You learn a lot of things in a million years, especially if you spend a lot of time down under, if you understand what I’m saying?’

‘I do,’ said Morgan. ‘That’s a really funny joke.’

‘Geez, Morgo, none of the drongoes I’ve been ever get my jokes. They don’t think women can be funny. You’re a fair dinkum beaut, etc.’ All this time, the red-haired angel was pressing her futile knee into Morgan’s, unable to resist him but knowing in her heart that she was hopelessly outmatched. But I’d been watching Morgan dance with the red-haired girl all evening, and now I saw him find her hand. Kylie saw her too, and she said, ‘Good decision, mate, I don’t blame you. Red’s the real thing. She’s going with Mary Sue when… I shouldn’t say. She’s amazing, mate.’ In the end, when we got to the house, Morgan and the red-haired girl said Kylie could join them upstairs if she wanted, and Kylie said, ‘Really, mate! That’s totally bonza! You sure you don’t mind? I know I’m just the third, don’t worry. I’ll just help out any way I can.’

I went into the garden, past David-Mitchell-the-novelist and Katharine, who were half-undressed barely out of sight of the kitchen window, and went to the back wall, where I waited for where I knew Johnny Depp would come to join me. He did, and we leaned back against the dry brick looking at the silver trees and held hands. We knew that nothing more than this would happen, and that we should go inside and sleep. But also, with out hands, we acknowledged how much we both wanted to do the things we weren’t going to do. I knew some reasons, and he knew some reasons, and they had to be enough reasons, however drunk we were. Then Johnny said, ‘We might die tomorrow.’ I said nothing, just pressed my side against him. ‘I love Vanessa, Mary Sue. I love her forever. And I know you don’t love me.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘It would just be lust if it happened. Which it won’t.’

My voice was husky because I could remember what it was like with him, which was, well. You either know what I mean or you don’t, and if you don’t I can’t describe it for you, because I’d heard it described enough times but I didn’t understand until Johnny. He said, ‘Yes, it would be wrong. Let’s go inside.’ But I didn’t move, and nor did he. And then he said, ‘I’ve lost her thousands of times, Mary Sue. Don’t think it’s ever easy, but when it happens, I deal with it like I deal with death in war, by denying it until there’s time to cope privately. But that only works when I’m with someone who doesn’t understand what’s happening, because then I don’t have to think about it or pretend, and they can assume they have all of me. But with you, I know you understand, and I also know you’re only doing it because you also can’t have who you want. So we should go inside now. I wouldn’t even be standing here if I wasn’t drunk and if there was no danger that tomorrow would be the end of everything.’ He sounded like he was trying to persuade himself. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he went on, ‘because we’re strong, and we know it would be wrong.’ His hand tightened on mine, but I felt the tightening somewhere else, and I shivered with the force of how hard it was to resist. He was right: we might die tomorrow. What harm could it do? What harm really? Miss Smallbone was jealous, but she could hardly blame… I mean, if this was just about Miss Smallbone being jealous, and not me being in more specific danger then… But Miss Smallbone had fought so hard for so long, and how could I make things worse for her, because if there was one thing I knew, it was that she would know, so… And she’d gone mental a couple of times in the past she said, and the last thing we would need tomorrow was a mental Miss Smallbone… And if Johnny didn’t know about that, and he was just worried about me, then I was the one who really knew where the most pain and danger would be caused, even if it was a thing no one could really help in the long run, and so it was up to me to be strong… But how strong could I be when… But, but, but. I was going to resist him. I knew I was going to resist him. I was almost certainly probably just about to say that we had to go inside when David Tennant called out, ‘Are you alright, Mary Sue?’

‘Yes,’ I called. I’m just coming in.’ I supposed I should have felt like a naughty girl called by her father from her dangerous older boyfriend’s car, but when I saw David, concerned and beautiful, that is not how I felt.

Chapter 57: 'Big Deep Breaths, Please, ...

… Johnny Depp. I’m not here to hurt anyone,’ said Rollo, lowering the point of his knife towards the floor, keeping his eyes fixed on Johnny’s. The music had stopped next door. ‘How could I do anything? Look around, there’s only one of me.’

‘Assassins don’t care what happens afterwards.’

‘If I wanted that, Johnny, then I’ve had plenty of chances.’

‘None of us knows anything about you, mate,’ said Johnny. ‘Pardon us for being careful. Pardon us for trying to protect her.’ I was pushing through the others towards them, and Johnny said, ‘Get back Mary Sue. No risks.’

‘I trust him,’ I said. You will think that some piece of me must surely have been thinking, ‘Please, oh please, let me be right about what I saw in Rollo’s eyes. Let me not have been bamboozled by them, because trustworthy eyes are hardly something I can take to the bank, so how can they possibly be something I will risk the world on?’ You will think that, but you will be wrong. I walked to Rollo, took his knife, then his hand, and then I pulled him over to a seat in the corner of the bar. Everyone was staring but I didn’t react to that. If Rollo was here, I reasoned, where he would know what kind of reaction he would get, it must be important. ‘What is it?’

He smiled, and squeezed my hand. His palms were dry, ever so slightly rough and completely comforting. Rollo looked like an ex-public school rugby player, with shiny brown shoes, neat jeans and crisp-collared short poking out from a blue and white round-neck sweater. This is not something I would usually find appealing, but it made Rollo look – it’s hard to put this in a way that doesn’t seem like faint praise, but you have to remember what a nightmare these two weeks had been in terms of trust and upheaval, and how this meant that certain things were unusually important to me – it made him look reliable. And then he said, ‘I’m here to say goodbye, Mary Sue.’

‘But…’

‘I’m sorry it has to be like this.’

‘But you said you were going to protect me.’

‘I will do everything I can, but we both know what’s happening tomorrow, and…’

‘How do you know? We only planned it today. Who are you?’

‘I’m someone you can trust,’ he said.

‘So,’ I said. ‘You think I won’t be coming back?’

‘I’m sure you will.’

‘But…’

‘We don’t have to go on about this conversation. I am not, well, I do not normally talk about these things, but I love you Mary Sue. I have to say it, in case I never get the chance again. I want you to remember that whatever happens, or however you come to think of me in the future, if, well. Just if. We will see each other again before the end, but the circumstances will be difficult, and when that happens, you have to know that I have always loved you as well as I could, after my fashion, and everything I have done in all this has been because you are incredibly important to me. Does that make sense to you?’

‘Not much.’

‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t.’ The music had started again, but there was still a critical mass of people watching us intently. The mood of the room was changed. ‘When that moment comes, very soon, when you see me, you may have some choices to make. At that point, you must remember that I love you, and would do anything for you, and if I tell you to do something, you have to do it, even if it seems, well, whatever it seems might be the result. Do you think you will be able to do that?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and I knew I would, and I didn’t know why. Again, I know, I know, if I were reading this, alarm bells would be going off in my head. Don’t think I don’t realise it now. Don’t think I didn’t realise it then, on some very deep level. Rollo smiled at me, stood up, kissed me gently on the cheek, said goodbye and walked away without looking back. Sir Conn hurried over to replace him, Johnny Depp and Freddie Flintoff at his shoulder, and asked if I was alright, and what Rollo had said, and whether anyone needed to go after and detain him. Sir Conn was holding a gin and tonic. I took it from him, drained it and said, ‘He was saying goodbye, Sir Conn. Let’s go home. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.’
***

Johnny Depp muttered something in the taxi home that came back to me later with particular vividness. He said, intending me to hear, I’m sure, ‘When that bastard broke in, and pulled the knife, where was David Tennant then? If he’s supposed to care about you so much?’

Chapter 56: They Can Because They Think They Can

At midnight, Kylie took her turn on the decks and the dancefloor began to fill. By the time she started her second set at two, everyone was doing the sort of dancing where they think they are dancing brilliantly, and they might as well be because they are all as drunk as each other and who is made happier by the thought that everyone looks an idiot? I’d stopped hugging my friends by this point. At the start of the evening I did it every five minutes, and they hugged me back, holding me four-drinks-tight because knew that something serious was happening, even if they didn’t know what it was. But now, none of us wanted to be thinking of that, and we were all dancing with celebrities, except Katharine who’d been snogging David-Mitchell-the-novelist since soon after we arrived. ‘I thought he was married,’ I said worriedly to England cricket hero Freddie Flintoff at one point. ‘I hope she doesn’t…’

‘Don’t worry, love. Most angel marriages are best-mate-style long-term partnerships. David-Mitchell-the-novelist’s wife is actually a lesbian at the moment, but when they got married, civil partnerships didn’t properly exist, and it was better for tax.’

‘That was a very full answer, Freddie.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t want you to tell anyone this story later for some reason, and have people not understand that we angels are very moral, but that our situation with all the eternal regenerating means that sometimes, if you describe what we do, it sounds as if we are cheating on wives and partners and everything. That totally isn’t the case. Look, that’s David-Mitchell-the-novelist’s wife over there, dancing with brainy Mariella Frostrup.’

‘But brainy Mariella Frostrup surely isn’t…’

‘Hey, pet,’ said Freddie. ‘When you’ve been around forever, everyone’s a little bit everything.’

‘Okay,’ I said. A bit later, I was being twirled around the dancefloor by Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson, my surprisingly light-footed Head of Chambers. He was mouthing along to that Gilbert O’Sullivan song which keeps saying, ‘I’m a bad dog, baby,’ and I had a sudden, clear vision of how surreal all this was and, just like that, I had my first flash of proper terror about tomorrow, and Sir Conn saw it in my eyes and without saying another word, he whisked me off the back of the dancefloor and through a door which I had been assuming was a cupboard, but which was actually the entrance to a quiet little sub-bar called Pin Head Too.

‘Mary Sue,’ slurred Jeremy Clarkson lumbering into us clumsily. ‘Have you been told not to judge us? Have you? Have you been told that your puny earth morals do not bind us, because we are superbeings.’ Then he broke down giggling.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Freddie told me.’

‘Freddie Flintoff,’ said Jeremy Clarkson, ‘is the best bloke in the world. Best. Bloke. Inthe. World.’

‘He certainly…’

‘Don’t patronise me. You know all my being an arse stuff is just an act. This is my wife,’ he said, waving over a woman who was rolling her eyes. ‘You know that genuinely none of us would ever sleep with anyone except our wives if our wives didn’t allow it?’

‘Or vice versa,’ said Jeremy Clarkson’s wife.

‘You wouldn’t sleep with anyone else because I’ve got such a huge…’

‘Stop it, Jeremy!’

‘I can’t help it. I love being Jeremy Clarkson. He is the funnest person I’ve ever got to be! I was a mediaeval scribe once, not even one who got to do the pictures; and someone who counted weeds in an African lake; and an industrial spy in a pharmaceutical company in Germany, but during a boring bit of German history. I always play whatever part the Teacher needs, but God those ones were boring. I don’t think I’ve ever really got over the weed-counting. And do you know, the thing is now being Jeremy Clarkson is that I’ve genuinely got so I hate speed cameras! At the start, I couldn’t believe people were so touchy, because the cameras can only catch people who are breaking the law, etc., but now I really think there must be something bad going on with them if people agree with all my ranting so much.’ Then his drunk face went serious again. ‘But the key thing to remember is that none of us are love rats, not even David-Mitchell-the-novelist. He’s a great bloke, even though if you’re having a dinner party and need to invite a David Mitchell, I’d invite the other one, because he probably doesn’t spend the whole time crapping on about how he should be the main David Mitchell. But he’s not a love rat, ok?’

‘Why does everyone keep saying this,’ I asked. ‘It’s not as if I’m telling anyone else what you’re getting up to. It’s all so wild and fantastic that everyone would treat it as a joke, and if it’s legal issues we’re worrying about here, then surely that problem would already have been made as bad as it could be, since by now I’d have revealed about David Beckham being gay and a murderer.’

‘Oh,’ said Jeremy Clarkson. ‘Yeah. Totally.’ And then he looked at Sir Conn, and smiled like someone much, much older than he was supposed to be, and also much younger. He said, ‘You know what this is like tonight, don’t you?’ Sir Conn nodded. ‘You know what we need?’ Sir Conn nodded again, without saying anything, and Jeremy dived off to the bar. I thought he might be humouring Jeremy Clarkson, but then I saw that Sir Conn’s eyes were glistening, and so were Jeremy’s, as if they he were about to cry.

‘What is it, Sir Conn? What is this like?’

‘Near death, Mary Sue. When you’re near death, there’s no point in holding back, so you dance. But us, we regenerate. We dance, and some of us are brave, and that’s all very well, but when humans dance on the edge of their void, it really is a void. Jeremy and I once fought alongside some very brave men, and there were parties like this every night because… Well, humans are very inspiring, Mary Sue.’ Jeremy returned with two huge glasses of port. He handed one solemnly to Sir Conn, and the pair of them stood opposite each other, and the intensity with which the looked into each other’s eyes somehow created a bubble of quiet, and they straightened themselves tall, and they intoned together, ‘Aeberhardt, Blake, Boswell, Brinsdon, Burgoyne, Couston, Coward, Cox, Cunningham, Dolezal, Fulford, Haines, Howard-Williams, Jones, Lane, Lawson, MacGregor, Marek, Parrott, Pinkham, Plzak, Roden, Scott, Steere, Sutherland, Unwin, Vokes, Whelan. Nineteen Squadron, friends and brothers, fewest of the few, Possunt quia posse videntur.’ Then they slowly saluted, and they drank their huge glasses of port in great gulps with tears streaming down their faces, and tears were streaming down my face as well.

As my vision cleared, I saw Rollo Price at the door to the little sub-bar, looking at me. I barely had time to register his presence before he was knocked to the ground by Johnny Depp, and the two bounced back to their feet, knives held instinctively and suddenly in front of them.

Chapter 55: Eat, Drink and Be Merry, for Tomorrow...

‘Are you okay, Mary Sue?’ called Johnny Depp, and I could hear that he was now running through the trees. I was stunned into silence staring in his direction, because I didn’t know how he would react to Miss Smallbone, or how I would explain her presence. I needn’t have worried. It can only have been a couple of seconds seconds, but when I turned back to the wall, she was gone. Johnny burst into view, gun in his hand.

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘There’s no one else.’

‘I thought I heard…’ He looked around and said angrily, ‘Why didn’t you reply? You know how important you are! You cannot wander off on your own, is that clear? You said you were going to the restroom.’

I’d almost forgotten my excuse for leaving the endless meeting. All the decisions were made in the first twenty minutes, and after that it was finicking over tiny details for hours and hours, mostly to do with what weapons we would take, and whether we should wear black or dark green. Although I would be a member of the party, I lack military experience on an extreme scale, and I couldn’t see what I was contributing. And also, Johnny Depp was in the room, looking at me, and I thought I might die tomorrow. (And also (II), part of the reason I was thinking of him like that was that it helped me put the twisted feelings I had for David Tennant out of my mind, and why I keep going on about these twisted feelings is beyond me, because I’m not twisted, and I would never do anything about them. Perhaps it’s the same reason that Miss Smallbone told me about Johnny Depp. Against the bright light of oblivion, it’s hard to resist baring your soul.) ‘Is the meeting over?’ I asked.

‘Er…’

‘Just some final details?’ I said. Johnny grinned. It would have been easier if he didn’t get my jokes.

‘Come on, Mary Sue. We’re almost done, I promise, and tomorrow we go to war, so…’

‘Yeah, yeah. We have to get a good night’s sleep.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, we might all be about to die! Tonight we party!’
***

Once, on a work trip to New York, I learned that the cool bars there are ones you have to know about to find, because they look as if they are the toilets of crappy Japanese restaurants or they are through a bead curtain behind the counter of second-hand bookshops. It never even crossed my mind that London was full of similar places, and maybe it isn’t, but there’s one at least. After wolfing down the delicious barbecue Kylie Minogue had been preparing all afternoon, and drinking a beaker each of a drink called Admiral’s Flip with which Freddie Flintoff seemed to be obsessed and I could see why, the mood was festive. We jumped into taxis, and headed to Kilburn. I couldn’t believe there was somewhere to go out that I’d never heard of this close to my home, but Freddie just laughed. He was clearly the leader of the gang. Even Johnny Depp and David Tennant, who were alpha as they come, deferred to him without a second thought in the matter of having a good time.

Because it was, well, because this might be the last time, and the end of everything, and all that jazz, I’d been allowed to call my mates. Jen and the others were waiting outside Cookies & Cream, looking bewildered. I started introducing them to the angels, many of whom they recognised, of course. It was surreal, presenting Jeremy Clarkson and saying things like, ‘Morgan, Jeremy, Jeremy, Morgan,’ or hearing the words over my shoulder, ‘Sorry, we haven’t met, my name’s Kylie.’

The best moment was when I said to Jen and Katharine, ‘Jen and Katharine, this is David-Mitchell-the-novelist,’ and Jen went, ‘What?’ and David-Mitchell-the-novelist said, ‘Yes, I know. I cannot believe the bloody BBC! Even when we gave them the list of angels with it very clearly in stated in brackets that there were TWO Davids Mitchell, they STILL put a picture of David-Mitchell-the-comedian on the screen when they said my name. It drives me up the absolute bloody wall. I mean, I was…’

‘I agree,’ butted in Katharine. ‘It’s ridiculous. I mean, you were famous long before him! I LOVED Gostwritten. And you’re much better looking than he is…’ Jen and I looked at each other and edged away.

Opposite C & C was a furniture shop I must have walked past a hundred times over the years, piled high with ramshackle sofas with bad gilding. The shop entrance was obviously closed, but next to it was an inconspicuous door, with three buzzers. Freddie held his right index finger in the air with great ceremony (I think he might have had two Admiral’s Flips), and pressed the middle one, which was labelled ‘Pin Head’. The bar was not as tiny as I expected, and the dance floor was also perfectly respectable, which boded well. For now, though, the music was at a level we could talk over, and there were eight barmen crowded along the counter, so there was hardly any waiting. ‘This is amazing!’ said Jen, next to me. ‘Daiquiris? I literally do not care how much they cost!’

‘Don’t worry about that, old thing,’ said Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson. ‘I’ve put a million pounds behind the bar.’