‘Under arrest?’ she asked, laughing. ‘On what charge?’
‘On suspicion of terrorist behaviour.’
Elizabeth stared at him in disbelief. She tried to move towards the armchair but, because her ankles were tied together, all she could manage was a sort of bunny-hop, and even as she tried that, one of the officers lifted his gun aggressively and pointed it at her head, his finger on the trigger.
‘Terrorist behaviour?’ she asked. ‘That’s ridiculous. Don’t you know who I am? I’m George Cleverley’s daughter! I have absolutely zero interest in politics or ISIS or whatever is popular at the moment. I was going to go to Indonesia, yes, which for all I know might be near Iraq, but that was to help lepers. I’m a philanthropist and an influencer! For pity’s sake, I have a blue tick! Now can you please untie me so I can call my father’s solicitor and see to it that you’re out of a job by evening time?’
The man didn’t so much as crack a smile but opened a folder he was carrying and ran his finger down a page.
‘There’s something about @BorisJohnson’s face that makes me want to attack it with a machete,’ he read carefully.
‘Me too,’ said Elizabeth, attempting to shrug. ‘I honestly don’t know what people see in him. And honestly, couldn’t someone just give him a comb?’
‘You wrote this, didn’t you?’
‘Me? No. Of course not. Why would I write such a thing?’
‘@TruthIsASword,’ he said. ‘You’re the administrator of this Twitter account, aren’t you?’
She paused for a moment.
‘Ah,’ she said, swallowing nervously. ‘I think I understand now. Right. Okay. I mean, you’re making a terrible mistake, but I can see how it got started. How did you even know that I’m @TruthIsASword?’
‘In the past six weeks, Miss Cleverley, you’ve issued threats against the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Leader of the Opposition, President Macron, both Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, a backbench MP from Yorkshire, Kate Winslet, Salman Rushdie, Banksy, the wives of three England football players, Delia Smith, Ant and Dec, and Her Majesty the Queen.’ He closed his folder now and looked at her with barely disguised contempt on his face. ‘Her Majesty the Queen,’ he repeated, spitting out the words. ‘Elizabeth Regina. Who has served this nation with distinction, while never putting a foot wrong, since coming to the throne at the tender age of twenty-five. Have you no shame?’
‘But I didn’t mean any of them,’ she protested. ‘They were just jokes.’
‘Threatening to chop the Prime Minister’s head off with a machete is a joke, is it?’
‘Well, it’s not the funniest joke of all time, I’ll give you that. But it’s just harmless political satire.’
‘That contravenes the Terrorism Act of 2018.’
‘Well, I haven’t read that, so how would I know?’
‘Saying that you’d like to see the Duke of York pummelled to within an inch of his life by a kangaroo. That’s a joke, is it?’
‘Well, we all want that, surely?’
‘All right, we could let that one slide. But the rest, Miss Cleverley, the rest—’
Before he could continue, one of the armed officers came downstairs carrying an evidence bag containing a lot of banknotes.
‘Thirty-five thousand pounds, boss,’ he said, waving it in the air. ‘Found it in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Looks like a lad’s bedroom by the posters on the wall.’
‘Do you know anything about this?’ asked the man in charge, turning back to Elizabeth.
‘Thirty-five thousand pounds?’ she asked, opening her eyes wide. ‘I certainly do not. And if you found that in my younger brother’s room, then you can take it up with him. The boy’s an idiot. He probably sold his brain.’
The man nodded to his colleagues, and they started to lead her outside, which wasn’t easy as her ankles were still tied.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she cried.
‘To the station,’ he said. ‘You’ve committed some serious criminal offences and it’ll be up to the Crown Prosecution Service now to decide what to do with you.’
With that, they put her into the back of a waiting police van and shut the door. She sat there, torn between laughter and shock, uncertain what to do next, before moving her tied hands to her right-hand pocket and nudging it with her elbow until her phone fell out and dropped to the floor. She leaned over it, poking it with her nose, aware of how undignified this must look but not caring, and clicked on the blue Twitter app but, to her horror, the police had obviously got there first.
This account has been suspended due to a violation of our rules, said the message on the homepage.
‘Oh my God!’ she screamed, looking up at where the heavens would have been, had the roof of the police van not been in the way. ‘I’ve been cancelled!’
THE LUCKIEST BOY IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD
Achilles didn’t often come to this part of London and, when the taxi dropped him off in front of Rebecca’s house, he felt distinctly outside his comfort zone. He’d grown up around conspicuous wealth and luxury and didn’t much care for the cold winds of suburbia. Strolling up the driveway, however, he felt so excited about what lay ahead that he forgot his irritation over Jeremy’s no-show. The £5,000 that wasn’t burning a hole in his pocket could wait until tomorrow.
He rang the doorbell and, when Rebecca answered, broke into a wide grin. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder dress and her hair was flowing around her shoulders.
‘You look amazing,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’
‘Seriously, I just want to throw you down on the staircase right now.’
She offered a half-smile. ‘Who says romance is dead?’ she asked, before stepping out of the way and ushering him inside.
‘I meant to bring you flowers, but I forgot,’ said Achilles, glancing around at the narrow hallway. ‘And I was planning on buying you some chocolates, but I forgot them too. I thought there was a box of After Eights at home, but someone seems to have eaten them all.’
‘It’s the thought that counts,’ she said, leading him into the living room and turning off the television. He looked around the small room and noticed the same newspaper on the coffee table as he’d been reading in the pub and wondered had she been reading about his father’s latest peccadillo.
‘So,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘Here we are.’
‘Here we are indeed,’ she replied. ‘I like your shirt.’
‘Thank you. It’s new.’
‘You look very handsome.’
‘I know.’
She laughed.
‘Well, I do,’ he said. ‘There’s no need for false modesty, is there?’
‘I suppose not,’ she replied. ‘When you look like you, you might as well use it in any way that you can, right?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean it exactly as I said it.’
‘Right. Well, I mean, you’re gorgeous too,’ he said. ‘Imagine what our children would look like!’