Kingfisher

Blue Café Blues

The Labour Party Conference was the absolute peak of Michael Krassen's year and he was determined not to let the previous night's events put a damper on things. He was standing for election to the Young Labour N.E.C. against the almost universally-popular Joe Sugg and was widely regarded as having less than a snowball's chance in hell; that was good, because finding a way to win regardless was precisely the kind of thing that Michael enjoyed doing and precisely the kind of thing that he liked people to think he was good at.

Besides, if there was any child of a politician who Michael would murdered without presidential instructions, it would have been Joe. And not many people who knew Joe on a personal level would have blamed him—those who didn't know him well loved him; those who did wanted to drown him in a toilet. A mile or so down the road from the hotel where Michael was staying, he was relaxing into his considerably more comfortable bed with his subscription copy of The New Statesman, wondering how he had found his way so easily into the British political élite.

'Joe!' He was extracted from his musings by the sound of rhythmic banging on plywood. 'Joe, we have a problem.' That was the voice of Jacob Kent, his "best friend." Rolling his eyes at his friend's melodramatics, Joe rolled off the bed and made his way to the door. He had been friends with Jacob since Year 7, itself now seven years ago, and his friend was already on the N.E.C. It was for those reasons and those reasons alone that Joe continued to tolerate the ever-lengthening list of Jacobisms for which he had little time, the melodramatics being one such irking trait.

'I just got a text from Michael—the one who's standing against you; he sent me screenshots of that conversation we had about Amy, where you–'

Joe reacted physically as though an airborne knife had just whizzed past his ear, narrowly missing his face. Jacob was pulled forcibly into the room and the door closed swiftly behind him.

'Shit! Where the fuck did he get those?'

'Fuck knows. Somebody must have gotten into my Messenger.' Jacob held a straight face. Michael and Joe were both going to get what they deserved, the former for trying to blackmail him and the latter for being an irritating little gob-shite.

Joe was trying to keep his eyes on the prize and not let himself be distracted by his friend's Americanisms. Gotten. It simply wasn't a word. But for as much as he couldn't stand the discordant blend of British and American English that Jacob insisted on using, he tried his best not to care about proper conjugation and to focus on the fact he was partway through being blackmailed by a self-obsessed sixteen-year-old malcontent with greasy hair and a fedora. 'Right,' he said, his tone shifting from surprise to malice, and a cold glint appearing in his eyes. 'Did the Twat in the Hat say what he intended to do with them?'

Jacob smiled grimly and raised his eyebrows an inch. 'He's– I mean, Krassen's– blackmailing you. He says that he'll delete the screenshots and do nothing with them if you e-mail Vicky and tell her you're pulling out of the by-election. Otherwise, he'll wait until you beat him, and then send them to the Young Labour inclusion and diversity officer.'

By coincidence—though if someone had pointed it out to him, he would have pretended to have arranged it all on purpose—the boy himself was walking on beneath the window, passing by the expensive hotel with a cheap smirk on his face and rather pleased with himself for having had one of his friends supply him with blackmail to use against Jacob. If Joe had been less busy throwing The New Statesman across the room he probably would have noticed Michael strutting along the A259 and grinning like a Cheshire cat.

But then again, it was night, and darkness made Michael rather hard to spot. He was white but tanned and was dressed in all black, with battered black chinos, a black dress shirt that was several sizes too big, and, worst of all, a black Primark fedora, sitting on a head covered with greasy black hair. His phone and his shoes were the only exceptions to the rule, as both were a suspect shade of grey that had likely once been white.