20:19 <VoxPVoxD> There are no courgettes in Manchester. 20:22 <VoxPVoxD> She hasn't really done much proper shopping in the last couple of weeks. It's a madhouse out there. Sky-high prices at Waitrose. Produce sections picked clean like a pretty girl's circulatory system. Nothing at the little local shops, the farmer's market was cleared out by the time she got there. Christ alive, she even tried Lidl. 20:26 <VoxPVoxD> It puts a terrible snag in her plans to do some Project Cooking over the coming week. The last time it was this bad, during lockdown, she was living off of crisps and doomscrolling and it didn't matter. 20:30 <VoxPVoxD> She returns home with a canvas bag full of canned vegetables, beef mince, and the urge to take the butt of her shotgun and mash it into Boris Johnson's fat crinkly inbred dog face until he looks like Rolf. She's got spices at least. Maybe chili con carne? Not something she's going to try to feed to her cellmates — do Aaron or Bob have involved meat slop opinions? she daren't find out. 20:34 <VoxPVoxD> Of course even that has to wait until work is done. She works late, until well after dark, grateful for the lack of intrusion from the night-city... or the night-boyfriend. They aren't in constant contact, but every time Sergio says 'let me ask Simpson about that' she has a little prickle of fear that this is the time they just stake him and stick him back in their dreadful little mancave 20:34 <VoxPVoxD> (a wine cave for storing men) until he's even more isolateable. 20:43 <VoxPVoxD> The knifework is very satisfying, as it always is. When she's being responsible she sets Sundays aside to prep food for the week's cooking, and giving a couple of hours to dicing, storing, and labeling leeks, carrots, shallots, etc is just... it feels really good. Orderly. Bright and clean and sharp. Maybe she should make a chili sin carne for Richard. And Bob will eat his vegetables if 20:43 <VoxPVoxD> someone stands over him while he does it. 20:43 <VoxPVoxD> Fuck! 20:44 <VoxPVoxD> Her hand slipped. She nicked herself. It doesn't hurt, even as the blood wells from the cut along the side of her finger. The knife is sharp enough to be painless, if not harmless. 20:45 <VoxPVoxD> No blood on the onions, at least. 20:48 <VoxPVoxD> That means she can let them sweat while casting about for bandages with her finger in her mouth. She must have some, still, surely... 20:56 <VoxPVoxD> Aha! The first aid kit got wedged underneath her bed. She wraps her finger up and then delicately wipes the smear of blood on the white lid of the box, sitting on the floor with her back against the bedframe. Just the tiniest bit winded. She's become intimately acquainted with the feeling of having just barely not quite enough blood in your system. 20:56 <VoxPVoxD> But it's a fair price, and freely bargained. Mephistopheles would never. 20:56 <VoxPVoxD> ...is that the phone? 20:59 <VoxPVoxD> She permits herself a Dad Noise "eeeeeuuurgh" as she rises and follows the ring. Phone's on the counter, facedown, vibrating ever-closer to the edge before she picks it up. She answers it without noticing who is on the Caller ID, or that it's a FaceTime call. 21:03 <VoxPVoxD> The wide face in her telephone, fair of skin and bleached of tooth: "Minnie, you look positively haggard. Back on the junk, are we?" 21:06 <VoxPVoxD> Willie feels her face pulled by unseen hooks into a smile so bright and glittering cold that Bob Goreman would fall to ash on the spot. "Charlie! Unforgivably rude as ever." 21:07 <VoxPVoxD> Charles Henry Wellesley, fifth son of the Duke: "Nah. Near the knuckle, surely. I didn't ask whose." 21:08 <VoxPVoxD> "Whose, though? Eddie told me you'd found a new host to lay a clutch of eggs in." 21:09 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "No, he didn't." 21:10 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Yeah, fair play. Your face did, though, just now." 21:13 <VoxPVoxD> The thought of just hanging up doesn't enter Willie's mind. It would amount to an immediate capitulation, and a Wellesley does not surrender. Particularly not to someone as dastardly and spiritually bereft as a Wellesley. "To what do I owe this pain?" 21:15 <VoxPVoxD> ...Eddie did forget his softish commitment to call her again, though, which Willie only realises now, some two weeks later. It's been a busy fortnight. 21:20 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie's quick little eyes dance over the screen, like a lidless dreamer. He blinks, a manicured expression of feigned shock. "I need a reason? You're my baby sister. We haven't spoken since Easter last, when you told me you were... whatever they've got you doing up there. Fashioning crutches for miners' waifs." 21:21 <VoxPVoxD> "How is Hull, anyway? I've never had the pleasure." 21:23 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Manchester." 21:25 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Well?" 21:26 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "It's wonderful. I'm having the time of my life." 21:26 <VoxPVoxD> Christ, she is, isn't she? 21:27 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "That's awfully bleak, pet." 21:29 <VoxPVoxD> The onions are going to burn. In with the garlic, then the mince to brown. The sizzle is loud. 21:30 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Oh! You're cooking! Is it for your man? Does he admit to being a man this time?" 21:31 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's elbow bobs in and out of Charlie's view as she stirs out-of-frame. "What do you want, Charlie?" 21:32 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "I'm stuck on the runway, and there's no one else in the cabin to talk to. Keep me company?" 21:33 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "How much do you typically pay your escorts? What kind of savings am I affording the family trust? I can use it as a tax offset." 21:35 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Ha ha haaaaaaaa! There's the Minnie I know. Enemy of the innocent. Repeller of children, animals, married women. Come on, pet. What are you up to?" 21:39 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "I'm just having a night in. I've been working non-stop and I'm taking a night to veg out." 21:40 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "That is definitely meat I hear frying." 21:40 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Good ear. This must be the closest you've ever been to a kitchen." 21:43 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "I confess I haven't had your training. I didn't have the privilege of attending Dusty Wycombe's School For Future Housewives. I had to go to Eton, where girls aren't allowed." 21:43 <VoxPVoxD> "For now, at least. Wait'll the Woke Mafia get their hooks in." 21:44 <VoxPVoxD> Willie giggles. 21:44 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Think that's funny, do you? Should a civil servant be so giddy at the erosion of our nation's time-honoured values?" 21:44 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "You just reminded me of a colleague of mine." 21:48 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "What have you been up to? Where are you flying?" 21:49 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Not flying. Landing. Just got back from Bonn. Had dinner with Alfie, Rita and the kids. Lovely little family." 21:50 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Uh huh." 21:52 <VoxPVoxD> "For a bunch of gossipy, frog-faced prats," Charlie concedes. "I was cursed to inherit the brains and beauty of our entire generation." 21:52 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "And the grace, as well." 21:54 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "You should come down to Ashwood. My friends are keen to meet the best-paid Page 3 girl the Sun's ever had." 21:54 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Do fuck off." 21:55 <VoxPVoxD> "Did you find a job yet?" 21:55 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "I've got some things lined up. Keeping busy, you know. Industrious, like our busy little Minnie." 22:01 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Good! Papa will be glad to hear it." 22:03 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "I don't think Papa's been capable of gladness since Black Wednesday. But he might rehydrate a bit. Less pruny, more plummy." 22:04 <VoxPVoxD> "So who is he? Come on, you can't resist talking about yourself. Not even to me." 22:05 <VoxPVoxD> "No one can resist talking about themselves. That's their fatal weakness." 22:05 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "You'd hate him." 22:06 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Have you met his girlfriend yet?" 22:06 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "I'm his girlfriend. Prick." 22:07 <VoxPVoxD> She's in frame now, with the beans and meat simmering away with their spices. The kitchen smells divine. 22:07 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Is he in? Can I say hello?" 22:07 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "None of your bloody business, and no." 22:08 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "It's fine! I'm getting better. They've got these sensitivity trainings now. But you want to talk about making Papa glad, you should try bringing someone white home for once." 22:13 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Maybe to his funeral." 22:13 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie tuts. "Honestly. And you call me rude." 22:15 <VoxPVoxD> Offhandedly: "The house was his idea?" 22:15 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "What?" 22:16 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie's nostrils flare with the scent of blood. "I told you I had dinner with Alfie. You know who else was there? Burnsy. He mentioned an interesting bit of work you'd pushed through the firm." 22:19 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Christ, Charlie. This is why you called?" 22:20 <VoxPVoxD> "I called because I missed you. The house was just my pretext." He means it, which makes this all the more ghastly. 22:21 <VoxPVoxD> "Is it your boyfriend's money? Does he just need a clean name for the deed? What sort of crime is he into? Can he get me drugs? Women? Women on drugs?" 22:21 <VoxPVoxD> The sound of fingers snapping. "No wonder you're so strung out." 22:22 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "He doesn't even know yet. What kind of woman do you take me for?" 22:23 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Evidently not the right kind, which is apparently the kind of woman who buys a house in secret." 22:24 <VoxPVoxD> "Is it nice? Have you picked out the bit where you're going to keep the animals you drive to suicide?" 22:24 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's off frame for a bit. Charlie can hear her stirring. She sniffs, presumably the chili. Sounds a bit stuffed up. 22:26 <VoxPVoxD> From by the range: "The house needs work. I wanted the land." 22:26 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Where'd the money come from?" 22:27 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "I have a job Charlie." 22:27 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "You have a 'doesn't need to do porn to make rent' job. You don't have a 'buys a house at 26' job." 22:27 <VoxPVoxD> "Is it porn?" 22:27 <VoxPVoxD> "Fuck you." 22:28 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie looks like the cream that got the cat. 22:32 <VoxPVoxD> "You're into something, Minnie. What is it?" 22:34 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "..." 22:36 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "You can tell me now or you can tell me later, when you're in a mess and you need to lean on someone who has to put up with you, and you realise I'm the only one who already knows." 22:37 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "There's nothing to talk about. It wasn't an expensive property." 22:37 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "What's it called?" 22:38 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "What?" 22:40 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "You can't tell me you're so middle-class now that you bought into a house without a name. You haven't gone native, Minnie." 22:41 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "...the owners named it after the lake it's on." 22:41 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Which is?" 22:42 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Do your own detective work. It's not like you've got anything better to do." 22:42 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "I worry about you, Minnie. I am worried about you." 22:43 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Is that a fact." 22:44 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie goes on as if she'd said nothing. "I worry you've become the kind of person who casts about looking for crutches to lean on, instead of remembering how to stand on your own two feet. Like you used to." 22:44 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "...let me ask you something, Charlie." 22:44 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Mmmm?" 22:45 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "What's the most irritating thing about the young?" 22:45 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Thinking you're immortal, obviously." 22:45 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "And the old?" 22:46 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "Being so close with death that they don't care about anything." 22:46 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "How would you deal with someone who was both of those at the same time?" 22:46 <VoxPVoxD> Charlie: "I wouldn't. Sounds awful." 22:48 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Sometimes I worry that you've become the kind of person who sees someone walking with a crutch, and immediately kicks it out from under her." 22:48 <VoxPVoxD> "Then I remember you're just another fucking toad." 22:49 <VoxPVoxD> "Don't call me." 22:49 <VoxPVoxD> The phone goes dark.