Bertie and the Kinky Politician (35 page)

She transferred the tray onto her knees, inhaled the delicious aromas rising from the overfilled plate and sighed happily. Home-made steak and kidney pie with roasties and a mountain of fresh veg. Perfect!

She stabbed the remote at the TV. ‘Good, just in time for the news. I wonder what that pillock of a Prime Minister has been doing while I've been away,' she muttered to no one in particular, tucking into a generous slice of pie.

A drama unfolded before her eyes, a drama that arrested the fork halfway to her gaping mouth. A kidney slid off the inert tines and fell with a plop into the waiting lagoon of gravy below, splashing brown on to her dressing gown – but she didn't notice.

The fire, now cranked up to a nuclear maximum, began to scorch the blanket draped over her feet – but she didn't notice.

The wind moaned suddenly, rising and swelling to rattle the windows in a renewed effort to penetrate her defences – but she didn't notice.

Her inflamed joints, the cause of continual pain from the moment she woke to the moment she closed her eyes at night, were hurting even more than usual – but still she didn't notice.

Mouth sagging in shock, she stared utterly transfixed at the screen, at an ex-Prime Minister leaving Buckingham Palace having asked the monarch to dissolve Parliament, at a blue parrot in someone's lounge, at an unseemly scuffle of news crews, at a jostled reporter yelling excitedly into his microphone – and at a distraught, wide-eyed, copper-haired woman.

‘I'll be goddamned,' she whispered. A forgotten image of long ago suddenly returned, an image of a very young girl with a bright open face and dancing orange pig-tails. ‘Well, I'll be goddamned to hell – it's Skippy Gordon!' She began to chuckle. The chuckle swelled into a witch's cackle, then a hooting laugh, and the laugh waxed uncontrollably, gathering force until she found herself wracked and red-faced, tears streaming down her cheeks and shoulders shaking convulsively.

‘That's my girl!' gasped Miss Rose Jelf.

THE END

Actually, no. Not even close to the end. Bertie's adventures have only just begun …

Other titles you may enjoy

For more information about
Mike A. Vickers

and other
Accent Press
titles

please visit

www.accentpress.co.uk

For news on Accent Press authors and upcoming titles please visit

http://accenthub.com/

Published by Accent Press Ltd 2014

ISBN 9781783753161

Copyright ©
Mike A. Vickers
2014

The right of
Mike A. Vickers
to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, Ty Cynon House, Navigation Park, Abercynon, CF45 4SN