PEPAC novel: excerpt: "AGFUTI"

There is a knock at Clarissa’s door.  Without waiting for an answer, in walks Donna from the post room.  She is pretty, sensual-looking in an obvious sort of way, like a Jewish Bardot.  She has long dark curls, a wide mouth and a cracking figure displayed to full advantage in gym leggings and a black clinging top.   She wears neat, trendy trainers.  

Looking amused at something, Donna paces across the room and slaps a sheaf of post onto the edge of Clarissa’s desk. 

“Bit late today.” Clarissa remarks, not looking up from her screen.  She’s pretending to be pissed off.

Donna says nothing.  She waits until her silence gets Clarissa’s attention.  Then she points solemnly to the three letters emblazoned, white on black, across her bosom:  G.F.Y.

“Oh, I was going to!”  Says Clarissa, suppressing a smile.  “Thank you very much.”

“My pleasure,” says Donna wiv’ her Norf London accent, and turns on her heel to reveal a second legend across her back; she pauses for Clarissa to read it.

“A.G.F.U.T.I.?” asks Clarissa.

“And.  Get.  Fucking.  Used.  To.  It.”  Intones Donna solemnly, still with her back to Clarissa.  She paces slowly out.

Clarissa bursts out laughing.  “Go Fuck Yourself too,” she murmurs to herself.  She’d have to come up with a suitable riposte by the time Donna drove her home tonight.   GALYFI?  Get A Life You Fucking Idiot?  Bit close to the bone that, for both of them.      

In the meantime, vamos!  With a reflexive slurp of Gordons, Clarissa deletes the delightful Spanish courtesies from Francesco’s email and forwards it to a select few (noting as she does so that, for all IT’s efforts recently, her laptop is disgracefully slow; Raul’s money can’t buy everything). 

But, hey, the King is Dead!  Long live the King!  It’s time to throw down the red carpet and hope like Hell it keeps PEPAC’s Grand Secret covered up.  If the heir apparent does find out how PEPAC has been propped up over the years, it will shortly be time to pull that same carpet from under him before he can do any structural damage.

And if he doesn’t like it, then Espinosa Minor can go fuck himself too.