Page 48 of The Final Vow

‘You said you’d rather eat a Linda McCartney sausage, Poe.’ ‘And the time before that?’

‘That you’d rather watch Boris Johnson’s birthing video.’

Poe nodded. He’d been proud of that one. Thought it was both funny and clever. ‘It seems I’ve been a terrible friend, Tilly,’ he said. ‘You were asking for help and I kept making fun of you. I apologise.’

Bradshaw frowned. ‘There’s no need to apologise, Poe; you don’t like comic books and role-playing games.’

‘And you don’t drink beer but that didn’t stop you going to the Carlisle Beer Festival with me last year.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘And you drove me to the Boiler Shop in Newcastle to see Half Man Half Biscuit this February. Youhatedthat.’

‘I didn’t hate it, Poe. I put in my earplugs and thought about the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture until it was time to go home.’

‘Birch and . . .?’

‘Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the seven Millennium Problems. Each one has a million-dollar reward for its solution.’

‘Blimey,’ Poe said. ‘Pity you didn’t solve it, it would have paid for the petrol.’

‘I did solve it, Poe.’

‘You did?’

Bradshaw nodded.

‘And they gave you a million dollars?’

‘I didn’t tell them I’d finished it,’ she said. ‘It didn’t seem fair. It only took me an hour.’

Poe looked at his friend. ‘Just how clever are you, Tilly?’

‘I’mveryclever, Poe,’ she said. She looked over to where the Norse Pantheon incident had taken place. Her brow furrowed. ‘But I do still have a lot to learn.’

‘We’ll learn it together,’ Poe said. ‘And from now on, I’m coming with you to every comic event you ask me to. No exceptions.’

‘You will?’

‘I will.’

‘And you’ll wear a costume?’

‘Don’t push it,’ he said. He paused. He pointed at a stall.

‘That wasn’t there before, Tilly. Let’s go and see this fool then grab something to eat.’

Chapter 37

The new stall was showcasing a game calledEmpty Skythat was still in its beta phase. The stall owner had arrived late – car trouble – which was why they’d both missed him the first time they’d walked around the NEC. Poe grabbed a flyer, although he needn’t have bothered. The guy knew Bradshaw. They were at Oxford together. Bradshaw had been thirteen and he’d been twenty-one. Ordinarily a twenty-one-year-old noticing a thirteen-year-old would have been enough to get Poe’s Spidey senses tingling, but, as Bradshaw had been theonlythirteen-year-old at Oxford, she’d have stood out like a spoon in the fork drawer. The guy also knew what Bradshaw was doing now, or thought he did anyway, and he willingly handed over his mailing list.

They talked about being characters in someone else’s game theory for a while, whatever the hell that meant, then the guy said, ‘Here’s my email address. I’d love it if we could stay in touch.’

‘No, thank you,’ Bradshaw replied. ‘That would bore me senseless.’

Poe was still laughing when they finished their final trawl around the NEC, which happened to be, by a massive coincidence that he definitely hadn’t planned, at one of the hog-roast vendors. Poe marched up to the window and, before Bradshaw could force-feed him any more mango, he said, ‘A roast pig belly buster, my good man. And don’t spare the crackling, the hairier the better.’

Bradshaw made some vomiting noises but didn’t try to stop him.