Tom’s face had gone very, very impassive. “It was work, Bridge.
You know, work.”
“What?” The Transport for London visibly scoffed. “You some kind of spy or something?”
Bridge gave the fakest laugh I have ever heard. “No. Of course not.” Her voice had lifted by at least an octave. “He’s a”—she paused, way longer than any woman should have had to before saying what her fiancé did for a living—“fireman.”
There was a long silence.
“Oh, crap.” The Transport for London guard’s eyes had gone very wide. “Is this a… Is this an MI5 thing? Is that woman some kind of secret agent?”
“Yes,” said Tom without missing a beat. “She’s a defector from a foreign power, and it’s vitally important that my fiancée”—he gave the word a verbal air quote—“and I be able to discuss the rest of this in private.”
Transport for London Guy nodded and backed right the fuck off.
“’Course. Won’t say a thing. You can count on me, agent.”
The moment he was gone, Bridge rounded on Tom, brandishing her phone in his face. “Look. I know she’s not really a spy, so who is she? What were you doing? And why are you leaving me for somebody from Harrow?”
Tom looked more flustered than I’d ever seen him, which, to his credit, was a lot less flustered than I was in most situations. “I told you, it’s work. And she’s not from Harrow. That’s why we’re here.”
“That,” Bridge said sharply, “makes no sense.”
His flusterance intensifying, Tom glanced around the increasingly crowded platform. “Can we go somewhere else?”
“No.” Bridge, still brandishing, was now also bristling. “I have been trying to call you since yesterday, Tom. Since yesterday. Where have you been?”
Tom took a deep breath and leaned in very closely. The rest of Bridge’s Bitches （Used in the Reclaimed Sense） gathered in. “I have been,” he whispered, “in a safe house with an informant.”
Bridge de-bristled very slightly. “Oh.”
“Now maybe,” suggested Tom, “we can finish this conversation somewhere that isn’t incredibly public.”
Trying not to catch the eye of the Transport for London guard on the way out, we all trooped back to the truck and squeezed in.
“Found him, then?” observed Priya.
“Yes,” Bridge was sitting on Tom’s lap in the front seat and still not looking totally mollified. “And he’s going to explain everything, aren’t you?”
Tom surveyed the assembled band of demi-strangers. “You realise this is the opposite of operational security?”
“Just tell me.” Bridge could be very firm when she wanted to be.
“The woman in the photograph is married to a major drug smuggler we’re investigating. I was moving her into a safe house.
We now have to move her to a different safe house, and I’m going to take myself off the case because somehow you got a picture of us together.”
“Sorry,” said Liz, “that was me. The Lord works in mysterious ways and all that.”
Behind his eyes, I could see Tom doing some very painful calculations. “And you sent it to Bridge?”
“And I sent it to Luc,” Bridge added.
“And,” I finished, “I sent it to…sort of the entire WhatsApp group?”
Tom thunked his head against Bridge’s shoulder. “Everybody.
Delete. The picture. It’s important. Sorry, Bridge. I should have taken this week off.”
She kissed him on the forehead. “It’s okay. I knew you were in Intelligence. I just didn’t know you were James Bond.”
“You didn’t?” Tom risked a smile. “I thought that was why you wanted to marry me.”
James Royce-Royce leaned between the seats. “Oh, that would be a very bad call. James Bond only got married once, and she was dead by the end of the film.”
“James,” said Tom, “stop helping.”
“And…” Bridge seemed to be having a lot of feelings. “And she really was an informant? Not, like, an international sex assassin?”
“She’s an informant, Bridge. There are no international sex assassins. International assassins are just ordinary-looking blokes who stab you with an umbrella or slip you an exploding cigar.”
“And you haven’t bought her a necklace?”