Archive of Our Own

The London Zoo has approximately eight lemurs, seven gorillas, and fifty three monkeys. Lando knows this because he used to visit the place incognito and count them one by one. It's for his mental health. Every Tuesday, thirty minutes blocked off in his diary, just enough time to mentally prepare himself for what comes next.

Because he finds it calming. The gorillas know who the silverback is. They sunbathe in neat little clusters, hierarchy settled without requiring secret briefings to the press. The lemurs do what looks suspiciously like yoga. Tiny brains, and yet they can apparently find it within themselves to sit still for several consecutive minutes without screaming across the enclosure.

The absolute animals Lando is about to face through the next set of doors cannot.

"Prime Minister."

Carlos Sainz materialises at his elbow the moment he steps into the Palace of Westminster, which is either excellent timing or proof that Carlos has been waiting behind a pillar like a very well-dressed ambush predator. 

Lando doesn't break stride.

"Did you hear what Max said," Carlos says, falling into step. 

"Good morning, Carlos."

"Did you hear what he said. Did you know he was going to say that. What is he doing."

Lando is walking, Carlos is orbiting, the way Carlos has orbited him since 2019, since they stopped being two backbenchers who shared a flat and started being the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary and all the terrible distance that implied. Lando misses the flat sometimes. The flat had a sofa that sagged in the middle and a kettle that took four minutes to boil and no journalists in the corridor.

"I know," Lando says. "I approved the agreement two weeks ago."

"You approved—" Carlos stops walking. This is a problem, because Lando cannot stop walking; the Prime Minister stopping in a parliamentary corridor is a news story, is a photograph, is a metaphor for a government in stasis. Lando keeps moving. Carlos has to jog two steps to catch up, which Lando would find funny under any other circumstances.

"You approved the agreement. You approved Max Verstappen promising basing rights to the Qataris without telling the Foreign Office."

"I didn't approve him promising anything. I approved a defence cooperation framework. The framework is three pages long. It covers joint exercises and a maintenance stop for the Queen Elizabeth. That's it. That's the whole thing."

"The media, Lando."

"I know about the media."

"The media is saying he's sold the carrier."

"He hasn't sold the carrier. You can't sell an aircraft carrier. It's sixty-five thousand tonnes of British sovereign territory. You'd need a receipt."

"The Daily Mail doesn't care about receipts. The Daily Mail has a headline that says—" Carlos pulls out his phone, reads, and then puts it away again like it has personally offended him. "It doesn't matter what it says. It matters that our backbenchers are reading it. Our people. MCL people. People who have been waiting since 1998 to be in government again, and now they're in government, and the government is being fronted by Max Verstappen doing his impression of a man who's never heard of cabinet collective responsibility."

They turn a corner. A junior minister—Lando doesn't catch who—sees them coming and ducks into a side office with the instinctive self-preservation of a gazelle spotting a lion.

"Our people are worried," Carlos says, quieter now. "They're worried this makes us look weak. They're worried Max is running his own government inside your government. And when people get worried, Lando, they start looking for someone they can trust. Someone who looks like they're in control."

Lando knows where this is going. 

"Carlos."

"They might look at Oscar."

The corridor is very quiet. Somewhere, a phone is ringing. 

"Oscar is my Chancellor," Lando says. "Oscar is not running against me."

"I'm not saying he's running against you. I'm saying worried backbenchers look for lifeboats. And Oscar looks like a lifeboat. He looks like the most competent person in the government—"

"He is the most competent person in the government."

"—and if people start thinking he's the only thing keeping us afloat, they're going to ask why he's not the one steering."

They have reached the door to the Prime Minister's parliamentary office. Lando stops. He turns to face Carlos, his friend, his former flatmate, one of the few people in this building who would warn him about a cliff before he walked off it.

"You can't keep letting Max get away with this," Carlos says. "We all know why you made the deal. I know the alternatives were worse. But Max is out there doing press conferences on aeroplanes and saying 'we good' to the American president like he's ordering a takeaway, and every time he does it, you look a little bit less like the Prime Minister and a little bit more like the man who's borrowing the chair until the real one shows up."

Lando exhales. This is the crux of it, isn't it. Lando Norris signed a deal with the devil, and the devil has horns, and the horns are attached to Max Verstappen, and Max Verstappen is currently on a plane back from Doha having apparently resolved an international incident with the phrase we good.

"Carlos."

"Lando."

"You were shadow foreign sec for four years. You know him. You knew what we were getting into."

"I knew what you were getting into. Bit different."

"He's choosing to work for me. The man was Prime Minister sixteen months ago, Carlos, he could be on a beach. He's not. He's in our cabinet."

"He's in our cabinet announcing things in Doha that nobody told me about."

"Growing pains."

"Don't."

"Growing pains."

"Don't say growing pains, that's a—that's an HR phrase, Lando, that's what you say to a graduate scheme."

"We'll handle it."

"You keep saying that."

"Because we keep handling it."

Lando opens the door before Carlos can finish whatever face he's making and walks into a wall of noise. 

Everyone is on a phone. Sky News is on mute in the corner. The chyron says QATAR ROW: PM UNDER PRESSURE, which is, Lando notes with the detached interest of a man watching his own house burn down, slightly ahead of the actual story.

Will Joseph appears at his elbow holding two folders and the air of a man who has not yet had breakfast and is no longer expecting to.

"Prime Minister."

"Where's Max?"

"Wheels-up Doha, on the ground at Northolt in about three hours. His office wants a slot with you this afternoon."

"His office wants a slot."

"His office, yeah."

"Fine. Give him a slot. After PMQs. After I've spent half an hour at the despatch box explaining what he meant by we good, he can come and explain it to me in person."

"Understood. And Minister Piastri—"

"Oscar's not coming."

A beat.

"I didn't—"

"He's on the autumn statement, Will, he needs to be at his desk, not in this—" Lando gestures around the room, which is now somehow louder, "—not in this."

Across the room, someone is shouting into a phone in a tone that suggests the person on the other end of the phone is one of Max's people, and the person doing the shouting is rapidly running out of ways to say what the fuck were you thinking.

"George," Lando says, to move things along. "Walk me through it."

Will exhales. 

"He'll lead on Qatar. He has to. If he doesn't lead on Qatar his own people will eat him."

"How hard?"

"Hard. Two angles, maybe three. One is the obvious—what did you know, when did you know it, blah blah. Two is the cabinet discipline thing, he's been workshopping a line about Max running his own foreign policy—"

"He's been workshopping—"

"Three separate people have told me, yeah."

"Three of his people have told you—"

"Two of his. One of his deputy's. He tried it out in a room and the room leaked, Prime Minister, the room always leaks, I don't know why he keeps doing rooms."

"And the third angle."

"Third one's the one I'd watch. He might go soft. Concerned-statesman thing. The Prime Minister has my sympathy, this is a difficult coalition, the country deserves a government that speaks with one voice. That sort of thing. Sad-uncle voice."

Lando rubs his face. There is, he realises, no version of this morning in which he gets to sit down.

"He's leading a party with half the seats RBR's got and he's behaving like he's six points ahead."

"He's not, though."

"No."

"You've seen—"

"Antonelli. Yes."

"Toto's all over him," Will says.

"I know."

"So George is going to come at me twice as hard on Max today because if he can't show his own party he can wound me with it, they'll start wondering what he's for."

"That's the read."

"Right. Right, okay. So here's what I want to do."

Will gets out his notebook. 

"I want to tell the truth."

Will's pen stops.

"Sorry?"

"The truth."

"Define the—"

"The truth, Will, the thing that happened. The agreement is a routine update to an existing framework from 2017. Joint exercises and a maintenance stop. That's it. Nobody's selling a carrier. Nobody's basing anything anywhere. It went through NSC, it went through the Foreign Office, you saw it, Carlos saw it, I signed it. Nothing in it is a surprise. We say that."

"Okay."

"And on Max we say—Max said what was in the agreement. He said it like Max says things, which is—"

"Don't say like a knob."

"I wasn't going to say like a knob. I was going to say—what's the—communication style. Max's communication style is Max's communication style. He's a former PM. People already knew exactly who he was. Nobody in this country has been confused about Max Verstappen since 2015."

Will writes that down. Then he looks at it. Then he crosses it out.

"Don't say the 2015 line."

"Why."

"Because the 2015 line is a good line, Prime Minister, and good lines are what people remember, and what you want them to remember about today is boring routine agreement, not Prime Minister makes joke about Defence Secretary at the despatch box. You give them the funny line, the funny line is the clip. You don't want a clip. You want them bored. Bored is the goal."

"Bored is the goal."

"Bored is the goal, Prime Minister."

—

The Commons chamber is, Lando has decided, very poorly named. They call it the bear pit. The bear pit. Lando has actually been to the bear pit at London Zoo—well, the bear enclosure, they don't call it a pit anymore—and the bears were fine. The bears were having a lovely time. The bears were eating an apple between them with the patient cooperation of two large mammals who have nothing to prove to each other or to the public. 

This chamber, meanwhile, is a room full of hundreds of people who have been told since childhood that they are exceptional and have organised their entire personalities around proving it in public. 

Calling it a bear pit is an insult to bears. Bears have self-respect. The bears were not, for instance, shouting hear hear at each other in a register pitched somewhere between braying donkey and drunk wedding guest. The bears were not waving order papers. 

The bears had, in short, more dignity than this room has had at any point in its eight hundred year history, and Lando thinks about this fact most Wednesdays at approximately eleven fifty-eight, which is now.

He walks in. The room quiets a bit, but not enough. Never enough. 

He takes his seat on the government front bench.

The chamber is packed. There are MPs sitting on the stairs, standing at the back,  wedged into the side galleries like commuters on a delayed train, all elbows and irritation and the quiet understanding that something is about to happen. The press gallery is full which it only is when the journalists have got wind of a story. 

His ministers are arranged around him. Carlos on one side, Foreign Secretary, still radiating the specific tension of their corridor conversation but managing to look serene about it. Alex Albon next to him, Home Secretary, the only person in the government who appears to have slept. Ollie Bearman, Energy, twenty-two years old and approximately fifteen in facial expression, sitting very straight and trying not to look terrified. Down the bench, the RBR contingent—Pierre Gasly at Transport, Yuki Tsunoda at Agriculture, the coalition's visible proof that this government contains multitudes, most of them incompatible.

Behind them, the backbenchers. They are eager and restless. The MCL ones are new to government, most of them—the party has been out of power since before some of them were born, and they still haven't quite figured out how to sit on the government benches without looking surprised. 

The RBR backbenchers are different. The RBR backbenchers look like they're waiting for something. Eight of them, the Marko Eight, sitting together in a block that his Chief Whip, Daniel Ricciardo, has been watching all morning like a weather front.

Lando checks his notes. The folder is open on his lap. Oscar's folder. Red, amber, green. Eleven scenarios. The yellow-highlighted lie. The Gulf agreement. The joint exercises. The very nice dock.

Opposite him, George Russell is not checking his notes.

George is sitting with one leg crossed over the other, his folder balanced on his knee, his hands resting on it with the particular delicacy of someone who has already done the reading and is now simply waiting for the cue. His eyes move across the chamber in slow, regular sweeps. Lando watches him check on his own people—the MERC shadow ministers arranged behind him, the FER contingent next to them in their uncomfortable alliance, Charles Leclerc sitting there in the dual role of shadow foreign secretary and party chairman, leading the traditionalist conservatives in a partnership nobody asked for and nobody wants.

It is, Lando thinks, a strange mirror. Two opposition parties sharing a bench, bound together by arithmetic rather than affection, each one wishing the other would disappear. 

George and Charles didn't choose this arrangement. 

Lando did. Kind of.

He looked at the numbers after the 2025 election and he looked at George Russell waiting by the phone with his speech already written, and Oscar looked at Max Verstappen, and Lando made a choice.

It should have been MERC. Everyone knew it should have been MERC. The Moderate Centre League and the Meritocratic Enterprise & Reform Coalition had governed together before, in the good years, the late 1990s and early 2000s when the country still believed in consensus and the centre ground and the idea that politics was all about finding the sensible middle. 

When MCL came out of the 2025 election as the largest party, George had a speech prepared. He had a coalition agreement drafted. He had already decided which tie he was going to wear for the joint press conference.

Lando still remembers the look on George's face when he announced it. Not in person—he'd watched it on a monitor in the back room of the Downing Street press room, the BBC feed cutting to George outside MERC headquarters, his expression frozen somewhere between shock and fury, his mouth opening and closing twice before he managed to say something about "respecting the democratic process" in a voice that made it very clear he respected nothing of the sort.

The clip had gone viral. Someone had set it to music. Carlos had sent it to him with a single emoji: 🫣

So here they are. Sixteen months into the Papaya-Bull Accord. MCL and RBR. The centre-left party and the populist right party, governing together in an arrangement that the Financial Times had called "a political suicide pact with surprisingly good fiscal discipline." 

Max Verstappen—the man who had capitalised on post-COVID paranoia in 2020, who had ridden a wave of anti-establishment fury all the way to Downing Street, who had governed chaotically for three and a half years and then competently for six months—was now Lando's Defence Secretary. George Russell was in opposition. Charles Leclerc was in opposition. 

The natural order of this country's politics had been upended, and the man who upended it was currently checking his folder for the eleventh time and trying to remember whether scenario four covered GVA forecasts with two decimal places.

Daniel Ricciardo appears at his side. As MCL’s Chief Whip, his job is not, structurally, to be subtle; But the way he is materialising right now suggests something is, in the technical Westminster sense, fucked.

"Where the fuck is Oscar."

He says it with his hand to his mouth, leaning down. The posture that, from the gallery, will read as Chief Whip having a routine procedural word with the PM. From half a foot away, it reads as Daniel is one degree of internal temperature away from full molten panic.

"In his office," Lando says, looking at his notes. "Autumn Budget prep. We discussed—"

"He needs to be here."

"Daniel, we—"

"He needs to be here, Lando, George isn't going to ask about Qatar."

A small thing happens in Lando's stomach.

"He's definitely going to ask about Qatar—"

"He's not going to ask about Qatar, he's going to pivot—"

"What the fuck do you mean pivot, the man's been doing nothing but Qatar all morning, the wires—"

"My sources—"

"It's a bit bloody late to be telling me about your sources, Daniel."

"Can you just—can you get Oscar here—"

"Daniel, I am a Prime Minister, not a—"

"—order. ORDERRRRR."

Lando shuts his mouth.

Ben Sulayem is in the chair. Sixty-four years old, robes settled, hands flat on the wood, and the room—a few hundred and something MPs who two seconds ago were doing the chamber's worst impression of a school assembly—has gone quiet. 

Lando, unlike approximately everyone else in this room, does not hate the Speaker.

Lando finds him a weirdo, but a weirdo of a sort Lando is willing to tolerate. The first thing Ben Sulayem had done to Lando, on the day Lando had walked into this chamber for the first time as Prime Minister—first PMQs, full press gallery, Newsnight doing a special, his mum watching at home—was, in the small five-second handshake by the chair before proceedings, try to touch his hair. 

It was a quick, almost involuntary little reach, as if the Speaker of the House of Commons had been informed in passing that the new Prime Minister's hair was like that, and had, on first opportunity, wanted to confirm it for himself. 

It has continued in this vein. Ben Sulayem materialises beside Lando at receptions; Ben Sulayem appears in corridors and asks Lando, with the small earnest concern of a man enquiring about a relative's health, whether the curl is natural; Ben Sulayem once, at a Commonwealth dinner, told Lando in passing that his own daughter had hair similar but not as much, and then walked away before Lando could work out what the appropriate response to this would have been. 

Carlos thinks the Speaker is deranged. Daniel thinks he's playing a long game. Lando, who has spent four months learning that this building is full of people doing genuinely terrifying things in service of genuinely terrifying agendas, finds him endearing. 

The procedural things happen. The first question, by the conventions of the thing, is a soft one, from a member of the government's own side, allowing the Prime Minister to land a warm-up like a tennis player hitting a ball into an empty court.

The Speaker calls the member. It's one of the Ellas.

There are three Ellas in the MCL parliamentary party.  Lloyd. Stevens. Hakkinen. 

Lando still cannot tell them apart, partly because they are all, in fact, broadly similar in age and demographic profile, partly because two of them sit on the same select committee, and partly because Lando has at various points referred to all three of them by the wrong surname and they have all, with the small forgiving courtesy of MPs who have decided that being on first-name terms with the Prime Minister is worth a small Christian-named indignity, let him. 

The blonde one is Hakkinen. That much Lando is sure of. The one currently standing is—Lando squints—not the blonde one.

Wales. Something about Wales. Ah. Lloyd, then.

Then Ben Sulayem, calls for the main event. 

"The Leader of the Opposition."

It's George's turn.

George Russell rises from the opposition front bench. He unfolds himself to his full 185 centimetres, which is a lot of centimetres, distributed across a frame that can only be described as lanky in the specific way of someone who was very tall very young and has never quite figured out what to do with his elbows. 

See, Lando's not one to judge other people's oration skills. He respects George enough not to badmouth him—not seriously, not on the record, not in a way that would end up in the papers. They've known each other since they were very, very young. 

But God, the man cannot tell a joke.

George has the sort of slightly-too-symmetrical face that ought to play well on television, but there's just something endearingly robotic about him. His sense of humour can only be described as something dorky, the kind of dorky that just invites you to bully him, the kind of dorky where he tells a pun and then pauses for laughter and the pause goes on slightly too long and you can see him processing, in real time, that the joke didn't land. 

He once said, at the despatch box, "I suppose the Prime Minister could say I've got him over a barrel"—the context was something about oil imports—and then he looked around the room with his big blue expectant eyes, waiting for the laugh, and the laugh didn't come, and Lando watched something die behind those eyes, very briefly, before George cleared his throat and moved on.

Lando doesn't want to bully this blue teary-eyed man. He really doesn't. George makes it very difficult.

Then he goes.

"Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister will, of course, be aware of the joint statement issued yesterday afternoon by the Secretary of State for Defence, in Doha, alongside his Qatari counterpart. The statement has generated, ah, some considerable interest, both in this House and in the country, and I think the country will want to know—and I am sure the Prime Minister will want to reassure the country—whether the announcements made in that statement reflect the considered policy of this Government, agreed in cabinet, or whether they reflect, as some are now suggesting, an independent initiative pursued by the Defence Secretary in a manner not, perhaps, fully coordinated with Downing Street."

A small ooooh from the opposition benches.

"And, Mr Speaker," George continues—and this is the bit Lando feels rather than hears, the small additional half-clause that George could have left out but is going to do anyway—"I do, genuinely, want to express to the Prime Minister my sympathy. It is, I am sure, a difficult job. It is harder, perhaps, than the Prime Minister had expected. And the question I would put to him, with all due respect, is this: where, today, is British foreign policy being made? Is it being made in Downing Street, where the Prime Minister sits? Is it being made in the Ministry of Defence, where the Defence Secretary sometimes sits? Or is it being made, Mr Speaker, in airport lounges, in Doha."

A bigger ooooh. Some laughter. Somebody on the MERC backbenches actually slaps his knee, which is a thing Lando did not know real people did outside of pantomime.

He started it, Lando thinks. He always starts it. That has been the consistent pattern of George Russell since at least 2011, when George had been the one, in a JCR debate, to refer to Lando's policy position on tuition fees as what one might call thinking, if one were being generous, after which Lando had, at the bar afterwards, called George a posh tit, and the two of them had, several pints later, formed the basis of a working political friendship that had lasted, by Lando's count, fourteen years and seven months and which was about to enter its fifteenth year on the basis of George started it.

Lando stands.

He's got the practiced line ready. It's an existing framework from 2017, I approved it, it's a surprise to nobody. He opens his mouth to deliver it, and then something happens. Something in his brain shifts, the way it sometimes does when he's been standing too long and the adrenaline is wearing off and the part of him that is tired of being defensive wakes up and says: actually, no.

"Mr Speaker," Lando says. "The Right Honourable Gentleman asks where British foreign policy is made. I'll tell him where it's made. It's made by the elected government of this country, by ministers who have my confidence, doing their jobs in the service of the British people."

He pauses. He's supposed to sit down now. That's the rhythm. George asks, Lando answers, Lando sits. But Lando doesn't sit.

"And I have to say, Mr Speaker, I find the question a little ironic. Coming from him."

The chamber murmurs. George's eyebrow moves a fraction of a millimetre. Lando keeps going.

"Because the Right Honourable Gentleman seems very concerned about how my government coordinates its messaging. He seems very concerned about whether my ministers are singing from the same hymn sheet. He seems to think there's something unusual about a cabinet having—" He pauses. Lets the pause breathe. "—robust internal discussions."

He glances across the aisle. At George. At Charles, sitting beside George, already looking like he knows where this is going and doesn't want to be there when it arrives.

"But I wonder, Mr Speaker, whether the Right Honourable Gentleman is really the best person to lecture anyone about coherent opposition."

The chamber makes a sound. Not the oooh of a direct hit. Something lower. Something more interested. The sound of several hundred people realising the fight they came to watch is about to be a different fight entirely.

"Because from where I'm sitting," Lando says, "the opposition doesn't look terribly coherent either. The Right Honourable Gentleman leads MERC. The Right Honourable Member for—" He gestures at Charles. "—leads FER. They sit on the same bench. They're supposed to be holding my government to account together. And yet, Mr Speaker, I can't seem to turn on the television without seeing one of the Right Honourable Gentleman's own colleagues contradicting him."

He pauses again. The chamber is very quiet now.

"Take this morning, for instance. I was doing my PMQs preparation—as the Right Honourable Gentleman has been kind enough to note, I do prepare—and I happened to catch the MERC shadow Treasury spokesperson on the morning shows. She was asked about infrastructure investment. She gave a very detailed answer. Very impressive. The only problem, Mr Speaker, was that it directly contradicted the position the Right Honourable Gentleman's own shadow chancellor gave on the exact same programme two days ago."

The MERC benches are not laughing. The MERC benches are very still.

"Now, I'm not criticising. These things happen. Robust internal discussions, as I said. But the shadow Treasury spokesperson—and I won't name her, Mr Speaker, I'm sure she was just expressing her sincerely held views—the shadow Treasury spokesperson is a known ally of the Honourable Member for Brackley."

He lets the name hang. Kimi. He doesn't say Kimi. He doesn't need to. Everyone in the chamber knows who the Honourable Member for Brackley is. Everyone in the chamber knows Kimi Antonelli is nineteen years old and won a by-election with a 14% swing and gives speeches that go viral without appearing to try. 

"So the Right Honourable Gentleman will forgive me if I don't take lectures on cabinet coherence from a man whose own members are auditioning for his job on morning television."

The chamber erupts. 

It is, Lando notes through the small ringing in his ears, a good erupt. The MCL benches are on their feet, half of them at least, doing the full bellowed YEEEEEAAAAHHHH of a parliamentary party that has been waiting four months for the Prime Minister to land a punch and is now collectively making up for lost time.

“Order.”

Ben Sulayem rises half an inch in the chair.

“Order.”

Nobody listens.

“ORDERRRRR.”

The chamber settles into something approaching order, which is to say the shouting drops to a level where individual words can occasionally be distinguished.

Lando sits.

The blood is still singing in his ears. That was—he shouldn't have done that. He knows he shouldn't have done that. But God, it felt good. It felt like the first real thing he's said all day, the first time he's stopped playing defence and just swung. 

George stands.

And as George stands, Lando—Lando, who has not, until this moment, allowed himself to look directly at George—looks directly at George.

Oh, Lando thinks.

Oh, fuck.

It is not guilt. Lando is not exactly going to apologise. What he said is true, what he said is, in fact, an open secret, what he said is the kind of thing that has been the subtext of every MERC-watching column in every broadsheet for two months and which George himself has been spending real political capital pretending not to notice. 

Lando has not invented anything. He has simply said it out loud in a room full of journalists, which is a thing politicians do to each other every Wednesday and which is, by the standards of this building, normal. 

But.

But it was, he registers—and this is, he supposes, the small price of having known George since they were both teenagers in slightly damp accommodation in the same university town—a teeny tiny bit below the belt. Not by much. By a finger's width. 

George takes a second to recalibrate.

"Mr Speaker," he says. "The Prime Minister is very entertaining when he's on the attack. He should do it more often."

A small ripple of laughter. Not the government benches. The MERC benches. 

"He referred to my colleague the shadow Treasury spokesperson, Ms Dorianne Pin, and to my colleague the shadow chancellor, Mr Frederik Vesti. He suggested their positions on the morning shows were contradictory. He suggested this was evidence of—how did he put it?—a coordination problem."

George pauses.

"I would invite the Prime Minister, if he cares to move beyond the headline and read what was actually said, to compare the two statements. Ms Pin said investment requires value for money and credible backing. Mr Vesti said spending requires cost analysis. Those are not contradictory statements, Mr Speaker. They are the same statement. They are the same statement because MERC's position on infrastructure investment is consistent, principled, and has been for some time."

He pauses again. The chamber is very quiet.

"Which is more than can be said for the government's position. The North-West Industrial Corridor is a classic MCL vanity project, anchored in the party's 2024 manifesto with great fanfare and very little detail. It has no credible private sector commitment, no independent cost-benefit analysis and no clear timeline for delivery. What we actually have is the number—twenty-five billion—and a promise that it would transform the region."

George looks down at his folder. Then up again.

"The Prime Minister spent several minutes just now discussing my party and my leadership. My colleagues. My supposed coordination problems. He seems very interested in who says what, rather than what is being said. It's an interesting attitude, Mr Speaker. It suggests a certain approach to politics. An approach where personality matters more than policy. Where it matters less what the argument is and more who is making it."

Lando can feel something shift in the room. 

George takes a beat. He's recalibrated now. The deadness behind his eyes has been replaced by something worse: the calm, focused energy of a man who has found his angle and is about to drive it home.

"The Prime Minister said earlier that he prepares for these sessions. He was quite emphatic about it. I'd like to test that."

He opens his folder. The gesture is almost casual. 

"The Chancellor published his quarterly fiscal outlook last Thursday. I want to put on record—again—my admiration for that document. It is analytically rigorous. It is intellectually coherent. The fiscal rules are well-designed. The supply-side framework is genuinely innovative. It is perhaps the most sophisticated piece of economic architecture this country has seen since the reforms of the Hamilton years."

He pauses.

"The Chancellor's economic vision is, in many respects, MCL's economic vision. It is his brainchild. Everyone knows this. The Prime Minister knows this. The Treasury knows this. The bond markets know this, which is why the bond markets have remained calm despite the various—" A small, precise pause. "—excitements of the past several months."

The government benches don't laugh. The MERC benches don't laugh either. Everyone is waiting.

"But here is the problem, Mr Speaker. The Chancellor has a vision. The Chancellor has a framework. The Chancellor has a set of fiscal rules and supply-side assumptions and growth projections that are, as I said, genuinely impressive. What the Chancellor does not seem to have—what this government does not seem to have—is the ability to deliver."

George lets the word sit.

"In the past year, we have seen the Chancellor encounter stumbling blocks he was not expecting. The North-West Industrial Corridor has been delayed, revised, and re-announced three times. The green energy transition fund, which was supposed to begin disbursements in autumn 2025, has disbursed less than fifteen per cent of its allocated budget. The skills training programme—remember the skills training programme? It was in the manifesto. It was in the autumn statement. It was in the spring update. It has not, as of this morning, produced a single trained skill."

A ripple of laughter from the MERC benches. Lando's jaw is tight.

"These are not failures of vision. The Chancellor's vision is excellent. These are failures of delivery. And they point, Mr Speaker, to a fundamental truth about government. It is not enough to have the right architect. You need the right builder. You need a government that knows how to take a framework—however elegant, however analytically rigorous, however personally impressive its author—and actually make it work."

The ooooh this time is not an ooooh. It is the lower, more dangerous sound—the sound, Lando registers, of a chamber considering whether the man speaking might be right.

"And MERC, Mr Speaker, with the House's indulgence—MERC understands this question better, perhaps, than any party currently represented in this House. Because MERC, between 2014 and 2020, was in this position. We had a manifesto. We had to deliver it. We delivered it, Mr Speaker, with the infrastructure programme of that period, with the apprenticeship reforms, with the regional banking framework that remains in place to this day. We are, Mr Speaker, builders. It is, if I may, who we are."

He sets a hand on the despatch box. The first time he has touched it this session.

"So my question to the Prime Minister, Mr Speaker, is this. And I am sorry, genuinely sorry, that we do not have the Chancellor with us today to answer it himself, because in fairness to the Chancellor it is a question that perhaps falls properly within his portfolio. But the Prime Minister is here. The Prime Minister is the head of this government. The Prime Minister is the man under whose leadership delivery has, manifestly, not happened."

He lifts his hand off the box.

"Mr Speaker. Prime Minister."

The smallest of pauses.

"The Chancellor has done his job. When will the Prime Minister start doing his?"

—

Oscar looks pink.

More pink than usual. Oscar has, as a constitutional baseline, the natural blush of a man who looks as if he has just come in from a brisk walk even when he has, in fact, been sitting in the same chair for three hours. The blush is a feature. Lando has, on several occasions, been asked by foreign correspondents whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer always looks like that, and has, on each occasion, said yes, with the small private satisfaction of a man delivering a true answer that sounds untrue.

But this is not the constitutional blush. This is the additional pink. The nose is doing a thing. The eyes have the particular gloss of someone holding himself together with flu medication and bloody-mindedness. Oscar is, as far as Lando can tell across approximately eight feet of cabinet-table oak, running on Lemsip.

The room is the small cabinet room. Not the full cabinet room—the full cabinet room is for full cabinet, and full cabinet, given the morning, would have leaked in approximately four minutes. The small room has a window that looks out onto a wall. 

Carlos is to Lando's left, still radiating the residual tension of a man who has spent six hours fielding phone calls from approximately fourteen foreign capitals who all wanted to know the same thing in slightly different diplomatic languages. Alex Albon, Home Secretary, is next to Carlos, doing the small considered Alex thing on the tablet. Kevin Magnussen, Business and Commerce Secretary, is at the far end of the table looking like a man who was told this meeting would be routine and is now realising it is not routine at all. 

A cluster of junior ministers are arranged around the edges of the room, the ones who knew this meeting was coming but were not expecting the Prime Minister's mood to have soured quite so badly between the chamber and the cabinet table.

"Will."

Will materialises at Lando's elbow.

"Prime Minister."

"Where the fuck is Max."

"En route, Prime Minister. He landed at Northolt forty minutes ago. He's in the car."

"He's been in the car for forty minutes?"

"He's been in the car for twelve minutes. He was, prior to the car, in Northolt, doing—"

"Doing what."

"They didn't specify."

Lando stares at him. Will stares back. Will's expression communicates that he has spent the last six hours managing a rolling cascade of diplomatic and political crises and is now being asked to account for the movement of a single car through West London. Will's expression also communicates that he will do this, because it is his job, but he will not enjoy it.

Lando turns back to the room.

"Right," he says, to no one in particular and to everyone in general. "We should start. Max can catch up when he gets here."

Carlos, to his left, does the small we discussed this eyebrow. 

"Oscar."

Oscar nods. Opens the laptop with the spreadsheet that never stops being open. Pulls up the deck he has, Lando notes, clearly been working on between coughs.

"Prime Minister. The quarterly outlook—as you'll have seen—was published last Thursday. Headline assumptions hold. The autumn Budget is on track for the announced date. We are at fifth draft, with the final OBR engagement scheduled for next week."

"What's changed."

"Two material things." A breath that does not, audibly, fully arrive. "The first is oil. The Hormuz situation has—"

He stops. Clears his throat. It sounds like gravel.

"The Hormuz situation has, over the last fortnight, taken Brent from eighty-one to ninety-four. The Treasury's working assumption for the Budget was eighty-four. With the blockade and no public timetable from either side for de-escalation, the OBR is using eighty-eight as its central case—but with—" another breath that does not arrive, "—with a range of plus-minus twelve dollars, which is the widest range I have seen on an oil assumption since 2022. That cascades. Energy. Transport. Every input price model. The inflation projection. It is the single biggest disruption to our forecast assumptions since we took office."

"GDP."

"Revised down zero point two for the current year. Zero point three for the next."

"Borrowing."

"Up three billion against the spring envelope. Possibly four, depending on where oil settles."

The voice is, by the end of four, doing the thing where it threatens to give out entirely and is held in place by sheer will.

Lando writes a small note. He folds it. He hands it to Will without looking at him. Will reads it, nods, and disappears.

"Continue," Lando says.

Oscar continues. Oscar is, Lando knows from four years of working alongside him, better when he is moving through the numbers than when he is sitting still—the talking does something to the gravel, makes it easier, gives the rest of him something to do. 

He talks about the OBR's revised central case. He talks about the second-round inflation effects and what they do to the wage-growth assumptions in the regional projections. He talks about—and here he visibly brightens, in the small visible way Oscar always brightens when the conversation turns from the problem to the response to the problem—about the suite of measures he is now proposing to cover the gap.

"There are three tracks. First, we accelerate the gilt issuance front-end. We've got the headroom in the schedule. It costs us slightly on duration but it buys us flexibility through Q1. Second, we revisit the energy levy framework—the one we shelved in July—and bring it forward as a temporary measure with a sunset clause, which I think we can get past the back benches if we couple it with the household rebate uplift. Third, and this is the bit I want to talk about—"

The door opens. Lando, for one delirious half-second, thinks Max, and then registers that it is, in fact, Will, with the ginger tea.

He places it there without ceremony, without interrupting the flow. Oscar registers the mug, registers what the mug is, looks up at Will, looks across at Lando, says nothing. A small additional flush appears on top of the pre-existing flush.

Oscar takes a small sip. Closes his eyes for one second. Opens them.

"Third," he says, and his voice is fractionally better, "the regional investment envelope. I want to protect the corridor. I know that's politically harder this week than it was last week. But the way I want to do it is by re-phasing—not cutting, re-phasing—the front-loaded capex into a tighter five-year profile, with the savings in years one and two redirected into the contingency reserve. That gives us a visible reserve buffer, which I think the markets will price favourably, and it preserves the headline commitment, which I think the parliamentary party will price politically favourably. The cost is—"

He goes into the cost. The cost is technical. Lando, listening, registers that he is not entirely tracking the technical part, in the way that he has, for four years, been not entirely tracking the deeply technical part of Oscar's plans, with the small private confidence of a man who knows that he does not need to track it because Oscar is tracking it, and that the right working arrangement between a Prime Minister and a Chancellor is, in fact, exactly this: the Chancellor tracks the numbers, the Prime Minister tracks the Chancellor, and the two of them between them produce a thing that holds.

Four years of working together will do that. Four years of late nights and early mornings and bad coffee and worse heating. Four years of arguing about policy and then not arguing about policy and then just talking. Four years of Oscar learning to read Lando's silences and Lando learning to read Oscar's micro-expressions. The media called them the best working pair in British politics, and they were right, even if they didn't know the half of it.

Lando watches Oscar talk through the contingency proposals and thinks: if I had a time machine, nobody would believe this.

But it depends, he supposes, on how far back.

A hundred years back, the people he showed it to would have several immediate questions about India and a ton of follow-up questions about the Empire.

Ten years back, they would say Lando who, and Oscar who, and would frown at the picture in the small polite way of people being shown a holiday photograph from a country they have not visited.

Five years back, they would not be surprised that Lando was in the picture—by 2021 Lando was, by then, already the youngest member of the shadow cabinet, the boy wonder of MCL, the one to watch—but they would, with absolute confidence, ask who the hell is Oscar Piastri, because Oscar had not, in 2021, even joined the party yet, because Oscar was, in 2021, a research fellow at a think tank, writing white papers that nobody was reading.

But most interestingly, if you go back to last year, people would ask what the hell went wrong that Oscar isn't the PM?

Because last year, Oscar was the favourite. The party had two rising stars, and Oscar was the one the commentariat had decided was the future. He was so anti-Max—his entire political identity was built on being the antidote to Verstappen chaos, the competent technocrat who would restore order and discipline and evidence-based policy. 

The forecast was clear. Max was going to lose the government. Oscar was going to be the next Prime Minister.

If you go back to last year and tell them what actually happened—that Lando is the PM and Max is still in the government—nobody would believe you. They'd laugh. They'd ask what parallel universe you'd stumbled out of.

But that's just how the dominoes fell.

Max's last six months were good. Not just good for Max—actually good. He somehow learned how to govern. He found the balance between being a populist piece of shit who knew what his base wanted and a serious politician who could actually deliver promises. The redemption arc was real, however infuriating, however improbable. And MCL, which had been so certain of victory, suddenly lost its certainty.

They pivoted. Lando took over the campaign. He leaned on the grassroots charm, the rallies, the viral clips, the thing he'd always been better at than Oscar. 

And MCL won. Not by much. Not as much as they'd hoped. But they won. RBR lost seats—a lot of seats compared to their peak popularity—but not as many as they could have. Max survived. Max was still the leader of the second-largest party. Max was still a force.

Suddenly Lando was looking at a choice.

The choice, when you stripped away the spin and the strategy memos and the colour-coded spreadsheets Oscar had prepared for the coalition negotiation, was between three options. 

None of them were good.

FER was a non-starter because as chairman Charles Leclerc was not in control of his own party. He couldn't guarantee his MPs would vote with the government. He couldn't even guarantee that the FER WhatsApp group wouldn't leak the coalition agreement before it was signed. A coalition with FER was a coalition with a party that was actively at war with itself, and Lando already had enough problems without inheriting Charles's.

MERC was the obvious choice, but MERC was not the MERC of the Hamilton years. That was the problem. George was technically brilliant and politically brittle. Kimi Antonelli was nineteen years old and already being talked about as the next leader. Toto Wolff was still in the background, pulling strings, treating every negotiation as a zero-sum game. The party had no clear centre of gravity. 

Lando and Oscar had agreed, from the beginning, on the one non-negotiable criterion for a coalition partner. The partner had to be actually in control and able to deliver their benches on confidence motions and budget votes and the thousand small procedural decisions that kept a government alive. FER couldn't do that because Charles was a hostage to his own party. MERC couldn't do that because George was a hostage to his own future.

RBR could. Lando hadn't been the one to see it.

Not because RBR was stable. RBR was a populist insurgency that had existed for barely two decades and had exactly one person holding it together. But that was the point. Max Verstappen controlled RBR in a way that Charles could never control FER and George could never control MERC. Max was the party. The party was Max. 

There was a Marko problem—there was always a Marko problem—but Max had promised eighteen months to neutralise it.

So Lando chose RBR.

He had let Oscar take the Treasury and the Deputy Prime Ministership, the way they'd always planned. He had let Oscar build the policy machine in the way Oscar had wanted to build it. 

And he had brought Max in as Defence Secretary, with all of the attendant horrors that any reasonable person could have predicted, on the basis that Lando was the only one of them who could plausibly manage Max in cabinet, because Oscar couldn't, because Oscar's whole thing was that he couldn't, because Oscar's existence in this party was a reaction against Max.

This is the deal Lando signed. The deal he could only sign because Oscar—

The door opens.

Max Verstappen walks in.

He is, by Lando's watch, twenty-five minutes late.

He is also, Lando notes with the small flat certainty of a man whose afternoon has been on a particular trajectory since approximately eight a.m., holding a Pret bag.

Max Verstappen enters the room in that particular way Lando's never sure is intentional or not. He stops just inside the doorway, scans the table with the slightly bewildered expression of a man who has never been in this room before despite having been in this room countless times, and takes a few performative seconds to locate where he's supposed to sit. 

He knows where his seat is. Three seats away from Lando, next to Alex Albon. Always has been. 

But Max has never been able to simply enter a room and sit down. He has to be seen entering. He has to be noticed. Even now, even after everything, even when he's twenty-five minutes late and the room is full of people who have been fighting his war all day.

"Max," Lando says. "Welcome back. Good flight?"

"Fine, fine. Sorry I'm late. There was an incident on the A4, and then the car took the wrong exit at Hammersmith, and I said to the driver—"

"We've started without you," Lando says. "Oscar's nearly done with the fiscal update. We'll catch you up at the end."

Max opens his mouth, closes it, and does the small shrug that means fair enough. He takes his seat. He puts the Pret bag on the table. 

Oscar finishes his presentation. The contingency reserve. The revised growth assumptions. The £1.5 billion gap and the reallocation from the M25 widening that Alex has signed off on. His voice holds out until the last slide and then gives up entirely on the final sentence, which comes out as something between a whisper and a croak. He reaches for the ginger tea.

"Thank you, Oscar." Lando turns to the room. "Alex, can you give us the Home Office update on the resettlement scheme. Then Kevin, the trade numbers. Then we'll get to Max."

Alex delivers his update with the calm of a man who has not been in the news today and considers this a personal victory. Kevin delivers his with the slightly defensive energy of someone who knows the trade figures aren't good but has prepared three reasons why they aren't his fault. The junior ministers ask the questions they've been told to ask. Carlos asks a follow-up about the Qatari trade implications that is really, transparently, a way of keeping the Gulf agreement in the room without having to mention Max's name.

Max waits.

By the time they're done, the Pret bag is empty. 

Lando turns to him.

"Max," he says. "Anything to add?"

Max sits up. Brushes a crumb from his lapel. "Okay. Yeah. As you're all aware, the meeting with my Qatari counterpart went well. Better than well. The basing agreement is signed, the maintenance schedule is confirmed, and the joint exercise framework is in place. Standard stuff. What the press release didn't cover—what I didn't disclose to the media—is that I also had a courtesy call with the Emir."

Carlos's head comes up. "You had a courtesy call with the Emir."

"Yes."

"You didn't mention that."

"I'm mentioning it now."

"The Emir. Of Qatar."

"Yes. It was—" Max pauses, searching for the right word. "Productive. We discussed the regional situation. The Hormuz blockade. The security implications for British shipping. And we came up with something. An interesting plan. Some elevated cooperation that's going to be good for us, given the latest, you know, developments."

The room is very still. Carlos is staring at Max with the expression of a Foreign Secretary who has just discovered that his Defence Secretary has been conducting his own foreign policy for the second time in one day. 

Oscar puts down his ginger tea.

"Elevated cooperation," Oscar says. His voice is very quiet. "What kind of elevated cooperation."

"A forward basing arrangement. Not permanent. Rotational. We station a small naval contingent at the Qatari facility—the one the carrier's docking at—and in exchange, they provide basing access and logistics support for our regional operations. It's a security guarantee. It's what the Gulf states have been asking for since the blockade started. It positions us as a serious partner in the region, and it gives us leverage with the Americans, who have been looking for someone to share the burden."

Oscar doesn't blink. "How much."

"Something like £340 million. Ballpark. I'll have my team run the actual number, but that's the initial estimate based on the commitment we'd be making over the next two fiscal years."

The room goes very quiet.

"We don't have £340 million."

"It's not a lot. In the context of the overall defence budget—"

"Have you seen the oil price?"

Max blinks. "Yes. I've seen the oil price. The oil price is exactly why we need this. The blockade is driving up costs across the board. If we have a forward basing arrangement, we can protect the shipping lanes, stabilise the region, and—"

"We don't have the money." Oscar's voice is still quiet but it's changed register. It's not the hoarse croak of a man with the flu. It's the cold, level tone of a man who has spent twelve months absorbing the fiscal impact of Max Verstappen's decisions and has finally reached the end of his patience. 

"We have a £1.5 billion contingency reserve that we've already had to allocate because the blockade revised all our assumptions. We have a regional investment framework that's been delayed twice. We have a skills programme that hasn't started. We have a green energy fund that's disbursed less than fifteen per cent of its budget. And now you want to add a new basing commitment that we haven't budgeted for, that Treasury wasn't consulted on, that the Foreign Office didn't know about, and that the Prime Minister clearly didn't approve before you pitched it to the Emir."

"I didn't pitch it. I discussed it. There's a difference."

"There's no difference when it ends up in the papers as 'Verstappen promises new Gulf basing arrangement.' Which it will. Because everything you discuss with foreign leaders ends up in the papers."

"That's not my fault."

"It is literally your fault. You briefed the media before you briefed us. You announced the carrier agreement from the plane. You said 'we good' to a journalist about the American president. And now you're sitting here telling us about a £340 million commitment you made to the Emir of Qatar without telling anyone."

Carlos puts his pen down. The click is very loud in the quiet room.

"You know," Carlos says, and his voice has the particular tightness of a man who has been holding something in for several hours and has decided, absolutely, that now is the moment. 

"While you were having your productive courtesy call with the Emir, the Bahraini foreign minister was calling my office. The Emirati ambassador was calling my office. The Americans were calling my office. And I had to stand there—I, the Foreign Secretary, who learned about your announcement from a BBC push notification at four in the morning—and pretend to know what you were doing. I had to say 'the Defence Secretary is keeping us fully briefed' while my own staff were frantically searching for the agreement on the government website. I had to lie, Max. Because you didn't tell me the truth."

"The truth was in the memo."

"The memo arrived at eleven o'clock last night. The announcement was at four. That's five hours. For a major defence agreement with basing implications. Five hours."

Max opens his mouth. He looks at Carlos. He looks at Oscar. He looks at Lando, who is watching all of this with the flat, evaluating expression of a man who has been expecting this explosion all day and is almost relieved it's finally happening.

"I'm not the enemy," Max says. His voice has shifted. Quieter and less performative. "I know that's how it looks. I know the announcement was badly handled. I know the comms strategy was—" 

He pauses. 

"I know. But the agreement is good. The relationship with the Emir is real. He trusts me. We have history, from when I was PM. And that history is worth something. It's worth the awkward phone calls and the five-hour notice and the Daily Mail headlines. Because right now, with the blockade, with the oil price, with the Americans looking for someone to step up—we need that relationship. I'm the only one in this room who has it."

Oscar looks at him for a long moment. His eyes are watery from the flu. His nose is red. His voice is barely functional. But when he speaks, it is with the particular clarity of a man who has been biting his tongue for twelve months and has decided, finally, to stop.

"You're right," Oscar says. "You have the relationship. You have the history. You have the personal rapport with the Emir and the direct line to the American president and the ability to walk into a room in Doha and come out with a basing agreement that nobody else could have negotiated. That's why you're in this government. That's why—that's why Lando chose you."

Something flickers across his face. Not anger. Something closer to a flinch, the way a person looks when they've caught their own reflection unexpectedly. Then it's gone.

"That's why we've been making compromises and commitments and excuses for twelve months while you do things your own way and we clean up after you."

He pauses. The pause is not performative. He looks down at his hands, which are flat on the table, and for a moment he seems to be studying them as though they belong to someone else. The pause is Oscar trying to decide whether to say the next thing.

"I expected more from you."

The room is very, very quiet.

Max stares at him. "More."

Oscar's jaw tightens—a small movement, the kind you'd miss if you weren't watching for it. His hand moves toward the ginger tea and then stops, hovering, not quite touching the mug.

"More consideration. More coordination. More understanding that the budget I am writing is not an obstacle to your defence commitments. It's the thing that funds them. Every time you announce something without telling Treasury, I have to find the money somewhere else. Every time you make a commitment without cabinet approval, I have to reallocate from programmes that are already underfunded. Every time you get on a plane and make a statement without telling the Foreign Office, Carlos has to lie to people who don't deserve to be lied to."

Oscar picks up his ginger tea. His hand is steady. Too steady—the steadiness of someone who is concentrating on keeping it that way.

"I have spent twelve months making your commitments fit inside my budget. I have delayed the North-West corridor. I have slowed the skills programme. I have reallocated from the green fund. I have done all of this without complaint, because the defence commitments are important and the relationship with the Gulf is important and the security guarantee is important."

He stops. His mouth opens for the next word and then closes again, and for half a second his expression is unguarded—tired, not just from the flu, but from something older, something that's been sitting in his chest since the day he told Lando this would work.

"But I cannot keep doing it if you keep making new commitments without asking me first. I cannot budget for things I don't know about. I cannot."

He stops. Coughs. The cough goes on for several seconds. When he speaks again, his voice is barely a whisper.

"That's it. That's what I have to say."

—

Lando thinks he's the kind of person who has a good awareness of time and space. He's usually right about this. He can tell when a room is about to turn on him, when a conversation is about to go sour, when the particular energy of a political moment is shifting from manageable to dangerous. He's built a career on it. The charm, the emotional intelligence, the thing Oscar calls "the people thing"—it's all just time and space, really. 

It is, in fact, one of the reasons he is Prime Minister. The country, the party, the donors, the lobby—they had all clocked, at one point or another in the long campaign, that Lando Norris always seemed to know where he was.

On a day like this, though, none of that works. 

On days like today he is reduced to the kind of person who relies entirely on the people standing next to him to keep him vertical and pointed in the right direction, the way a slightly drunk man at a wedding relies on his friends to get him from the bar to the dance floor without bumping into the bride. 

Will is at his right elbow. He has been at his right elbow approximately ninety-five per cent of the working day. The other five per cent has been Daniel and one extremely brief panicked thirty-second window in which Lando had been alone in a corridor at half past two with no one to tell him where he was supposed to go next, and during which he had simply stood still until somebody appeared.

He is now walking back to his office, with Will and three other people from the team trailing behind when Alex Albon catches up along the corridor.

"Hey," Alex says. "You have a minute?"

Lando doesn't stop walking. "I really don't know. Will, do I have a minute?"

Will opens his folder, the one with his schedule, and the schedule is the only thing standing between Lando and total temporal collapse. Will scans the page, scans the corridor, scans the general vicinity for additional people who might be about to ask the Prime Minister for something.

"You've got a one-on-one with Max," Will says. 

Right.

The one-on-one had been on the schedule under the placid bureaucratic heading which, eight hours ago, was the kind of slot Lando books with Max approximately once a fortnight because not booking it would be worse. It now feels, in the small reweighted calculus of the day, like a thing he does not currently have the bandwidth for.

"Yeah, sure," Lando says to Alex. "Let's go to my office. Will, tell Max I'll be there soon."

He doesn't have to say anything more. Will, by some small adjustment of the folder and the smallest possible nod, has already absorbed the instruction, which is to tell Max to wait, in one of the cramped holding rooms on the ground floor, the ones with the inadequate sofa and the lukewarm radiator, the ones that are technically for everyone but which are, in practice, the rooms in which people who have annoyed the Prime Minister discover that they are about to wait. 

And Lando is not, in any way, feeling remotely guilty about it.

When they get to Lando's study, Alex closes the office door behind them. 

Lando slumps into his chair—the Prime Ministerial chair, the one that's supposed to convey authority and statesmanship and the weight of office—and discovers that it also conveys a man who has been upright for approximately eleven hours and is no longer certain his spine is functioning.

Alex doesn't sit. He approaches slowly, the way you approach an animal you're not sure is injured or about to bite. Everyone's been doing that today. Carlos in the corridor. Daniel at PMQs. The junior ministers in the cabinet meeting, watching Lando with the wide-eyed caution of people who weren't sure whether the Prime Minister was going to make it through the hour. 

But Alex's doing it in his own careful way. He's giving that look that Lando has not seen on Alex's face since approximately a Tuesday in March of their second year at university, when Alex had stood at the door of Lando's room and said mate, we need to talk about the thing you said at the party, which had been the prelude to one of the most useful twenty minutes of Lando's adolescence.

"So," Lando looks up. "What's up?"

Alex blinks. "You tell me what's up. What was that?"

Lando exhales. It's the exhale of a man who has been having variations of this conversation since approximately 7:45 this morning. "You've got to be specific, Alex. I've had a day."

"How could you let Oscar do what he just did?"

Lando looks at him. His brain, which is running on fumes and the memory of a Pret sandwich he didn't eat, takes a moment to process the question. "Oscar did what?"

"You know. He just. Going off at Max. In front of everyone."

Lando grins. 

"Max deserved it, though."

Alex stares at him. "Lando. For fuck's sake. You're fucked. Do you know that?"

Lando sits up. Properly sits up, the small slightly affronted straightening that comes from being a Prime Minister in his own office being sworn at by someone two ranks below him in the cabinet who is, yes, fine, one of his closest friends, but who is, also, currently being Home Secretary-ed about a cabinet meeting Lando has not yet, in any meaningful sense, processed.

"Hey. Watch your language."

"Watch yourself, mate. Don't you realise how many people saw that exchange? Oscar dressing Max down like that? Ever think of how many journalists are hearing about this right now?"

"Yeah," Lando says. "What's wrong with that?"

He's being stupid. He knows he's being stupid. Some part of his brain—the part that isn't exhausted, the part that's still functioning at normal political-operating speed—is trying to get his attention, waving a small flag that says Alex is right, pay attention, this is important. 

But the rest of his brain is still back in the cabinet room, watching Oscar put down his ginger tea and say I have spent twelve months making your commitments fit inside my budget in a voice that was barely a whisper, and the rest of his brain is thinking: good. Max needed that. Everyone needed that. Why is Alex upset?

Alex, apparently, can read this on his face.

"Lando, mate. I'm telling you this because I am your friend. Right? I am your friend. This only confirms what George spent the entire morning drilling you on. This only confirms what the Times leader is going to say tomorrow. You are not in charge of your cabinet. That is the line the entire press gallery has already written. And you have just given them a visual."

Lando opens his mouth. Closes it. The small flag in his brain is waving more vigorously now. George's six questions about Oscar. The Chancellor is the architect. The Prime Minister cannot answer. The Chancellor has my full confidence. The slip. The front pages. The narrative that has been building all day, brick by brick, while Lando was busy fighting fires and making jokes about gorillas and bears.

"Oh," Lando says.

"Yeah. Oh."

He thinks about it for a few minutes.  

The optics, Lando thinks. Oscar, the Chancellor, the man George Russell has been praising by name, the man the backbenchers think should be Prime Minister—dressing down the Defence Secretary in front of witnesses. The Defence Secretary who has been undermining Lando all day. The Defence Secretary Lando was supposed to be managing. And Lando just sat there. Let it happen. Didn't intervene. Let Oscar do the heavy lifting.

It looks like Oscar is the one in charge. 

"Huh," Lando says. "Yeah. You're right."

"Thank you."

"That's bad."

"That's very bad."

"I should have—" Lando stops. What should he have done? Interrupted Oscar? Defended Max? Made the confrontation worse by trying to manage it? There was no good option in that room. There were only bad ones and worse ones, and Lando chose the one that let Oscar say his piece and Max absorb it. 

But the optics don't care about choices. The optics care about what it looked like. And what it looked like was a Chancellor who has stopped waiting for his Prime Minister to handle things.

Alex is still leaning forward. His expression hasn't changed. He's not frustrated anymore—the frustration was a few minutes ago, when Lando was being deliberately dense. Now he's something else. Something quieter. The particular energy of a friend who is about to say something you don't want to hear.

"Lando," he says. "I get the sense you're not realising how worried people are."

"I know people are worried. Carlos told me. Daniel told me. The Guardian wrote an opinion piece about it. I'm aware."

"You're aware. You're not worried."

"Should I be?"

Alex doesn't answer immediately. He looks at the door, as if checking it's closed. He looks at the window, as if checking no one is listening. He looks back at Lando.

"Some people have been counting heads."

The room goes very quiet.

"What do you mean, counting heads?"

"Some people are calculating how many MPs are still on board with you. And how many would be needed to—" Alex pauses. The pause is the length of a man who doesn't want to say the next word. "You know. Back Oscar."

Lando stares at him. "Oscar? Oscar's my deputy. He's not going to do anything."

"He's not going to. But he could."

"He doesn't want to."

"But he could, Lando," Alex repeats, "that is the point. The point is not what Oscar will do. The point is what other people are willing to imagine him doing. And the number of people who are willing to imagine it is growing. Two MPs have asked me about it directly. Two. This week. One of them is in the parliamentary party committee. The other is—and I am not going to tell you who, mate, I'm sorry—but the other is the kind of MP who, six months ago, would have walked through a wall for you, and is now, this week, asking the Home Secretary in a corridor whether the Home Secretary thinks the Deputy Prime Minister might, if pressed, be willing to consider his position."

The room is very quiet.

Lando, sitting at his desk, registers—with the small flat clarity that has been arriving at the wrong moments all day—that the actual sentence Alex has just spoken is the kind of sentence Westminster does not unsay.

"And it's growing," Alex says. "It's been growing all week. After this morning, after PMQs, after—after that meeting—it is going to grow some more. Lando. Mate. You need to get your shit together. Because if you do not get your shit together—"

"Alex."

"If you do not, Lando—"

"I get it."

A leadership challenge. A vote of no confidence. The thing Lando has been dismissing, deflecting, refusing to take seriously because taking it seriously would mean doubting Oscar, and doubting Oscar is the one thing Lando has decided he will not do.

But Alex isn't asking him to doubt Oscar. Alex is telling him that other people already do. Or rather—other people don't doubt Oscar at all. They believe in Oscar. They believe Oscar should be running things. They believe Oscar just proved, in a cabinet meeting, that he can do what Lando can't: stand up to Max Verstappen and make it stick.

"Two MPs," Lando says.

"Two that I know about. There'll be more. You know how these things work. It starts with two, then four, then eight, then someone writes a letter, then the Chief Whip has to—"

"I know how these things work."

"Then act like it." Alex's voice is sharper now. "I'm telling you this because I'm your friend and because I don't want to work for George Russell. But if you don't start taking this seriously—if you keep dismissing it, keep making jokes, keep acting like Oscar's loyalty is the only thing that matters—you're going to lose your own party."

Lando looks at his desk. The folder is still there—the PMQs folder, red and amber and green, the eleven scenarios, the yellow-highlighted lie. Oscar's folder. Oscar's handwriting on the sticky notes. Oscar's work, as always, holding the government together while Lando takes the credit and Max takes the headlines.

"I can't lose Oscar," Lando says. It comes out quieter than he intended.

"You're not going to lose Oscar. Oscar's not the problem. The problem is the twenty-odd MPs who think Oscar should have your job and are starting to wonder if they should do something about it."

"Twenty?"

"I don't know the exact number. That's Daniel's job. But it's not zero. It was zero six months ago. It's not zero now." Alex stands up. "Talk to Max. Fix the coalition. Show the party you're in control. And Lando—"

"What."

"Talk to Oscar. He's the only person who can shut this down. If he wanted to."

Alex leaves. The door closes. Lando sits in the Prime Ministerial chair, staring at the folder on his desk, and thinks about what Alex just said.

If he wanted to.

—

There's this strange rhythm that few people experience in the world, and Lando's feeling it as he walks through the corridors toward the holding room. 

The corridor between his study and the smaller offices—the cubicles, the analysts' desks, the civil servants who get to call No. 10 their office, just their office, not their life—runs along the side of the building, and at this hour, in late October, the sun is setting outside. The light through the windows is going gold and then grey, and the fluorescent lamps are flickering on one by one, and the people are starting to leave.

Lando watches them pack up. They close their laptops, put on their coats, check their phones for the Tube status. They say goodnight to each other with the casual ease of people who are going home. 

Going home. To a place with their own front doors and their own kitchens. Their own lives, separate from this building, from these corridors, from the particular constant low-grade-or-sometimes-high-grade stress that Lando has not been able to put down since last year.

He used to have that. The decompression. Thirty-five minutes between Westminster and his Surrey house—just enough time to listen to music, to call his mum, to stop being a politician and start being a person. He'd get home and make dinner and watch something stupid on television and not think about the party or the polls or the latest crisis. It felt normal. It felt sustainable. It feels, in retrospect, like the most precious thing he owned.

Lando reaches the holding room. It's one of those cramped little spaces off the main corridor—not uncomfortable, exactly, but not comfortable either. A sofa. A side table. A print of something pastoral on the wall. The kind of room that says you are here because the Prime Minister is busy, and the Prime Minister will see you when he chooses to.

Max is still waiting.

He's scrolling something on his phone, his legs stretched out in front of him, his jacket slung over the arm of the sofa. He looks up when Lando walks in, and for a moment—just a moment—his expression is unguarded. Tired. Almost hopeful. Like a man who has been waiting a long time and is genuinely glad to see the person he's been waiting for.

Then the guard comes back up. The smirk. The shrug. The Max Verstappen default.

"Finally," Max says. "I was starting to think you'd forgotten about me."

Lando doesn't sit next to him on the sofa. He pulls the chair from the side table, positions it directly opposite Max, and sits down facing him. The message is clear: we're going to keep this brief.

"Okay," Lando says. "Look. I have had so many people telling me today that I can't keep letting you get away with this. So I'm going to say it once. What you're doing is unacceptable. This is not the arrangement we agreed on."

Max opens his mouth. "I know this is not—"

Lando cuts him off. "It's standard governing principles, Max. Surely you know this. Why are you making things way more difficult than necessary? You talk to me. I talk to Oscar. You keep Carlos in the loop. We figure things out. That's how it works. That's how it's always supposed to work."

Max closes his mouth. Something flickers behind his eyes—not anger, not yet. Something closer to frustration. The frustration of a man who has been trying to say something for weeks and keeps getting interrupted.

"Well," Max says. "If I don't do shit like this, you never talk to me, Lando. Do you realise how many meetings Will cancelled or postponed because you're always busy?"

"I am always busy, and I see you literally every day."

"You see me in cabinet. You see me in briefings. You see me in rooms full of other people where I'm one of fifteen ministers competing for your attention. That's not the same thing." 

"It's easier for Alex Dunne to get a meeting with you than me," Max continues. "Alex Dunne. Your parliamentary private secretary. The guy who brings you coffee. He sees you more than I do. I'm your only partner in coalition, Lando. The reason you have a majority. And I can't get fifteen minutes without going through Will, who cancels it half the time anyway."

"Will is doing his job."

"Yeah and his job is to protect you from people who want things from you. But I'm not people, Lando. I'm your partner. I'm supposed to be your partner. And I don't—" Max stops. The frustration is still there, but something else is creeping in around the edges. Something that sounds, improbably, like hurt. "I don't understand what changed. Last year we were good. Last year we made this deal and we were going to figure it out together. Now you're making me feel like I don't belong in my own government."

"You're the defence secretary."

"What kind of defense secretary has to stage an international incident to get his own Prime Minister to talk to him? That's not belonging. That's—" Max searches for the word. "That's being managed. I didn't sign up to be managed. I signed up to govern."

Lando looks at him. The tired eyes. The rumpled suit. The phone still clutched in his hand, the screen dark now. Max Verstappen, who was Prime Minister for four years, who nearly won a second election, who stood on stages and drew crowds that no other politician could match—sitting in a cramped holding room in Downing Street, telling Lando he feels like he doesn't belong.

"And what am I getting out of this?" Max asks. "Seriously. My voters are leaving. My base is shrinking. Marko's people are circling. I'm bleeding support every week I stay in this coalition, and what am I getting in return?"

Lando is quiet for a moment. Then he says, very calmly: "Well. Maybe you could start doing what you promised to do."

Max blinks. "What?"

"You promised me you’d get rid of Horner and Marko. That's what you said in December. You get your party under control. That was the deal."

"They're gone," Max says. "I already did that. Horner's taking the peerage. Marko's been sidelined. What more—"

Lando shakes his head. "Marko's minions are still there. They're still voting as a bloc. They're still briefing against the coalition. They're still making headaches for Daniel every time we need to pass legislation."

"They're literally just eight people."

"That's still eight people too many, Max. Eight people is the difference between a majority and a crisis. Eight people is the reason we had to pull the education bill in March. Eight people is the reason Ollie nearly resigned. Eight people is why the Daily Mail keeps running stories about RBR MPs who think you've sold out."

Max stares at him. "You're blaming me for eight backbenchers?"

"I'm blaming you for promising to handle them and not handling them."

"Lando—"

"Listen." Lando's voice is harder now. The exhaustion is still there, the bone-deep tiredness of a day that started before dawn, but underneath it is something else. Something colder.  

"I am not going to tolerate any more freelancing from you. From now on, all security and defence decisions are going to be made in a committee that I chair. You'll have a seat at the table, but you won't have the final say. The Foreign Office will be consulted before any announcement. The Treasury will be consulted before any funding commitment. And you will not—" He pauses. Lets the pause do its work. "—get on a plane and announce a defence agreement without my explicit approval. Ever again."

Max's expression goes very still. "You're stripping my authority."

"I'm freeing you from the burden of being a minister so you can focus on getting your shit together at RBR. That's what you need, isn't it? Time to deal with Marko? Time to deliver what you promised? Here's your time. Use it."

Max looks at him for a long moment. The fluorescent light hums overhead. Outside the window, the last of the sunset has faded, and the building is quiet in the way buildings get when most of the people have gone home.

"You know," Max says, and his voice has changed register. Quieter. More dangerous. "This punishment doesn't match the crime. You know that, right? I made a bad comms call on a routine agreement. I didn't sell state secrets. I didn't start a war. I announced a parking spot for a boat. And you're talking about stripping my portfolio."

"The comms call isn't the problem. The problem is the pattern. Your constant freelancing. The fact that every time I turn around, you've done something else without telling me."

"Because you won't let me tell you! Because your chief of staff cancels my meetings and your Chancellor hates me and your party thinks I'm a liability. I'm trying to govern, Lando. I'm trying to do the job you gave me. But you've made it impossible."

"No I don't—"

"Lando, come on, I'm not stupid, and you're not exactly in a position to lecture me about party management, are you?"

Lando's jaw tightens. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Max leans back on the sofa. The smirk is back—not the full performance, but a flicker of it. The flicker of a man who knows he's about to land a hit.

"Your party isn't that peachy either, is it? From what I hear."

Lando rolls his eyes. "Yes, Max. You're about to be the fourth person telling me that today."

Max squints. "Really?"

"The Oscar thing. I've heard. Carlos told me. Daniel told me. Alex just told me." He says it flatly, without inflection, the way you recite a list of things you've already accepted.

Max is watching him with an expression Lando can't quite read. "And you're not worried."

"I'm not worried because Oscar's not going to do anything. It's something you might not be familiar with, but two people can trust each other."

"Oh," Max says. "I'm familiar with the concept. I'm also familiar with the concept of a standing offer from the Leader of the Opposition."

The room goes very still.

"What?" Lando says.

Max's smirk widens, just slightly. "You didn't know?"

"Know what?"

"That George has a standing offer to support Oscar. If Oscar wants to make a move. Oscar as PM, George as Chancellor. It's been on the table for months. I assumed you knew."

"You're telling me this now," Lando says. "Why?"

"Because you just tried to strip my portfolio. Because you're treating me like a problem to be managed instead of a partner. Because you didn't know about the offer, which means Oscar didn't tell you." Max pauses. "And because I need you to see that I am not the threat here. Oscar is."

The room goes very still.

Lando looks at Max. He looks at him for a long moment, the way you look at someone who has just said something so spectacularly wrong-footed that you're not sure whether to laugh or shout.

Lando exhales.

"Oscar," Lando says, "is not the threat."

"Lando, listen. You already know this. Your own party is counting heads. They're asking each other whether Oscar is ready. Whether he'd be open to it. And George—" Max gestures in the general direction of Westminster. "George has been courting him in public. You saw it. The whole chamber saw it. He's not being subtle. He's laying groundwork. And if Oscar gets enough support—if enough of your MPs decide they'd rather have him than you—he's going to make a move. And when he does, George will be there. The offer's been standing for months."

"Oscar will not do that," Lando says. His voice is flat. He's said this line so many times today he could deliver it in his sleep. 

"He's keeping secrets from you."

"He's allowed to have secrets."

"Not this kind of secret though."

Lando's jaw tightens. "How dare you."

Max blinks. "What?"

"How dare you use this to get yourself out of the mess you made." Lando's voice is rising—not to a shout, he's not a shouter, but to something sharper, something with edges. 

"You spent all day undermining me and now—now, when I'm finally holding you accountable—you bring up Oscar. You bring up the one thing you knew would get under my skin. You're not warning me, Max. You're deflecting. You're using my relationship with my own Chancellor as a shield because you don't want to face the consequences of your own actions."

Max holds up his hands. "I'm not making it up. It's true. I heard about it from someone very close to the source."

"From George himself?"

"No. But from someone directly affected by this offer. Someone who saw it happening. Someone who—" Max pauses. The pause is the length of a man deciding whether to burn a source. "Someone who has been watching George build this for months."

Lando stares at him. The fluorescent light hums. Outside the window, the wall is dark.

"Charles," Lando says. "It's Charles."

Max smiles. It's not the smirk. It's something smaller. Something almost rueful. "Charles was very frustrated. George has been cutting him out of shadow cabinet meetings. He just wanted to vent."

"Charles Leclerc, the leader of FER, gossiping with my Defence Secretary about my Chancellor."

"At a diplomatic reception. It was very civilised. There were canapés."

Lando doesn't laugh.

"Look," Max says. He leans forward, elbows on his knees. The smirk is gone. The deflection is gone. He just looks tired. "I know I was wrong. About the Gulf announcement. About the comms. About walking into that meeting late and dropping a new commitment on the table without warning. I was wrong. I'm sorry. Okay?"

Lando waits.

"But I'm not trying to undermine you." Max's voice is quieter now. "This is just how I operate. It's how I've always operated. You knew that when you brought me into this coalition. And it works—or it worked, those last six months, when I was actually getting things done. The skills levy. The childcare expansion. Things that MCL had been trying to do for years, and I delivered them. Because I don't do things the way you do them. I don't go through committees and consultations and three rounds of cabinet clearance. I see a thing that needs doing, and I do it. That's not chaos. That's—"

"That's chaos, Max," Lando says. "It's chaos when my Foreign Secretary finds out about a defence agreement from a push notification. It's chaos when my Chancellor has to reallocate from his own programmes because you made a funding commitment nobody knew about. It's chaos when I spend six hours of a Wednesday answering questions about something you said on a plane."

"I told you, the comms was bad. I accept that."

"The comms isn't the problem. The problem is that you don't see why there needs to be a process. You think process is the enemy of action. But process is how we keep the coalition together. Process is how Carlos knows what you're doing. Process is how Oscar can budget for your commitments instead of finding out about them in a cabinet meeting."

Max is quiet for a moment. "I don't want this coalition to collapse."

"Neither do I."

"I mean it." Max looks at him. The fluorescent light makes everyone look terrible, but Max looks especially terrible—drained, rumpled, older than he is. "I'm telling you all this because I want to keep us both in office. If Oscar makes a move—if your party decides they want him instead of you—that's it. For both of us. You lose the premiership. I lose the only thing keeping Marko from taking back RBR. This coalition is the only thing protecting both of us. And you're standing there telling me Oscar won't do it, and maybe you're right, maybe you know him better than anyone—but the MPs are counting. The offer is there. George is waiting. And Oscar hasn't told you about any of it."

The room is very quiet.

"So no," Max says. "I'm not deflecting. I'm telling you that I am not the threat here and you need to see where the real danger is coming from."

—

Lando walks through the corridors of No. 10, past the cubicles and the analysts' desks and the civil servants who have all gone home now, and thinks about the question someone asked him on election night.

It was one of those moments that doesn't feel real even while it's happening. MCL had just won. Twenty-six years in opposition, over. The ballroom was full of people crying, hugging, screaming. Someone had put on "Things Can Only Get Better" and someone else had found a confetti cannon and Lando had given a speech that he'd written three different versions of and then abandoned entirely halfway through, just speaking, just letting the moment carry him. 

And then, in between the congratulations and the handshakes and the forty-seven different people who needed forty-seven different assurances about forty-seven different things, a journalist had pulled him aside. She wasn't asking some serious questions like Lando's coalition plan or what he was going to do about Max Verstappen. Her question was so unexpectedly human that Lando blanked. 

Have you thought about what it's going to be like? Living there?

He hadn't thought about it, because he'd been thinking about the campaign, the polls, the coalition math, the million other things that had consumed every waking moment since Oscar stepped aside in that hotel room in Milton Keynes and changed the trajectory of both their lives. 

He hadn't thought about the flat. He hadn't thought about the address. He hadn't thought about the fact that he was about to become one of the fifty-something people in this country's history who would get to call 10 Downing Street their official residence.

He'd said something vague and gracious and then someone else had pulled him away, and the moment had passed, and he hadn't thought about it again until he was standing in the hallway on his first night, looking at the door to the private residence, holding a suitcase he'd packed himself because he still hadn't figured out how to delegate things like packing a suitcase.

It's his. That's the thing he keeps coming back to. Not the country—the country is the job, or a weight, or maybe something he holds in trust and will eventually hand back. But the flat. The small, tucked-away space at the top of the stairs, smaller than anyone would think, hidden inside this massive labyrinth of government buildings like a secret. 

The flat is his. 

He earned it. All the hard work, the blood and sweat and tears of bringing MCL back to where it belonged—the youth wing meetings in draughty community halls, the years in opposition when nobody thought they'd win, the campaign that nearly fell apart until Lando took over and dragged it across the line. He earned this. The flat. The quiet. The person waiting inside.

It's quiet now. That's the first thing he notices when he reaches the door. It's finally, finally quiet. No one speaking over each other. No phones buzzing. No Will Joseph materialising at his elbow with a schedule change. No Max Verstappen telling him things he doesn't want to know. No Alex Albon counting heads and asking if he's worried yet.

It's so blissfully quiet. 

The flat is dark when he steps inside. The lights are not on. But the television in the living room is glowing—the British Bake Off, on mute, someone's soufflé collapsing in slow, silent tragedy. 

The door to the bedroom is open. Lando can see the shape of a mound on the bed, buried under a duvet, entirely still.

He turns the lights on. All of them. Every room. The living room, the kitchen, the hallway, the little study that's technically supposed to be a dressing room. 

He does this every night, because he's been in this building long enough to know that it creaks and settles and makes sounds that could be the plumbing or could be the ghost of a Victorian prime minister coming to express dissatisfaction with the current government's fiscal policy. The lights help. The lights make it feel less like a museum and more like a home.

The mound on the bed moves. Groans. Reacts to the sudden brightness with the particular agony of a person who was very recently asleep and is now very recently not.

"Sorry," Lando calls, not sorry at all. "Go back to sleep."

The mound draws the blanket over its head with the deliberate drama of someone who wants the world to know exactly how much it is suffering. A muffled sound emerges from underneath—something that might be words, might be a curse, might be a request to turn off the lights and go away.

Lando laughs. It's the first time he's laughed all day—really laughed, not the performative PMQs laugh, not the grim-acknowledgment-of-bad-news laugh. A real one. The kind that only happens in this flat, with this person, after the day is finally over.

He leaves the mound alone.

The kitchen is small—smaller than the kitchen in his Surrey house, smaller than the kitchen in the flat he shared with Carlos. But it's his kitchen, and the kettle works, and the phone on the wall connects directly to the building's kitchen staff, who are used to the Prime Minister calling at odd hours to request things that are not on any official menu.

"Hi," Lando says when someone picks up. "Sorry, I know it's late. Would you be able to send up some dinner? Nothing fancy. Pasta, maybe. Some of that clear broth soup. And ginger—do you have ginger? For drinks? Could you put it in a big teapot or something?"

The voice on the other end says of course, Prime Minister, twenty minutes, and Lando hangs up and stands in the kitchen for a moment, listening to the quiet hum of the refrigerator and the distant murmur of the muted Bake Off and the small rustling sounds of the mound in the bedroom trying to decide whether consciousness is worth it.

He goes back to the bedroom. The mound has not moved. The mound has, if anything, become more mound-like, the duvet pulled tighter, the shape underneath curled into itself like a hibernating animal. Lando sits on the edge of the bed and puts his hand on what might be a shoulder.

"Hey," he says. "How are you feeling?"

The mound answers with a groan. It is a groan of considerable depth and complexity, a groan that communicates I am dying, why is the light on, and please go away in approximately equal measure.

Lando smiles. It's a fond smile, the kind of smile that only happens in this flat, with this person, after the day is finally over. He peels the duvet back, layer by layer, like unwrapping something fragile.

Underneath the duvet is Oscar. Pouting. Actually pouting, his lower lip pushed out, his eyes still half-closed, his hair flattened on one side and sticking straight up on the other. He looks younger, softer, less like the Chancellor of the Exchequer and more like someone who has been defeated by a head cold.

"There you are," Lando says.

"Go away."

"I'm worried about you." Lando puts his hand on Oscar's forehead. It's warm, but not fever-warm—normal skin temperature, or close enough. The kind of normal that means the worst has passed. He feels something in his chest loosen, just slightly. "You're not hot."

"I'm always hot."

"You're not fever-hot."

Oscar mumbles something that might be that's not what the tabloids say and might be leave me here to die. Lando chooses to ignore both possibilities. 

His breathing still has that congested rasp, the slight whistle of airways that aren't fully cooperating, but he looks better than he did this morning. 

"What have you been taking all day?" Lando asks.

"Nothing."

"When was the last time you ate?"

Oscar pauses. "I had a croissant."

"That was this morning."

"I had the ginger tea."

"That’s not food."

"It had ginger in it. Ginger is a root vegetable."

"That's not how nutrition works."

Oscar closes his eyes, as if the conversation is too much for him. "You're not my doctor."

"I'm your Prime Minister."

"That doesn't mean anything."

Lando looks at him. The disaster hair. The congested breathing. The way his body has sunk into the mattress like it's given up on the concept of verticality. He'd told him this morning to at least skip PMQs. Stay in the Treasury. Rest. I'll handle the chamber. 

But Oscar had gone to the Treasury and then he'd gone to the cabinet meeting and then he'd dressed down Max Verstappen in front of half the government, and at no point in any of that did he rest. 

Because rest isn't something they can afford. It's something they both knew they signed up for, a few years ago, somewhere in that deep ridiculous period when Max was still in charge and the country was lurching from crisis to crisis and they'd decided—in a late-night conversation in a cramped opposition office, before the campaign, before the coalition, before any of this was real—that there was no other goal than winning the election and leading the country.

They'd known it would be like this. They hadn't known it would be like this. Both things are true.

"Alright," Lando says. "Let's get you up. You need to eat something."

"I'm not hungry."

"I don't care."

"You're very bossy."

"I'm always bossy. I’m professionally bossy, it’s my job." Lando pauses. "Maybe we should get a doctor. It's been a few days."

Oscar shakes his head. The movement is small and stubborn. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine."

"I don't need a doctor. I need sleep. And soup. Which you've already ordered. You've solved the problem."

"I could get you some proper meds. Something stronger than Lemsip. The kind that actually—"

"No pills."

"Oscar."

"I hate pills."

"You're a grown adult."

"Yes," Oscar agrees, "and I am not taking pills. They're yucky."

Lando stares at him. 

He was about to laugh—this hot guy with a smart mouth, this ridiculous man wrapped in a duvet like a small grumpy emperor, this person he'd met in some bar right before COVID happened and the world stopped making sense. 

Oscar had been the subject of Lando's secret unhealthy obsession through those feverish months, those strange suspended weeks when nothing was normal and everything was terrifying and yet somehow, impossibly, Oscar's voice on the other end of a phone call had been the only thing that made sense. 

They'd argued about policy. They'd argued about everything. Lando had spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about Oscar's collarbones, which he'd seen exactly once, when Oscar had leaned over to pick up a dropped pen during a Zoom briefing and his shirt had gaped slightly at the neck.

And yet. After all of that—after the pandemic and the campaign and the coalition and the sixteen months of governing and the four years of sharing a bed—there are still new things he's learning. The man won't take pills. The man thinks medicine is yucky. The man is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, responsible for the fiscal architecture of an entire country, and he won't swallow a paracetamol because it tastes bad.

Lando opens his mouth to ask a follow-up question—several follow-up questions, actually, starting with how have I never known this and ending with what else don't I know about you—but then someone knocks on the door, and the moment dissolves.

He goes to the door. Opens it. Takes the tray from the kitchen staff with a quiet thanks and carries it back to the living room. The flat is small enough that the dining table is really just a corner of the living room, a modest wooden thing that could seat four if four people were very good friends and didn't mind touching elbows. 

Lando sets the tray down. Two plates of pasta with tomato sauce, steam still rising. A bowl of chicken soup that actually smells good—rich and savoury, the kind of soup that reminds you you're hungry even when you thought you weren't. Fresh bread, still warm, with a small dish of butter on the side. The teapot full of ginger drink, the ceramic warm to the touch.

"Come on," Lando calls toward the bedroom. "Food's here."

Oscar shuffles out and sits down heavily in the chair opposite Lando. Looks at the food. His expression shifts from I'm too sick to eat to I'm going to eat all of this in approximately three seconds.

Lando watches him work through the soup and half the bread and most of his pasta with the focused intensity of someone who has been running on a croissant and Lemsip since eleven this morning and has just remembered that food exists. 

Lando watches him. He's not staring. He's definitely staring.

Oscar looks up, fork halfway to his mouth. "Are you going to finish that?"

Lando glances down at his own plate. He's eaten maybe half his pasta. He's not particularly hungry anymore—the day has left him with the particular hollow feeling that isn't hunger, exactly, but something adjacent to it. Tiredness, maybe. 

He smiles and pushes his plate across the table. "Go ahead."

Oscar doesn't hesitate. He pulls the plate toward him and keeps eating. Lando watches him for another moment, then leans back in his chair and says, "You know what my mum used to say?"

"What."

"You have to fight the flu with food."

Oscar looks up. His mouth twitches—not quite a smile, but close. "Yeah? Does she have tips on how to fight other things I have to fight today?"

Lando chuckles. "You're fighting your Excel spreadsheet. I don't think she'd have anything for that."

"The Excel spreadsheet needs something more than food, that's for sure." Oscar leans back in his chair. "Somewhere between a pope's blessing and a blood sacrifice."

Lando laughs. It's the third real laugh of the evening, and it feels easier than the first two—less like something he's been holding in, more like something that just happens. "A blood sacrifice?"

"I'm exploring all options. The gilt issuance schedule is very demanding."

"You're not sacrificing anything on the gilt issuance schedule."

"Not with that attitude." But Oscar's mouth is twitching, the way it does when he's trying not to smile. 

He takes a moment, the brief pause of someone who is deciding whether to bring work to the dinner table and has decided, inevitably, that he's going to. "I think I've got a few solutions for the £340 million. There are still some things to move around. The regional infrastructure line has some flexibility if we push the M25 rescheduling into the next fiscal year, and the contingency reserve can absorb about half if I reclassify the basing commitment as—"

"Oscar."

"—operational expenditure rather than capital, which is defensible given the nature of the—"

"Oscar." Lando reaches across the table and puts his hand on Oscar's wrist. "You don't have to think about this."

"The £340 million is the reason I shouted at Max in front of half the cabinet. I should probably have a solution for it."

"You don't need a solution. The Americans are going to pay for it."

Oscar blinks. "What?"

"Carlos came up with it. Some trilateral framework—us, the Americans, the Qataris. Maritime security cooperation. Shared basing costs. The State Department was going to announce something similar next month anyway, so we're folding our commitment into theirs. They get to look like they're leading the coalition. We get the bill covered. Everyone's happy."

"We might have to send the King to Miami again this year though."

Oscar stares at him. "Again? Poor man."

"He likes Miami."

"He likes Miami in February. It's October. The humidity is—"

"I don't know the seasonal humidity patterns of southern Florida. Carlos is handling it. The point is the Americans are paying, and you don't have to find £340 million in the regional infrastructure line or the contingency reserve or anywhere else."

Oscar makes a look on his face. It's not relief—or not only relief. Something closer to regret, the particular expression of someone who has just realised that a thing they did might not have been necessary after all.

"Then what's the point of me saying all that to Max?" he asks. "In the cabinet meeting. In front of everyone. If the funding gap was already closed."

"It needed to be said." Lando's voice is steady. "He can't keep walking around here thinking he's still in charge. You said what everyone's been thinking for months. You said it better than I could have."

"It's such a basic concept, though." Oscar shakes his head. "Tell the Treasury before you commit to spending. Consult the Foreign Office before you announce a defence agreement. Basic. I shouldn't have to explain it to a former Prime Minister."

"You shouldn't. But you did. And now he knows." Lando shrugs. "I've told him he can't do any of that anymore. I'm putting him on a time out."

Oscar blinks. "A time out?"

"You know. I'm locking him out using committee processes. All defence decisions go through a new committee. I'm chairing it. He's not even coming to the trilateral announcement next month. Carlos is leading."

Oscar gives him a look—the particular look of someone who is recalibrating their understanding of a situation. "That's harsh. Do you really have to do that?"

Lando raises his eyebrows. Shakes his head. "It's fine. It gives him time to deal with Marko's eight goblins."

A pause. Then Oscar smiles—the small, reluctant smile of someone who understands exactly what Lando is doing. Deliberately icing Max out. Giving him fewer ministerial duties, fewer cameras, fewer opportunities to freelancer. Clearing his schedule so the only thing left is the thing he's been avoiding.

"That's—" Oscar searches for the word. "That's quite elegant, actually."

"Thank you."

"Ruthless, but elegant."

"I learned from the best." 

They clear the table together, or rather Lando clears the table while Oscar makes a vague motion toward helping and then gets distracted by the last piece of bread. Lando stacks the plates, rinses the teapot, wipes down the small modest table that has witnessed approximately four hundred late-night dinners and at least two genuine political crises. 

The flat is quiet. The Bake Off has moved on to the showstopper—someone is constructing what appears to be a life-size replica of Big Ben out of gingerbread, and Paul Hollywood is watching with the particular intensity of a man who has seen too many structural failures to be optimistic.

Oscar is already on the sofa when Lando comes back. He's wrapped himself in the duvet, still looking like a small grumpy emperor, but he's arranged himself in the corner of the cushions with his feet tucked up and his head resting on the armrest, waiting. Lando sits down next to him, and Oscar shifts—not quite graceful, not quite coordinated, but practiced, the way things become practiced when you've done them a hundred times—until his head is on Lando's chest and the duvet is spread across both of them and the Bake Off is still flickering silently on the television.

Lando reaches for the remote. Turns the volume up, just slightly. Paul Hollywood says something about structural integrity. Someone's gingerbread clock face is cracking. The tent is very tense.

They watch for a while. Or Lando watches, and Oscar half-watches with his eyes drifting closed and then open again, the way you watch television when you're too tired to fully commit but too comfortable to go to bed. His breathing is still congested. His head is a warm, solid weight on Lando's chest. The flat is quiet. The day is over.

"Max told me something I didn't know before," Lando says.

Oscar doesn't move. His voice is muffled against Lando's shirt. "What is it?"

"He told me about George's standing offer."

Oscar doesn't flinch. His head stays where it is, his breathing stays even, his hand—which had been resting on Lando's knee—doesn't tighten. He just asks, very calmly: "Who told him that?"

"You wouldn't believe it."

"Try me."

"Charles."

Oscar's head comes up. His hair is even more of a disaster now, flattened on one side from where it was pressed against Lando's chest. "Charles? Charles Leclerc? FER Charles?"

"The very same."

"What—" Oscar stops. Processes. A small, incredulous laugh escapes him. "No way."

He shakes his head. "Huh. Yeah, that actually makes sense. You know Max and Charles have—" He waves a hand vaguely. "History. Or something. I don't know the details. Carlos would know. Carlos knows everything about everyone."

"I'll ask him tomorrow."

"Don't. He'll give you a forty-five minute briefing on FER internal dynamics and you'll miss your morning meetings." Oscar settles back down, his head finding its place again on Lando's chest. "Charles. I can't believe Charles is out here doing opposition research for Max Verstappen. What did you tell him? Max. When he brought it up."

Lando is quiet for a moment. The gingerbread Big Ben is leaning at a concerning angle. Paul Hollywood is frowning. "I said I was surprised. Which was true. I was actually surprised. And then he went on this whole thing about how he's not the threat, you are, he's my friend, yada yada."

"Yada yada."

"He was deflecting. He'd just spent all day undermining me and I was finally holding him accountable, so he brought up the one thing he knew would throw me off."

Oscar doesn't answer immediately. His hand has found Lando's again, his fingers tracing absent patterns on Lando's palm. The duvet rustles as he shifts.

"Are you going to take George's offer?"

"Of course not."

"Then he's not right. He's paranoid."

Oscar tilts his head, looking up at Lando from the very unflattering angle of someone who is resting their chin on another person's sternum. "You're very still."

"What?"

"You're being still. You've been still since you brought it up. You're doing the thing where you're trying to be casual about something that's actually bothering you."

Lando exhales. The exhale is longer than he meant it to be. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Oscar doesn't look away. "Because I said no. Straight away. The moment the offer came through. I didn't hesitate, I didn't negotiate, I didn't leave the door open. I said no. And the fact that George isn't taking no for an answer, that's not my problem. It's his. I didn't tell you because there was nothing to tell. I'd already handled it."

"You didn't tell me because you thought it wasn't important."

"I didn't tell you because I thought it would worry you. And you already had enough to worry about. And I was right, wasn't I?" Oscar's voice is still hoarse, but it's steady. "You're worried now."

"I'm not worried about you taking the offer. I'm worried about—" Lando stops. Searches. "I don't know. The fact that you've been carrying it alone. The fact that Charles Leclerc knew before I did. The fact that Max used it as leverage and I didn't see it coming because I didn't know it existed."

"That's not about me. That's about Max."

"It's about both of you. Max telling me things about my own—" He stops again. The sentence was going to end with boyfriend. He doesn't say it. He doesn't need to. "About my own Chancellor. And me not knowing. That's the part that bothers me."

Oscar is quiet for a moment. The gingerbread Big Ben has collapsed completely. Paul Hollywood is shaking his head with the particular disappointment of a man who expected better. Someone in the tent is crying.

"I'm sorry," Oscar says. "I should have told you. Not because the offer was a threat, but because we tell each other things. That's the deal."

"That's the deal."

"And I broke it. A little bit."

"A little bit."

Oscar shifts again, pushing himself up so he's not lying on Lando's chest anymore but sitting beside him, the duvet still draped around his shoulders, his face level with Lando's. His eyes are still watery from the flu. His nose is still red. He looks, Lando thinks, like someone who has been fighting a war on multiple fronts and is only now realising that one of the fronts was unnecessary.

"Besides," Oscar says. "How awkward would it have been for me to say yes to that offer?"

"Very awkward."

"Humiliatingly awkward. I'd have to sit across from George and explain that, by the way, on a very drunken election night, I was the one who made the case against partnering with MERC. I was the one who told you not to take George's calls. I was the one who argued—" He pauses. "Actually, I didn't just argue. I drew charts."

Lando blinks. 

"On the back of pamphlets. On napkins. On the back of your speech notes, which you were very annoyed about the next morning."

"I don't remember the charts."

"You were very drunk."

"We were both very drunk."

"Yes, but I was drunk and drawing charts, which is how you know I was serious. Drunk me doesn't draw charts for just anything. Drunk me draws charts when the future of the country is at stake." Oscar's mouth twitches. "I drew a pie chart on a napkin showing RBR's seat count versus MERC's seat count. I drew a bar graph on the back of a room service menu comparing coalition stability projections. I drew something on the back of your hand that was either a Venn diagram or a very bad sketch of a duck. We never figured out which."

"You drew on me while I was asleep."

"It was a very compelling duck. Possibly." Oscar pulls the duvet tighter. "The point is, I was the one who said it. Me. The person whose entire political identity was built on being anti-Max. The person who joined the party in 2023 because I couldn't stand watching him run the country anymore. I was the one who looked at the numbers and said—" He pauses, the memory surfacing. "'What if we didn't call George?'"

Lando remembers it now. They'd been in Oscar's hotel room—or maybe Lando's, the rooms had blurred together by that point—surrounded by the debris of the victory party. Confetti in Oscar's hair. Champagne on the carpet. Lando's speech notes crumpled on the bedside table, and Oscar, still in his suit, still wearing his MCL rosette, pulling a pen out of nowhere and flipping over a room service menu.

"George was the obvious call," Lando says. "I was going to call him. I had my phone out."

"I know. You were dialling. I took your phone and you kept saying 'George is waiting,' and I said—" Oscar pauses again. The memory is clearer now, for both of them. "'What if we didn't do the obvious thing?'"

"You said Max brings more seats."

"Max brought sixty-four seats. George brought twenty-six. The math wasn't complicated. Even drunk, I could do that math."

"You said the math was the only thing that mattered."

"The math is always the only thing that matters. That's why I'm the Chancellor." Oscar shifts on the sofa, his knee bumping against Lando's. "But it wasn't just the math. I also said—and this is the part that still keeps me up at night—that MCL's traditional partner meant nothing when we weren't sure George could hold his own party. Toto was already propping up Kimi at that point. We'd be signing up for a coalition where the senior partner was constantly looking over its shoulder."

"You said George was a walking leadership contest."

"I was very blunt. I was drunk."

Lando laughs. It's the kind of laugh that comes from somewhere deep, somewhere that's been holding onto this memory—the chaos of it, the absurdity—for sixteen months without really letting himself think about it. Oscar, the anti-Max crusader, the policy wonk who'd joined the party to stop Verstappen, sitting cross-legged on a hotel bed at three in the morning, drawing charts on everything he could find, making the case for the most chaotic option on the table. 

"And then we woke up," Lando says.

"Yeah, and the MERC proposal was on the fax machine."

"They wanted Treasury for George."

"Absolutely not," Oscar says, with the same flat conviction he'd used that morning, hungover and exhausted and staring at the proposal like it had personally insulted him. "I said 'absolutely not' and then walked out of the room and then walked back in and said it again."

"You said it three times."

"Because it needed to be said three times. George at Treasury was a non-starter. George at Treasury meant the end of my fiscal framework before it even started. George at Treasury meant—" Oscar stops. "Well. It meant I wouldn't be Chancellor. George at the Treasury would have unpicked everything I'd built within six months."

"So you said no."

"I said absolutely not. Three times. And then I said—" Oscar looks at him. The watery eyes. The red nose. The duvet slipping off one shoulder. "I said I'd rather partner with Max."

"And I listened."

"You listened."