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found a television station that met with her satisfaction. There were plenty in English but they were mainly American and she had soon got bored with the unfamiliar cartoons and sitcoms and the weather reports from Arkansas. BBC News 24 had been worse: some dreary report about an English MP who wanted to legalize drugs. Sonia had smiled at that at least. Lucky for her he hadn’t managed it yet. There’d have been no free holiday in Thailand for her if he had. She’d still be stuck in Birmingham.
    She had finally found a pop channel with a half-hour special on the lead-up to the Brit Awards. Tommy Hanson, the people’s pop star, was of course expected to clean up as he had done the year before. Could it really be only four years since he had emerged victorious from Pop Hero with the biggest popular majority in the show’s history? Sonia had voted for him eight times.
    It was as Tommy sang to Sonia via the Asian Star Cable Network that her employers came to transact their business. Sonia was nervous but pleased to see them.
    Excited.
    One big, bad, mad-for-it Brummie bird.
    ‘I’ve never been in a Hilton Hotel before. Noice, in’t it? Didn’t know they ‘ad them in Bangkok, it’s just loik England, in’t it? Top tune, this. Tommy ‘anson, I love ‘im I do, ‘e’s dead lush. Let me be the tattoo on your thigh. Brilliant. I’ve bought loads of CDs while I’ve been here, they only cost about three American dollars each, which is two quid. Two quid for a CD! I mean, that’s mental that is, that is just stupid. I got three copies of everything so that’s Christmas sorted. Eminem, Dido, Slipknot for mates, U2 for me mum and of course loads of Tommy. I’m going to see ‘im in concert at the NEC in Birbingham next month. Have yow ever been to Birbingham, or is it just your mate in England?’
    The Brummie babble stopped for a moment. The man’s briefcase was open on the coffee table. It contained only one item.
    ‘Jesus Chroist! I can’t swallow that! It’s loik a bag of sodding flour!’
    The man explained that they would lubricate the condom with vegetable oil. Sonia wondered if it might be possible to divide the load into two lots, but the man had made his preparations and wanted to stick to them. He was anxious to be about his business.
    ‘Oh, screw it, all roight, that’s what I’m ‘ere for. You’re sure this thing won’t burst? I mean it’d kill me, wouldn’t it? I read that if the condom bursts yow wroithe around in agony for about foive minutes then youm dead, bang, just loik that…’
    Suddenly the reality of why she was in Bangkok at all was lying on the coffee table in front of her. A sinister shiny white sausage, a pale, evil-looking slug. Swallowing it was a terrifying prospect, but Sonia reminded herself that she was no crybaby, she was a tough, up-for-anything, Brummie bird and she wasn’t going to let some drug-pushing foreigner see that she was scared.
    ‘Come on, then, let’s get it swallowed. Down’t blame moi if I puke. Give us one of them Courvoisiers out of the mini-bar to wash it down.’

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, WESTMINSTER
    N o, Madam Speaker, I will not withdraw! Nor will I apologize. The terrible, terrible tragedy reported in this morning’s papers is entirely irrelevant to the issues that I have come today to put before the house. Except in this one point! It has been established that the poor older sister Michelle, whose drugs were taken by her younger sibling and friend, waited twenty minutes before calling for an ambulance. Were those twenty minutes crucial? They might have been. I don’t know but I can certainly imagine why the girl hesitated. She hesitated because she was terrified. She knew that calling an ambulance must inevitably mean her arrest and her disgrace. So this seventeen-year-old girl, faced with the appalling circumstance that her little brother and his friend were dying because of her, panicked, Madam Speaker. She panicked and in order to avoid the