Tad was grateful as he climbed in the back seat next to Bif that he wouldn't have to ride in some sort of embarassing car. He was half-afraid Bif's driver would show up in a hybrid or something equally humiliating. He was a little smug as he gave the driver directions to the hotel in Old Bullworth Vale—after all, his own driver already knew where everything was—and then settled back on the leather to watch Bif.
He eyed the phial suspiciously. "What is that?" he asked Bif. Was it drugs?
Tad knew all about drugs. Mummy did them, but it was the kind that came in pill form, in the orange bottles from the Vale pharmacy. Once, worried she was sick, he asked her what they were for.
"Childbirth," she'd answered.
Tad never understood what she meant by that. He was her youngest child, and he was nearly two decades old at the time.