Mildred 'Bing Bong' Hoolihan, shortend over time to 'Bing, is a retired agent.
She does not want to be, that much is certain. She would be the first to tell you, and the chronicler of her life does just that in the opening words of the first recorded adventure: "nothing funny about being past 50 and retired in this business".
Born in 1972, she is 9 years old when we meet her, living in foster care because her real family is too dysfunctional to care for her. Some it is due to drugs and some to being in prison, often both. She is very smart and very crafty and well-liked by the people in the neighborhood who have no idea this sweet girl, a skinny beanpole all "milky and ginger", has inside her a rage against so many things. It "protects her from the bad people around her, most of whom are in her family; foster and birth." Being just 9, though, there is not much she can do about that anger so she knows to temper it, "be alone, be invisible. Exist in the cracks". Believe me when I say she learns her lesson well and will keep that in mind well into her upcoming career.
When next we meet her, it is over four decades later, 2024, and "Bing Bong" is past 50 years of age and long since forced into retirement. "Bing left the MI6 Circus nine years ago and is now wondering the Earth; a long-displaced Scouse Nomad [no clue!] roaming Europe with a certain set of skills, living the simple life and on her own ticket. Sharp crewcut, irn-bru coppertop, high and tight, conspicuous yet inconspicuous. Free from a job she loved and hated, but just because she left the job doesn't mean that it's left her. Nine years and it's still in her every thought, every instinct."
Hoolihan comes across as a loner for that is what she has been most of her life and is when we meet her. There is, though, another woman who has shared her life for a good while and with whom she had raised a son (I believe Hoolihan is the biological mother but that is a bit confusing). To my mind, Hoolihan secretly wishes to find a way to reconcile with them but has "issues".
Good Lines:
- Observation by a 9-year-old Mildred that is so true, "Stupid people think others are stupid and don't think they're stupid themselves".