The Yips

‘People generally bowl in a team.’ Gene shrugs.

‘And gymnastics. I like gymnastics.’

‘Ditto.’

‘And I’ve always liked the javelin,’ Jen presses on. ‘In fact I love the javelin. There’s something really … really basic and primeval about the javelin.’

To illustrate her point, Jen lobs an imaginary javelin towards Eugene’s head.

‘Okay. So the theory’s not entirely watertight,’ Gene concedes, flinching.

‘And surfing …’ Jen persists. ‘I really, really –’

‘I USED TO BE A SURFER!’ Ransom suddenly yells, tossing down his phone and leaping up from his stool. ‘I USED TO BE A BLOODY SURFER! EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT!’

‘Uh … Could you just …?’ Jen raises a sardonic hand to her ear.

‘I did! I DID!’ Ransom is bouncing, hyperactively, from foot to foot. ‘Everybody knows that. Ask anybody! Ask … Ask him …’ Ransom points at Gene. ‘Surfing was my life. I was a total, surfing freak. I loved it. I lived it. I had the tan, the boarding shorts, the flip-flops, the bleached hair …’

‘The hair was pretty extravagant,’ Gene concurs.

‘All the way down to there, it was …’ Ransom lightly touches his chest with his free hand. ‘I kept it that length for years. It was like my talisman, my trademark, my signature …’

‘Didn’t you insure it at one point for some inordinately huge amount?’ Gene asks.

‘Half a million squid.’ Ransom nods. ‘Although it was just some cheap publicity stunt dreamed up by my ex-manager.’

‘Ah …’ Gene affects nonchalance.

‘But I was in all the fashion mags,’ Ransom persists. ‘Started my own clothing line. Had lucrative contracts with two types of styling gels. Modelled for Westwood in London, McQueen in New York, Gaultier in Paris – which is where I first met Karma …’

He stares at Jen, expectantly.

‘Karma,’ he repeats, ‘Karma Dean? The model? The muse? Come on! You must’ve heard of Karma Dean!’

‘Hmmn?’

Jen just gazes back at him, blankly.

Her mother is perched on the edge of the bed, her slight but curvaceous frame encased in a delicate, apricot-coloured silk nightdress. She is staring at Valentine, expectantly. Valentine is standing close by, looking puzzled. She is holding a small, black vibrator in her hand.

‘I’m really sorry, Mum,’ she eventually murmurs, ‘but the battery’s completely dead.’

Her mother’s mouth starts to quiver. Her eyes fill with tears.

‘I’m really, really sorry, Mum,’ Valentine repeats.

‘Can’t we just take one from the video?’ her mother wheedles. ‘We’ve done that before, remember? Just take one from the remote control!’

‘I don’t think that would work.’ Valentine speaks softly and in measured tones. ‘It’s a different size battery.’

‘No! No it’s not!’ Her mother stamps her foot. ‘You’re lying! You’re just fobbing me off again, same as always!’

‘I’m not lying, Mum. In fact I’m pretty certain –’

‘Stop calling me that!’ her mother snaps.

‘Sorry?’

‘I’m not your “mum”. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m a person! I have a name! My name is Frédérique!’

‘Like I was saying,’ Valentine persists, ignoring this last interjection, ‘I’m pretty certain that the ones in the remote are several sizes smaller …’

Her mother hurls herself on to her back. ‘JESUS CHRIST!’ she hollers. ‘IS THIS WHAT I’M TO BE REDUCED TO?’

‘Shhh!’

Valentine glances over towards the door. Her mother clenches both hands into fists and boffs them, repeatedly, against the counterpane.

‘I’d go to the shops, Mum,’ Valentine struggles to mollify her, ‘but Nessa’s in bed and –’

‘THEN ASK A FUCKING NEIGHBOUR!’ her mother bellows.

Valentine closes her eyes and draws a deep breath. ‘Why don’t we try some of those breathing exercises you learned at the day centre the other day?’ she suggests, her voice artificially bright. ‘Or I can fetch you your crochet …’

Hostile silence.

‘I can’t ask a neighbour, Mum. It’s way after twelve …’ She pauses, grimacing. ‘And anyway, the doctor –’

‘Ah-ha! ’

Her mother sits bolt upright again. She has a victorious look on her face.

‘Maintenant nous arrivons au coeur de la question!’

‘He just thinks it’s advisable for you to try and lay off …’

‘Number one’ – her mother lifts a single, accusing digit – ‘you’re too damn scared to go out on your own, Nessa or no Nessa. Number blue’ – she lifts a second finger – ‘you’ve swapped the live batteries with dead ones – on the doctor’s instructions – simply to spite me and stop me from having a bit of fun. Number tree’ – she lifts a third finger – ‘I’m a gorgeous, healthy –’

‘… because this thing is much too hard,’ Valentine interrupts her, ‘and you’re rubbing yourself raw with it.’

Her mother lifts her nightie, opens her legs and shows Valentine her vagina.

‘C’est belle! And you should know! You’ve seen enough of the damn things over the years!’

‘Mum …’

Valentine is upset.

‘What?’

Her mother is unrepentant.

‘Will you just …?’

‘What?’

‘That’s not really …’

‘WHAT?!’

‘That’s just not really acceptable, Mum.’

Her mother drops the nightie. ‘But it’s acceptable to interfere with my toy and then stand there, bold as brass, and lie to my face about it?’

‘I didn’t …’ Valentine begins.

‘God!’ Her mother collapses back on to her bed again. ‘You bore me! This is so boring! I’m so fucking bored !’

Valentine turns to leave.

‘Menteuse!’ her mother mewls. ‘Imbecile! Prude!’

‘But of course I’ve heard of Karma Dean!’ Jen scoffs. ‘Are you crazy?! I mean who hasn’t heard of Karma Dean? She’s huge!’

‘Well we were an item for about eighteen months.’ Ransom shrugs, nonchalant. ‘She was still married at the time – to some pig-ugly old French actor … I forget his name. The tabloids had a fuckin’ field-day. It was totally insane.’

Ransom takes a long swig of his beer. He seems understandably smug at the sheer magnitude of this revelation.

Silence.

‘But Karma Dean’s really famous,’ Jen eventually murmurs.

‘Yeah. I know.’ Ransom scowls.

‘I’m serious!’

Jen pulls her ‘serious’ face.

‘Yes, I know.’ Ransom struggles to hide his irritation.

‘But I don’t think you do,’ Jen enunciates slowly and clearly (as if describing something new-fangled to a deaf octogenarian), ‘Karma Dean’s really, really …’

‘FAMOUS! YES! I KNOW!’ Ransom barks.

‘Here.’ Gene chucks Jen her cleaning cloth. She catches it. He points at the machine, and then (when she shows no inclination to get on with the job) he gently but firmly angles her towards it. Jen finally gives in to him (with a cheeky, half-smile) and commences cleaning again.

‘I remember how you always used to wear it in those two, scruffy plaits …’ Gene gamely returns to their former subject. ‘Hiawatha-style.’

‘Huh?’

Ransom’s still gazing over at Jen, scowling.

‘Your hair?’

‘My …? Oh, yeah …’ Ransom finally catches up. ‘I was the original golf punk. Man. D’you remember all the fuckin’ stick I got for that?’

‘Absolutely.’ Gene nods.

‘An’ Ian Poulter suddenly thinks he’s the latest wrinkle just ’cos he’s got himself a couple of measly highlights!’ Ransom snorts.

‘The latest wrinkle?!’ Jen sniggers.

‘I still miss the old goatee, though.’ Ransom fondly strokes his chin (doing his utmost to ignore her).

‘It was pretty demonic,’ Gene agrees. ‘I believe you grew that around about the time the tabloids first coined …’

‘“The Devil’s Ransom.” Yeah …’ Ransom grimaces. ‘But I loved that goatee. Shaved it off for charity just before my big comeback in 2004 – my new manager’s idea. That twatty comedian did it, live, during Children in Need.’ Ransom scowls. ‘The bald one with the fat collars and all the –’

‘D’you remember that brilliant campaign she did for Burberry?’ Jen turns from the coffee machine.

‘Huh?’ Ransom looks blank.

‘Karma. Karma Dean. That amazing …?’

‘Urgh. Don’t tell me …’ He rolls his eyes, bored. ‘Nude, on a beach, with the teacup chihuahua slung over her shoulder inside a Burberry rucksack? I was there when they took that shot. The dead of winter in San Tropez. She got a mild case of hypothermia – lost all sensation in her feet. Believe it or not, journos still pester me about it now, a whole seven years later …’

‘What a drag,’ Jen smirks, tipping a pile of damp coffee grounds into a brown, paper bag.

‘Yeah,’ Ransom sighs, glancing down at his phone (seemingly oblivious to the irony in Jen’s tone). ‘It’s dog eat dog out there, kid.’

‘Weren’t you banned from the Spanish Open or something?’ Gene quickly interjects.

‘Huh?’

Ransom looks up, confused.

‘The Spanish Open. Weren’t you banned from that at one stage?’

‘Bingo!’ Ransom snaps his fingers. ‘The German Open. They tried to ban me! It was all over the papers. Because of the plaits. They couldn’t accept the plaits. Everybody remembers the friggin’ plaits! C’mon! Who doesn’t remember the plaits?! The plaits are legendary …’

As Ransom holds forth, Jen passes Gene the bag of grounds to dispose of. Gene takes the bag and then curses as it drips cold coffee on to his loafers.

‘Although the point I’m actually trying to make here’ – Ransom ignores Gene’s muted oaths – ‘is that I was a professional surfer – a successful surfer – on the international circuit for two, solid years before I was wiped out in South Africa, so I’m in the perfect position to know, first-hand, how unbelievably selfish surfing is …’

‘Are they real suede?’ Jen crouches down and dabs at Gene’s shoes with a used napkin.

‘Yeah,’ Gene mutters. ‘My wife got me them for Christmas.’

‘Oops.’

Jen grimaces, apologetically.

‘… way more selfish than golf,’ Ransom stubbornly persists, ‘infinitely more selfish.’

‘Well, I can’t pretend to be much of an expert on the matter,’ Jen avers, screwing the damp napkin into a ball and rising to her feet again, ‘but I generally find the most efficient way to delineate between a so-called “normal” sport and a “selfish” one’ – she paints four, ironic speech marks into the air with her fingers – ‘is by employing the handy axiom of sex versus masturbation’ – she flings the ball, carelessly, towards the bin – ‘and then sorting them into categories under similar lines.’

On ‘axiom’ Gene’s jaw slackens. On ‘sex’ his eyes bulge. On ‘masturbation’ his grip involuntarily loosens and he almost drops the grounds. Stuart Ransom is struck dumb for a second and then, ‘MASTURBATION IS SEX!’ he explodes.

‘Exactly,’ Jen confirms, with a broad grin (like a seasoned fisherman reeling in a prize-winning carp), ‘but selfish sex.’

‘Mum?’

Valentine tentatively pushes open the bedroom door and peers inside. The room is dark. Her mother appears to be asleep in bed with the coverlet pulled over her head.

‘Mum?’ Valentine repeats.

Her mother begins to stir.

‘Mum?’

‘Huh?’ Her mother slowly pushes back the coverlet and yawns.

Valentine slowly moves her hand towards the light.

‘NOT THE LIGHT!’ her mother yells.

‘Shhh!’ Valentine frantically tries to quieten her. ‘Nessa’s asleep next door, remember?’

Her mother sits up.

‘What is it?’ she demands.

‘Did you take the remote by any chance?’ Valentine enquires.

‘The what?!’

‘The remote. The video remote. It’s gone missing.’

‘You think I took the remote?’ Her mother looks astonished.

Pause.

‘Yes.’

‘You woke me up when I was fast asleep to find out if I took the remote?!’

‘Yes.’

‘Vraiment?!’

‘Pardon?’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yes.’

Longer pause.

‘Oh. Fine.’ Her mother crosses her arms, defiant. ‘Well I didn’t.’

‘I see …’

Valentine nervously pushes her fringe from her eyes. ‘Then I guess you wouldn’t mind if I just …?’

She slowly inches her way into the room.

‘Good Christ!’ her mother exclaims, drawing the coverlet up to her chin like an imperilled starlet in an exploitation movie. ‘What is this?! Who the hell are you?! The fucking remote Gestapo?!’

‘I hardly think it’s fair to compare –’ Gene slowly starts off, shaking his head, evidently bewildered.

‘But what about match-play?’ Ransom interrupts him. ‘What about the Ryder Cup? That’s team golf, right there!’

Pause.

‘Good point,’ Jen concedes, then returns her full attention back to the coffee machine.

Ransom is initially gratified, then oddly deflated, by Jen’s sudden volte face.

‘I was selected for Sam Torrance’s team in 2002,’ he blusters, ‘and we fuckin’ stormed it. Pretty much left the Yanks for dead that year …’

‘That must’ve been an incredible feeling …’ Gene tries his best to buoy him up.

‘It was,’ Ransom confirms.

‘To be perfectly honest with you’ – Jen peers over her shoulder – ‘I don’t even know what the Ryder Cup is …’

She pauses for a moment, thoughtfully. ‘Although when Andy Murray exaggerated the severity of his piddling knee injury to pike out of playing in the Davis Cup the other year … Urgh!’

She shakes her head, appalled.

Ransom gazes at Gene, befuddled. ‘Is she always like this?’ he demands, hoarsely.

‘We had Jon Snow in here the other week,’ Gene confirms, ‘and Jen spent the whole night labouring under the misapprehension that he was her old science teacher from Middle School …’

‘Mr Spencer,’ Jen interjects, helpfully, ‘from Mill Vale.’

‘… which was pretty embarrassing in itself,’ Gene continues, ‘but then she swans off to the kitchens …’

‘I just kept asking if he’d kept in contact with Miss Bartholomew – my Year Seven form teacher,’ Jen butts in, ‘and he was totally polite about it, bless him. He kept saying, “I’m not really sure that I have.” Which I thought at the time was kinda weird … I mean you either keep up with someone or you don’t.’

‘So she heads over to the kitchens,’ Gene repeats, ‘and one of the waitresses mentions having served Mr Snow for dinner. Jen puts two and two together, makes five, and then sprints back to the bar to apologize: “I thought you were my old science teacher,” she says, “I had no idea you were a famous weatherman.”’

‘SHIIIT!’ Ransom covers his face with his hands.

‘That was Lenny’s fault!’ Jen shrieks. ‘It was Len who said –’

‘Lenny’s still struggling to come to terms with the trauma of decimalization,’ Gene snorts. ‘Is he really the best person to be taking direction from on these matters?’

‘Jon Snow’s a fuckin’ newsreader, you dick!’ Ransom gloats. ‘Everybody knows that.’

‘I never watch the news’ – Jen shrugs, unabashed – ‘although when Carol Smillie came in just before Christmas,’ she sighs, dreamily, ‘I was totally star-struck …’

‘If I remember correctly,’ Gene takes up the story, ‘you served her with a chilled glass of Pinot Grigio and then said, “I think you’re amazing, Carol. I’m addicted to Countdown. I’ve never missed a single show.”’

‘And?!’ Jen demands, haughtily.

‘Carol Vorderman presented Countdown, you friggin’ dildo!’ Ransom crows.

‘Oh.’ Jen scowls as Ransom exchanges a celebratory high-five with her benighted co-worker before he turns on his heel (with an apologetic shrug) and departs for the kitchens. Ransom – brimming with a sudden, almost overwhelming exuberance – taps out a gleeful tattoo with his index fingers on to the bar top.

‘She was a real class act,’ Jen mutters, distractedly (her eyes still fixed on the retreating Gene), ‘beautiful skin, immaculate teeth, and perfectly happy to sign an autograph for my dad …’

As soon as Gene’s safely out of earshot, however, she abruptly interrupts her eulogy, places both hands flat on to the bar top, leans forward, conspiratorially, and whispers, ‘I know exactly who you are, by the way.’

* * *

Valentine is crawling around the room on her hands and knees, feeling along the carpet in the semi-darkness.

‘I know the sudden change from dark to light upsets you,’ she’s muttering, ‘that it jolts you – but if we could just …’

She slowly reaches towards the light on the bedside table.

‘A CAT’S COME IN!’ her mother screeches. ‘YOU’VE GONE AND LET ONE OF THOSE FILTHY CATS IN!’

She leaps from her bed. ‘OUT, YOU DIRTY, LITTLE SWINE! OUT! OUT! OUT!’

As her mother chases the cat from the room, Valentine takes the opportunity to dive under the coverlet and sweep her arm across the bed-sheet.

‘LA VICTOIRE!’ her mother yells, ejecting the offending feline with a swift prod of her foot, and then – before Valentine can throw off the coverlet, draw breath, and commence a heartfelt plea to persuade her to do otherwise: ‘GOOD RIDDANCE!’ she bellows, smashing the door shut, triumphantly, behind it.

The door reverberates so violently inside its wooden frame that a small ornament (a cheap, plastic model of St Jude) falls off the windowsill on the opposite wall, and a young child starts wailing in a neighbouring room.

‘Jesus, Mum …!’ Valentine hoarsely chastises her, starting to withdraw her head from under the coverlet, but before she can manage it, her mother – possibly alerted to her daughter’s clandestine activities by the sound of the falling saint – has turned and propelled herself – ‘NOOOOOOOOO!’ – (a howling, rotating, silken-apricot swastika), back on to the bed again.

Valentine gasps as her mother’s knee crashes into her cheek (although this sharp expostulation is pretty much obliterated by:

a) the cotton coverlet

b) the extraordinary racket her mother is making

c) the traumatized squeal of the bedsprings).

She eventually manages to extract herself and collapses, backwards, on to the carpet.

‘Ow!’ she groans, feeling blindly for her nose. ‘I think you might’ve … Woah!’

Her normal vision is briefly punctuated by a smattering of flashing, day-glo asterisks.

‘NO BLOOD ON MY NEW CARPET!’ her mother bellows.

‘Eh?!’

Valentine feels a sudden, inexplicable surfeit of warm liquid on her upper lip. She throws back her head, pinches the bridge of her nose and gesticulates, wildly, towards a nearby box of tissues. Her mother (unusually obliging) grabs a clumsy handful and shoves them, wordlessly, into her outstretched palm.

‘Didn’t you see me?’ Valentine demands, applying all the tissues to her face, en masse.

‘See you?’ her mother clucks. ‘Where?’

‘Where?!’ Valentine honks at the ceiling, through a mouthful of paper. ‘Under the coverlet! In the bed!’

Shocked pause.

‘You were in the bed?’

Her mother affects surprise.

‘Of course I was in the bed!’ Valentine squawks (through her mask of tissue). ‘You just jumped on me! You just landed on me! You just kicked me square in the face!’

‘Did I?’

Her mother seems astonished by this news.

‘Yes!’

Valentine straightens her head and stares at her, indignant.

‘Yes!’ she repeats, removing the tissues. ‘You did!’

‘Oh.’

Pause.

‘Well what the hell did you expect?’ her mother rapidly changes tack. ‘You were crawling around under there like some huge maggot! I panicked! I was terrified!’

‘But that’s hardly –’ Valentine starts off.

‘I mean you wake me up in the middle of the night,’ her mother interrupts her, counting off Valentine’s offences on to her fingers, ‘yell at me, accuse me of stealing the stupid remote …’

‘I never yelled at you!’ Valentine’s deeply offended. ‘I would never –’

‘Then you lure one of your stinking cats into the room.’ Her mother points to the door, dramatically.

‘I didn’t lure the cat anywhere!’ Valentine is gently feeling her nose for any evidence of a bump. ‘The cat simply …’

She shakes her head, frustrated. ‘The point is …’

‘You know I don’t like those cats in my room!’ her mother hollers, almost hysterical. ‘You know how much I loathe them! Petits cons! Les chats sont venus du diable pour me tourmenter! Tu es venue du diable pour me tourmenter! Vraiment!’

Valentine reapplies the tissues to her face again. After a few seconds she removes them and subjects them to a close inspection. The sudden flow of blood appears to have abated. She wiggles her nose and then sniffs, experimentally.

‘I’m very sorry about the cat,’ she finally volunteers, glancing up, ‘it just followed me in here out of habit, I suppose.’

‘You know how much I hate them!’ her mother hisses.

‘Of course,’ Valentine acknowledges, ‘it’s just …’ She hesitates, plainly conflicted. ‘D’you remember that conversation we had the other day about all the various adjustments we’ve been making ever since …’ She pauses, delicately. Her mother simply grimaces.

‘Well, one of the adjustments I obviously need to make,’ Valentine doggedly continues, ‘is to understand that your feelings have changed about the cats, that you’re not –’

‘I HATE THOSE BLESSED CATS!’ her mother yells.

‘I hear you.’

Valentine dabs at her nose again. ‘Although there was a time,’ she murmurs, smiling nostalgically, ‘when you used to actively encourage them into this room. You used to love having them in bed. You used to lie there with them draped all over you. In fact you and Dad were constantly at loggerheads about it …’

‘I don’t care! ’ her mother growls. ‘That was her. C’est hors de propos à ce moment! ’

‘Yes,’ Valentine sighs, standing up. She glances around the room and spots the fallen saint lying in a muddy patch of moonlight on the carpet. She grabs it and returns it to its original place on the windowsill, then cautiously picks her way around the foot of the bed, preparing to make her exit.

On her way out, she bumps into a wastepaper basket and almost upends it. She tuts, catches it before it tips, sets it straight, then impulsively pushes an exploratory hand inside it. Her idly swirling fingers soon make contact with something small, rectangular and plastic.

She calmly retrieves this mysterious object and holds it aloft, balefully, like a down-at-heel court official tiredly displaying an especially incriminating piece of criminal evidence to judge and jury.

‘Huh?’

Ransom’s virile tattoo slows down to a gentle pitter-pat.

‘I know who you are,’ Jen repeats (struggling to repress a grin), ‘I’m just pretending that I don’t to wind Eugene up.’

‘Eugene?’

Ransom’s tattoo stops.

‘Eugene. Gene. The barman. I love taking the mick out of him when someone famous comes in. It’s just this sick little game we like to play …’ She pauses, thoughtfully. ‘Or this sick, little game I like to play’ – she chuckles, naughtily – ‘kind of at Gene’s expense.’

Ransom stares at Jen, blankly, and then the penny suddenly drops. ‘Oh wow …’ he murmurs, instinctively withdrawing his fingers into his fists. ‘Oh shit.’

‘I mean don’t get me wrong,’ Jen chunters on, oblivious, ‘I love Eugene to bits, but he’s just so infuriatingly laid back’ – she rolls her eyes, riled – ‘and gentle and polite and decent, that I can never quite resist …’

She glances over at the golfer as she speaks, registers his stricken expression and then pulls herself up short. ‘Oh heck,’ she mutters, shocked. ‘Didn’t you realize? But I made it so obvious! I mean all the stuff about … about tennis and leeches and … and Norfolk. God. I thought I was telegraphing it from the rooftops!’

Long pause.

‘Oh, yeah. Yeah.’ Ransom flaps his hand at her, airily (although both cheeks – by sharp contrast – are now flushing a deep crimson). ‘Of course I realized! Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘Really?’

Jen isn’t convinced.

‘Of course I fuckin’ realized!’ Ransom snaps, almost belligerent.

Jen grabs his empty beer bottle, tosses it into a crate behind the counter and then fetches him a replacement (flipping off the lid by hitting it, flamboyantly, against the edge of the bar top).

‘Jesus!’ Ransom is leaning back on his stool, meanwhile, a light patina of moisture forming on his upper lip. ‘Jesus!’ he repeats, glancing anxiously over his shoulder, towards the kitchens.

‘Here.’

Jen hands him the fresh beer.

‘Cheers.’ The golfer snatches it from her and affixes it, hungrily, to his lips. Jen watches him, speculatively, as he drinks.

‘FUUUCK!’ he gasps, finally slamming down the empty bottle, with an exaggerated flourish. ‘What a gull, eh?’

‘Pardon?’

‘What a sucker!’

Jen looks baffled.

‘A gull – a stooge – a patsy!’ Ransom expands.

Jen still looks baffled.

‘Eugene. Gene. Your barman. What a gull! What a royal fuckin’ doofus!’

Ransom wipes his mouth with the palm of his hand and then burps, majestically. ‘That poor fucker was totally duped back there!’

‘You reckon?’ Jen’s understandably sceptical.

‘Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely …’ Ransom chuckles, vindictively. ‘He didn’t have the first friggin’ clue.’

‘I dunno.’ Jen’s still not buying it. ‘Gene’s a whole lot smarter than you think. Could just be one of those double-bluff scenarios …’

But Ransom’s not listening. His eyes de-focus for a second, and then, ‘My God!’ he erupts. ‘What a performance! You were completely friggin’ nuts back there! You were truly demented!’

Jen merely smiles.

‘And the stuff about selfish sports was a fuckin’ master stroke!’ Ransom continues. ‘It was brilliant! Insane! How the hell’d you just spontaneously come up with all that shit?’

‘I’m a genius.’ Jen shrugs.

‘Ha!’ Ransom grins at her, grotesquely, like an overheating bull terrier in dire need of water.

‘No joke,’ Jen says, firmly, ‘I am a genius. I have an IQ of 210 …’

‘Pull the other one!’

Ransom kicks out his foot. ‘It’s got bells on!’

‘… which is apparently the exact-same score as that scientist guy,’ Jen elaborates.

‘Who? Einstein?’ Ransom quips.

Jen thinks hard for a moment. ‘Stephen Hoskins …? Hokings? Hawkwing?’

Pause.

‘Hawking?’ Ransom suggests.

‘The one who wrote that book about … uh …’

‘Time travel. A Brief History of Time. Stephen Hawking.’

‘Yeah. Yeah. Stephen Hawkwing. We have the same –’

‘Haw-king,’ Ransom interrupts.

‘Pardon?’

‘Haw-king. You keep saying Hawk-wing, but it’s actually …’

‘I’m crap with names,’ Jen sighs. ‘People automatically assume that I’ll have this amazing memory just because I’m super-brainy, but I don’t. My short-term memory is completely shot. I’m not “clever” at all – at least not in any practical sense of the word. I’m intellectual, yes – hyper-intellectual, even – but I’m definitely not clever. The embarrassing truth about intellectuals is that we can be amazingly dense sometimes. And clumsy. And insensitive. And really, really tactless. And incredibly forgetful,’ she sighs. ‘It just goes with the territory. Remember Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind?’

‘I saw it on a plane,’ the golfer murmurs, eyeing her, suspiciously, ‘twice. But I fell asleep both times.’

‘Because our brains are generally operating at such a high level,’ Jen expands, ‘that we simply don’t have the space up there for all these reams and reams of more conventional data …’

The golfer gazes at her, perplexed, noting, as he does so, a slight, pinkened area – almost a gentle chapping – on her upper lip. This idle observation sends a frisson of excitement from his inside knee to his thigh.

‘… data relating to, say – I dunno – table manners,’ Jen rambles on, ‘or road safety, or basic personal hygiene. Take me, for example,’ she expands, ‘I actually started reading Aristotle when I was five – in the original Greek. By seven I’d discovered that a particular chemical component in bananas advances the ripening processes in other fruits. A tiny fact, something people just take for granted nowadays. But it was a huge revelation at the time – had a massive impact on the wine and fruit export industries …’ She shrugs. ‘I got my English language GCSE when I was eight, maths A-level when I was nine. But I was actually twelve years of age before I was successfully toilet-trained.’

‘Wuh?!’

Ransom’s horrified.

‘And I never learned to tell the time.’ She points to her wrist. ‘Couldn’t ever really master it, somehow. I just thank God the world had the good sense to go digital …’ She fondly inspects her watch, notices a tiny smear on its face and then casually buffs it clean on her breast (Ransom observes these proceedings with copious levels of interest).

‘Even tying my own shoelaces was a nightmare,’ Jen continues. ‘At school I always wore trainers with Velcro flaps …’

She illustrates this poignant detail with a little mime. Halfway through, though, Ransom clambers to his feet, reaches over the counter, grabs her arm and yanks her, unceremoniously, towards him.

She squeals, half-resisting. He ignores her protests, roughly twists her wrist and pulls the newly buffed timepiece right up close to his face. He inspects it for several seconds, his breathing laboured.

‘You manipulative little cow,’ he eventually mutters.

Much as he’d surmised, her watch has a leather strap, a gold surround, a traditional dial and two hands.

* * *

‘So you just took out the batteries and then tossed the casing into the bin,’ Valentine murmurs (more rueful now than accusing).

Her mother gazes at Valentine in much the same way a slightly tipsy shepherd might gaze at the eviscerated corpse of a stray sheep on a neighbouring farmer’s land (a gentle, watercolour wash of concern, querulousness and supreme indifference).

‘Well it’s my remote,’ she eventually sniffs, ‘so I can do what the hell I like with it!’

As if to prove this point, categorically, she marches over to her daughter, snatches the remote from her hand and returns to her bed again.

Valentine remains where she stands. ‘It’s not really a question of ownership, Mum –’

‘Frédérique,’ her mother interrupts.

‘Sorry?’

‘Frédérique,’ her mother repeats.

Valentine struggles to maintain her composure.

‘It’s not really a question of ownership, Frédérique …’ (she pronounces the name with a measure of emotional resistance), ‘no one’s denying that the remote is yours. It’s more a question of …’

She is about to say trust.