“Mum, what’s wrong?” I said, putting my arm round her.
“It’s just this whole baby business. I mean, of course I want to be there for you, darling, but if only you could have done it like normal people. It’s just thrown everything into disarray. Everything! I just really, really wanted to sit next to the Queen.”
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” I said, patting her hand. “But why is it so important to you to sit next to the Queen?”
“It would mean that I meant something if the Queen sat next to me. I’ve never meant anything. And I’ve worked really hard for the village all my married life with all the baking and the preserves and everything and it would have meant…”
“Like being a hundred or something?”
“Not a HUNDRED, darling!”
“No, I mean like a CBE or a Queen’s Guide or something. Like an official stamp of being worthwhile?”
She nodded, wiping her eyes. “The Admiral says the Queen’s table is going to be decided by a vote. I mean, I was hoping you could just sort it out and find out who the father IS—perhaps the baby IS Mark’s, and it would be so wonderful for all of us if you were to come to the pre-vote debate and say it was Mark’s. Will you? Will you, darling? And will you come to the seating plan event?”
“Mum, I’ve got an important work meeting tomorrow morning. I need to go to sleep.”
“All right, I must get back to Daddy, anyway. You will come, darling, to the debate?”
“I’ll try.”
“…and wear the smock?”
Mercifully, the phone rang.
“Better take that, probably work,” I said. “Bye, Mum.”
She gave me a quick kiss and scuttled out, leaving the smock.
—
9 p.m. Phone call was from Daniel.
“Christ, Jones, did you see that bloodbath? It was an assassination attempt from the start. Bill Sharp’s entire life goal is to prove he’s read The Oxford Dictionary of Incomprehensible Defunct Long Words to Slag People Off With from cover to cover. As for O’Shea: envy, Jones, the green-eyed monster. They had no understanding of the concept…”
By nine-thirty p.m. Daniel was still going on “this whole baby thing has thrown me off kilter. I could have taken them on if I’d been at the top of my game. The Poetics of Time can’t be represented by a ten-second sound bite and a couple of resentful goons. It will set the tone, it’s all over the wires, and now I have the reviews to face. It’s like going over the top, I feel…”
There was a texting ping—
MAGDA
Audrona is taking a job designing new Airbus propeller shafts. I have no nanny. Help! Can I call you?
This was followed by another text.
TOM
I’ve just had a blazing row with Shazzer about the baby thing. She says I AM a horrible person. Am I? Can I call you?
—
11.20 p.m. Just got off the phone with everyone and a text pinged up from Mark.
MARK DARCY
What did you think of my painting?
MONDAY 20 NOVEMBER