“Well, do you know I’d be a bit confused—”
“Hah!” I said to Mum. “You see?”
“—because,” Polly carried on, “if you texted me asking for Landen and the kids to come over for Sunday dinner, I’d not know why you hadn’t asked him yourself.”
“Ah…I see,” I mumbled, suspicious that the two of them had been colluding in some way—as they generally did. Still, I never knew why they made me feel as though I were an eighteen-year-old when I was now fifty-two and myself in the sort of respectable time of life that I thought they should be. That’s the thing about hitting fifty. All your life you think the half century is death’s adolescence, but actually it’s really not that bad, as long as you can remember where you left your glasses.
“Happy birthday, by the way,” said my mother. “I got you something—look.”
She handed me the most hideous sweater you could possibly imagine.
“I don’t know what to say, Mum, and I really mean that—a short-sleeved lime green sweater with a hood and mock-antler buttons.”
“Do you like it?”
“One’s attention is drawn to it instantly.”
“Good! Then you’ll wear it straightaway?”
“I wouldn’t want to ruin it,” I replied hastily. “I’m just off to work.”
“Ooh!” said Polly. “I’ve only now remembered.” She handed me a CD in a plain sleeve. “This is a preproduction copy of Hosing the Dolly.”
“It’s what?”
“Please try to keep up with the times, darling. Hosing the Dolly. The new album by Strontium Goat. It won’t be out until November. I thought Friday might like it.”
“It’s really totally out there, man,” put in my mother. “Whatever that means. There’s a solo guitar riff on the second track that reminded me of Friday’s playing and was so good it made my toes tingle—although that might just have been a pinched nerve. Wayne Skunk’s granny is Mrs. Arbuthnot—you know, the funny old lady with the large wart on her nose and the elbows that bend both ways. He sent it to her.”
I looked at the CD. Friday would like it, I was certain of that.
“And,” added Polly, leaning closer and with a conspiratorial wink, “you don’t have to tell him it was from us—I know what teenagers are like, and a bit of parental kudos counts for a lot.”
“Thank you,” I said, and meant it. It was more than a CD—it was currenc
y.
“Good!” said my mother. “Have you got time for a cup of tea and a slice of Battenberg?”
“No, thank you—I’m going to pick something up from Mycroft’s workshop, and then I’ll be on my way.”
“How about some Battenberg to go, then?”
“I’ve just had breakfast.”
The doorbell rang.
“Ooooh!” said Polly, peering furtively out the window. “What fun. It looks like a market researcher!”
“Right,” said my mother in a very military tone. “Let’s see how long we can keep him before he runs out screaming. I’ll pretend to have mild dementia, and you can complain about your sciatica in German. We’ll try to beat our personal Market-Researcher Containment record of two hours and twelve minutes.”
I shook my head sadly. “I wish you two would grow up.”
“You are so judgmental, daughter dear,” scolded my mother. “When you reach our age and level of physical decrepitude, you’ll take your entertainment wherever you can find it. Now, be off with you.”
And they shooed me into the kitchen while I mumbled something about how remedial basket weaving, whist drives or daytime soaps would probably suit them better. Mind you, inflicting mental torture on market researchers kept them busy, I suppose.
I walked out the back door, crossed the back garden and quietly entered the wooden out house that was my uncle Mycroft’s laboratory. I switched on the light and walked to my Porsche, which was looking a little forlorn under a dust sheet. It was still unrepaired from the accident five years before. The damage hadn’t been that severe, but 356 parts were getting pricey these days, and we couldn’t spare the cash. I reached into the cockpit, pulled the release and opened the hood. It was here that I kept a tote bag containing twenty thousand Welsh tocyns. On this side of the border pretty worthless, but enough to buy a three-bedroom house in Merthyr. I wasn’t planning to move to the Welsh Socialist Republic, of course—I needed the cash for a Welsh cheese deal I had cooking that evening. I checked that the cash was all still there and was just replacing the sheet on the car when a noise made me turn. Standing at the workbench in the half-light was my uncle Mycroft. An undeniable genius, with his keen mind he had pushed the frontiers in a range of disciplines that included genetics, fusion power, abstract geometry, perpetual motion and romantic fiction. It was he who had ushered in the home-cloning revolution, he who may have developed a memory-erasure machine and he who had invented the Prose Portal that had catapulted me into fiction. He was dressed in his trademark wool three-piece suit but without the jacket, his shirtsleeves were rolled up, and he was in what we all called his “inventing mode.” He seemed to be concentrating on a delicate mechanism, the function of which was impossible to guess. As I watched him in silence and with a growing sense of wonder, he suddenly noticed me.