Misspent Youth

biographies in the datasphere. They never say much about her. She was called Tracy, wasn’t she?”

“She certainly was, dear old Flaky Tracy.”

Tim sniggered. “Flaky Tracy. What, did she have dandruff?”

“Yeah.” Jeff gave him a conspirator’s grim. “On the inside of her skull.”

Tim laughed.

“Honestly, Tim, I’m not kidding, she was an absolute angel to look at. Small, blonde, utterly adorable, good figure. Maybe not quite as beautiful as your mother, but men looked around when she walked into a room. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, guess so.”

“Right. But the thing is, you can never believe that anyone who looks so lovely can be anything other than lovely. Especially when it comes to women. I mean, that knowledge is hardwired into a man’s genes. Pretty equals nice. Jesus wept, did I ever learn the hard way. I’m not joking, Tim, Flaky Tracy turned out to be the ultimate bitch demon from hell. The only reason she was sent to roam the earth was because the devil got nervous when she was around down below. And that’s not me being bitter over the divorce, either. Believe me, thirty-seven years has managed to calm me down quite a lot as far as that one’s concerned.”

“She can’t have been that bad, surely?”

“Like I said, judge for yourself. We were getting divorced around the time I worked out the molecular structure of the memory crystal. You know what would have happened if I’d patented it, don’t you? I, we, you, would have been so bloody rich we could have afforded to go for the X-orbit prize just like Sir Mitch. But she would have got half, probably more if that bastard of a lawyer she hired—and slept with—had his say.” Jeff looked at his mildly scandalized son, and smiled broadly. “So I gave it away. That’s it, Tim. I didn’t do it as some noble gesture. I wasn’t pure in heart. I didn’t do it for the betterment of all mankind. I did it because I hated that cunt so much you couldn’t put it into words. And when she realized what I’d done, that she wasn’t going to have more money than an African nation’s debt, that lawyer of hers had to hold her down in her chair to stop her attacking me. I can still remember her screaming. Lord, but it was a beautiful sound.” He drew down a long, cleansing breath. “So you see, I’m not Jeff Baker. I never have been. It was all complete bullshit from start to finish.”

Tim’s jaw had opened as he stared at his father. “But… they chose you for rejuvenation because you gave away the memory crystal.”

Jeff quirked his eyebrows. “Yeah.”

“It cost trillions of euros.”

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t tell them?” Tim tried to laugh, but it came out as a short bark, wavering between outrage and admiration.

“They didn’t ask.”

“Oh my God. Dad!”

“Cheer up, Brian, remember, always look on the bright side of life.” He whistled a few bars of the Monty Python song, smiling contentedly.

Tim started laughing. He couldn’t stop, not even when it began to hurt. Jeff put his arms round him and hugged him tight. Tim returned the embrace, bursting with joy to finally know who his father really was, and loving it.

28. EXAM PRESSURE

THE FINALS FOR PSE (progressive secondary education) courses had started. More than seventy-five percent of England’s eighteen-year-olds were currently fretting their way through them. You couldn’t fail if you got a low mark on the finals—that would be tremendously unfair after spending two years performing the course work—but the exam did make up twenty percent of the overall course mark, which decided a pupil’s grading and therefore which university they went to.

All told, Annabelle had eight exams to work her way through (Tim had fifteen). It meant she was going to have her PCglasses glued to her head for hours at a time during the two weeks of the finals, reviewing and running through previous exam questions. She didn’t plan on spending much time with her friends in that period; they were too likely to distract her (she hadn’t decided about Derek; admittedly it would be a good way of letting off steam). But she couldn’t study the whole time; there had to be periods when she could chill out. That wasn’t going to happen at home. Which made the manor just about perfect, and Tim was ever eager to make amends for the apres-Jet Ski party.

The afternoon she went up there they splashed around in the swimming pool for half an hour before dragging a couple of sunloungers out onto the patio. It was a hot afternoon, with no clouds and no wind; the forecasters were predicting the high would last at least three weeks. Annabelle toweled herself off, then sprayed on factor forty sunblock. She was wearing her navy blue bikini, a copy from the one in Stephanie’s range. It was a shame because she would have preferred an all-over tan, but going topless in front of Tim right now would give him the wrong idea. As far as she was concerned he was still on probation.

So they lay side by side, with only a small table between the sunloungers. Tim lay with his head resting on the cushions so he could look at her the whole time. The talk was almost as relaxed as it had been a week ago. Tim was starting to accept his father going out with other girls, though Annabelle wrinkled her nose with distaste when she learned about him going out and crawling around the clubs each night. But it was nice to see Tim returning to some sort of equilibrium. She told him how devastated she’d been when her own mother left.

When it came to the finals, he was cool about them, which sparked not a little envy in her. He apologized, and said he understood about her wanting to get to university and away from her home. They daydreamed together about what it would be like if she went to Oxford or Cambridge with him. He still hadn’t decided which one he’d choose.

The radio they had on in the background, tuned to an eighties music station, began a news report about Rob Lacey’s campaign. He was in Spain, speaking at rallies there and trying to make alliances with regional politicians, eager for their endorsement.

“He’ll do well out there,” Tim said.

“How come?”

“Spain’s always been a good ally to us in Brussels. They usually vote with us to block the central and northern countries.”

“He’ll never win.”

“Yes he will. The Med countries don’t have their own candidate. Nobody in France will vote for him, same way as we’d never vote for a Frog. All he has to do is swing the Germans behind him.”

“I can’t believe we’ll have a president of Europe.”

“Do you think it’ll matter, that it’ll make a difference?”

“No. Be nice if it did, though. There’s so many regulations he needs to liberalize or just abolish.”

“And more he needs to strengthen. The Germans are getting a thousand Russians a day sneaking in over the eastern laser-curtain border. More, if you access the undernet reports.”

“I know.” She sighed. She picked the glass tumbler off the table, only to find it was empty. “I need more juice.”

“Call Mrs. Mayberry,” Tim said.

“Honestly, Tim, you’re so much a slob.” She climbed to her feet and walked over the lawn to the house with its wide open French doors.

“Get me one, too,” Tim yelled at her.

“One of these coming right up.” Annabelle gave him the finger, and walked into the living room. It was cooler inside, the air conditioning murmuring quietly behind slim vents in the baseboard. She pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead, and blinked while her eyes adjusted to the light.

“You look sensational in that bikini,” Jeff said.