I've Got Your Number

can’t make one up—”

“Oh, don’t you know that word?” I adopt a tone of surprise. “Sorry. I thought it was fairly common knowledge.”

“Whay-zled?” ventures Wanda dubiously. “Why-zled? How do you pronounce it, exactly?”

Oh God. I have no bloody idea.

“It … er … depends on the region. It’s traditional Scottish dialect, of course,” I add with a knowledgeable air, as though I’m Stephen Fry.42 “Used by Robert Burns. I was watching a documentary about him the other night. He’s rather a passion of mine, in fact.”

“I didn’t know you were interested in Burns.” Magnus looks taken aback.

“Oh yes,” I say as convincingly as possible. “Always have been.”

“Which poem does whaizled come from?” Wanda persists.

“It’s … ” I swallow hard. “It’s actually rather a beautiful poem. I can’t remember the title now, but it goes something like … ”

I hesitate, trying to think what Burns’s poetry sounds like. I heard some once at a Hogmanay party, not that I could understand a word of it.

“’Twas whaizled … when the wully whaizle … wailed. And so on!” I break off brightly. “I won’t bore you.”

Antony raises his head from the N–Z volume of the dictionary, which he instantly picked up when I laid my tiles down and has been flicking through.

“Quite right.” He seems a bit flummoxed. “Whaizled. Scottish dialect for wheezed. Well, well. Very impressive.”

“Bravo, Poppy.” Wanda is totting up. “So, that’s a triple word score, plus your fifty-point bonus … so that’s … one hundred and thirty-one points! The highest score so far!”

“One hundred and thirty-one?” Antony grabs her paper. “Are you sure?”

“Congratulations, Poppy!” Felix leans over to shake my hand.

“It was nothing, really.” I beam modestly around. “Shall we keep going?”

35 I finally winkled this out of him on the phone at lunchtime.

36 Magnus says Wanda has never sunbathed in her life, and she thinks people who go on holiday in order to lie on beds must be mentally deficient. That’ll be me, then.

37 “Study of Continuous Passive Motion Following Total Knee Arthroplasty.” I’ve still got it, in its plastic folder.

38 She didn’t say exactly where it was questing to.

39 Although I am rather good at footnotes. They could put me in charge of those.

40 No idea what most of these words mean.

41 Which apparently is a word. Silly me.

42 Stephen Fry of QI, I mean. Not Jeeves and Wooster. Although Jeeves probably knew a fair bit about Burns’s poetry too.

5

I won! I won the Scrabble game!

Everyone was gobsmacked. They pretended not to be—but they were. The raised eyebrows and astonished glances became more frequent and less guarded as the game went on. When I got that triple word score with saxatile, Felix actually broke out into applause and said, “Bravo!” And as we were tidying the kitchen afterward, Wanda asked me if I’d ever thought of studying linguistics.

My name was entered in the family Scrabble book, Antony offered me the “winner’s glass of port,” and everyone clapped. It was such a sweet moment.

OK. I know it was cheating. I know it was a bad thing to do. To be honest, I kept expecting someone to catch me out. But I put the ring tone on silent and no one realized I was texting Sam all the way through.43

And, yes, of course I feel guilty. Halfway through, I felt even worse when I texted Sam in admiration:, How do you know all these words?, and he replied, I don’t. The internet does.

The internet?

For a moment I felt too shocked to reply. I thought he was thinking of the words, not finding them on Scrabblewords.com or whatever.

That’s CHEATING!!!! I typed.

You already crossed that line, he texted back. What’s the difference? And then he added, Flattered you thought I was a genius.

Then, of course, I felt really stupid.

And he had a point. Once you’ve started cheating, does it matter what your methods are?