turns freckles black as pockmarks. It plucks at Natalie's features and her son's as if it's determined to puff up their flesh until they're as plump as her mother. It performs a similar illusion – using the treacherous shadows to reshape them close to identical – with Warren's squarish face and Nicholas's longer one. Then everyone sets about chanting 'Happy birthday to you' so enthusiastically that I could believe there are extra guests in the dark, and the candles on the cake in the middle of the table flare up. All the grinning faces appear to swell towards me, and another one does in my mind. Nobody present resembles it – not schoolboyish Colin or doughy Joe or Rufus behind his beard, and certainly nobody else – even if the instability of all the faces suggests they're about to transform. When I shut my eyes to put an end to the idea I see Tubby's face lying like a fat replete parasite on the surface of my mind. None too soon everyone choruses 'You' at length and Mark cries 'Now you've got to blow them all out or we won't have good luck.'
I suppose I should be touched that he's including himself and presumably his mother in my fortunes. I fumble for the light switch before opening my eyes to see that a dark shape has reached it ahead of me – only my shadow. 'I'll just put the light on so we won't be in the dark.'
'It won't be as special,' Mark complains, but I've already slapped the switch down. I keep my eyes open as I turn to the room. Everyone is smiling, and Bebe is coming at me with a knife – for me to use on the cake, of course. She lays it on the table when I wave it away, and it shimmers like a magic blade with flame. I suck in a breath that tastes of hot wax to extinguish the candles, but the breath emerges as a faltering gasp. Beneath the bristling candles is a clown's wide-eyed gleeful face.
I'm hardly aware of nervously scratching my wrist. I stop when I notice that Mark is imitating me. As I lean towards the black and white face of the cake I feel as if I'm confronting some unspecified dread. I can't tell how much of the heat is in the flames and how much in my face, though of course that isn't melting. I expel a breath like a long resigned sigh. The flames point at my audience and give way to scribbles of smoke. I expect the candles to relight themselves at once, but they don't play that trick. 'Well done,' Bebe says, more in the manner of praising a child than I like. 'You must have the first slice, Simon.'
I poise the knife while I consider how to mutilate the face. I cut through the button nose and as much of the right side of the grin and the downturned mouth as I can encompass without seeming greedy. I transfer the slice to the topmost of a stack of plates beside an array of parcels and envelopes addressed to me. I'm about to cut the rest of the cake when Bebe says 'Eat up, Simon. It's for you.'
'What's it like?' Mark asks before the slice divested of its candle has reached my mouth.
Perhaps a trace of wax has strayed into the icing, because it tastes indefinably odd. Everybody smiles more intensely than I welcome as I take the bite. They must be encouraging me to display pleasure, however amused they look. I do my best, although I feel as if the confected grin I've swallowed is returning to the surface of my face, dragging my lips into its shape. 'Good,' I'm compelled to assure Mark, but the word emerges as such a nonsensical mumble that Bebe frowns. Two further mouthfuls, which I mime enthusiastically so as not to seem ungrateful, finish off my portion. I let the aching corners of my mouth subside as I wonder 'Why a clown face, Mark?'
'It wasn't his idea,' Bebe says. 'The party was.'
'Whose was the cake?'
'Chums know what chums like,' says Joe.
Did I ever mention the circus to him? Another possibility occurs to me, one so disconcerting that I blurt 'Have you put something in it?'
His face may be about to own up to an expression when Bebe interrupts. 'I should very much doubt it.'
'You aren't in Amsterdam now,' Warren says and fixes his wide eyes on me. 'I heard someone ate one of those cakes there and went completely mad.'
'Well, thank you for the cake and all it's brought me, Joe. You must have the next piece.'
'I don't think I want it if it's offered in that spirit.'
'Who'll be next, then? Someone who can vouch for its innocence. We don't want anybody thinking Joe provided something questionable.'
I don't know why I chose that word. It makes my speech feel dangerously close to straying out of control, as if the ingredients of the cake may not be as trustworthy as I've been led to believe. I could almost fancy that the word has disturbed someone else in the room. Of course Colin and Rufus are aware of its significance. 'I think I'll take a rain check,' Bebe says.
'Me too,' says Warren.
Nicholas merely shrugs, and even Natalie looks disinclined to respond. I'm struggling not to imagine that she's being influenced by her employer, Mark's father, when Mark says 'I'd like some.'
I have an unhappy sense that his gesture on my behalf – even if it isn't one, that's how it's bound to be interpreted – will cause more problems than it solves. Nevertheless I cut him a slice that spans the middle of the clown's mouth. As he raises it to his own he says 'Can Simon open one of his presents now?'
I'm not sure how much urgency I sense. 'Any in particular?'
'The one mummy and her friend got.'
There's no mistaking the tension this brings into the room. I avoid glancing at Nicholas to discover how much of it is his, and pick up the flat rectangular package that wishes me happy birthday and love2 in Natalie's handwriting. 'This one?'
'That's right, isn't it, mummy?' Mark chortles, spluttering crumbs. He wipes his mouth as I untie the bow. Before I peel back the silvery wrapping I can tell that the item is a DVD. I uncover the back of the case, which is blank. Is emptiness the joke that's provoking Mark's caked mirth? I turn the case over and strip it of wrapping, and have to laugh as Mark does harder. The rudimentary cover tells me that it contains Tubby's lost and final film,
FORTY-NINE - INTERTITLES
The best word for the cover is amateur. A sheet of paper has been cut into a shape with aspirations to the rectangular and inserted under the transparent surface of the plastic case. Beneath the title, which is printed in capitals simple enough for a child's first reading book, is a blurred image, presumably a still from the film, of Tubby in a gown and mortarboard. He's pointing with a stick that resembles a wand at a dozen or more lines chalked on a blackboard. I hope the reproduction on the disc is clearer, because it's impossible to judge whether the text is nonsense. If Tubby's face and his fixed grin seem better defined, perhaps that's because they're more familiar. Around me everyone is smiling like him – anticipating my reaction, especially Mark. 'Thank you, it's just what I wanted,' I tell Natalie and give her a lasting kiss, even if it discomforts at least one person more than Mark. When I eventually pull away from her smile I say 'Where on earth did you find it?'
'Online. Everything's there if you look hard enough.'
This makes me feel unexpectedly inadequate. 'You mean you downloaded it?'
'No, it was on an auction site.'
'An expensive one,' Bebe is concerned I should know.
'I hope you didn't pay too much, Natty.'
'I don't see how it could be when it's so important to you. Anyway, we'll make it back from your book, or maybe your publishers could cover the expense.'
'Worth a thought,' Rufus says to Colin, who laughs.
I'm still feeling less adept with the Internet than I ought to be, which may be why I remind Natalie 'And you said someone at work helped.'
'Guilty as charged,' says Mark's father.
Too late I realise I was willing it not to have been Nicholas. 'Then I must thank you as well.'
'Gratitude accepted.'
'Nicholas had it picked up by courier,' Natalie says, 'otherwise we wouldn't have had it in time.'
'Dubbing the granite dude, then.'
'Run that past me again?' Nicholas says with a frown at Mark's giggling.
I struggle to retrieve my language from a random eruption of mirth. 'I said double the gratitude.'
'Likewise the acceptance.'
