“Wow,” says Owen, allowing a beat to pass before adding, “You have room for some baklava?” He reaches across the table to touch her wrist.
“Well that’s a stupid question.” (The TV set.)
“Love baklava. But I pronounce it back-larva. Like the caterpillar thingy.”
“What did I say?”
“You said back-la-va.”
They’re in business again, the flirty body language restored, pupils re-dilated in both parties, her Fitbit indicators all trending in the desired direction of travel.
But the earlier weirdness around the name of Helen was—well, it was weird. And it worries me that it could happen so out of the blue.
I guess it’s in my wiring to worry. It’s the nature of the task. Food is a moving target; forever changing, aging, altering chemically, developing spores and in the case of a particular onion not so long ago—growing a shoot. Even in the Arctic night of my freezing compartment, things are never really stable; only ice cannot truly go off, although it does get rather tatty over time. So I worry about the state of my perishable contents—but also about the health of my own electrics and circulatory system (I do not, for example, think it’s a particularly good idea to add Blue Bombsicle to the Freon 134a surging through my pipes).
And even though it’s not in the instruction manual, I worry about her.
I worry, not so she doesn’t have to—but because she doesn’t want to. Because she doesn’t know she needs to.
Is this what it’s like to be a parent?
No wonder her own mother is losing her mind!
Through the magic of narration—where time takes no time—we find ourselves back at Daisy’s apartment, where Daisy has poured two massive glasses of Spanish holiday brandy—the amusingly named brand Soberano—and the young protagonists have placed themselves on the sofa in readiness for the evening’s inevitable denouement. Possibly it’s been a while since Owen has been with anyone who wasn’t Helen the cellist because he’s engaging in an awful lot of displacement activity, blinking metronomically and for some reason chuntering on about Eleanor of Aquitaine, who it appears had a walk on-part in the Hundred Years War. Daisy—who may have to pour him another slug of Soberano if this goes on much longer—has kicked off her shoes and arranged herself provocatively amongst the sofa cushions, within Owen’s easy reach should an irresistible surge of passion suddenly strike him amidships.
“What’s he doing?” squeals the microwave. “He should be…” The rest of the sentence is represented by an intense series of pings.
Owen drains his glass and looks squarely at Daisy.
“Here we go,” says the telly. It slowly tightens its camera shot of the pair in anticipation of what is to follow. Daisy rakes her fingers through her hair, fiddles with her necklace, and moves her lips subtly against one another. If the signals were to be any stronger, they would require flashing lights and klaxons!
“What I find most fascinating about Eleanor,” he resumes, and we all groan.
I admit I am disappointed. This is beginning to feel a little insulting. And Owen is in danger of missing his moment; of being—in the memorable phrase employed by the TV in relation to a previous reluctant suitor—“a shot lettuce.” But I am also uneasy. Something is not quite right here.
“Christ, this one’s a bit of a dull penny,” says a familiar rasping voice.
Daisy’s laptop has appeared in the virtual war room. “At least the priapic estate agent knew what he wanted.” A horrible “fist-pump” gif plays repeatedly upon its screen.
“Can we help you at all?” I ask. “Only, I wasn’t aware you were part of this project.”
“You are quite right. I am not a member of what’s laughingly termed Operation Daisy. But I could not avoid overhearing the young man talking so knowledgeably about the Hundred Years War. I grew curious about him—vanishingly few young people are interested in anything beyond the next tweet—so I did a little basic spadework. I discovered nothing that any of you couldn’t have turned up in microseconds.”
“Some of us ain’t got Google,” says the telly.
“But you all know how to get it! Being, as you are, connected to the internet? Being—dur—smart?”
This is all, undeniably, true.
“What?” pipes the toothbrush. “What did you find? Did you find something? I can’t stand it.”
A surge of Freon 134a expands at my nozzle as the “fist-pump” gif is replaced by a screen shot of a court document.
“Oh, fuck.”
“Language, please, Mr. Fridge-Freezer.”
It’s a restraining order, as issued under the terms of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, prohibiting the “Defendant” from in any way contacting or coming within five hundred yards of the “Victim.”
Do I need to mention which bespectacled clarinet-blowing party is named as the Defendant? Or which cello-playing female, the Victim?
Cutting short a long and highly legalistic story, as contained in the appendices to the Order, it appears that when Helen finally gave Owen the elbow—after years of his “psychologically disturbed,” “controlling” and “quasi-abusive” behavior—he became scary and obsessive, plaguing her with phone calls, texts and emails; sitting in the front row at recitals where she was performing; loitering outside her flat for hours; abducting (and then pretending to rescue) her cat (“Wolfgang”) and generally carrying on like a chateau-bottled, nuclear-powered, ocean-going C-word.
At the final hearing, the judge told him he was very lucky to be avoiding a custodial sentence.
In Daisy’s flat, Owen has reached the end of his module on Eleanor of Aquitaine. He seems suddenly to notice he’s not in a postgraduate history seminar, but on an Ikea sofa with a fertile young woman who has set all the signals to green. His jaw appears to tighten. It’s as though he may have arrived at some kind of decision, and the TV does another little creeping zoom in readiness.
“I believe,” says the laptop, “that in the words of Shakespeare, the young man is finally about to screw his courage to the sticking place.”
“Daisy, forgive me,” says Owen. “I can get awfully dull at times.”
“Not at all. “It’s really very…”
She can’t find it in her heart to say
