“What are their names? What do they do?”
“The boy. He’s Ben, an internationally renowned brain specialist. He finds a cure for dementia, obviously. Or, perhaps, he quits medical school after his band are offered a four-album deal.”
“And her?”
“Oh, she’s a housewife.”
Did my jaw actually drop open? It may have.
“It’s a joke!” he added quickly. “Your face, honestly!”
“Phew!”
“She’s Rachel. An astrophysicist. And she discovers the secret of dark matter, the invisible stuff that holds the galaxies together.”
“And in her honor, they call it Eggstainium.”
“I like that!”
We clinked again to celebrate.
“And what about yours?” he asked. “How many would you like, what are they called and what do they do?”
When the answer popped into my head my face must have done something strange because Eggstain stared at me oddly for a long time, and I almost said, what?
“What about yours?” he repeated softly.
My heart began to thump when I realized I couldn’t say my answers to the three questions for a very good reason. I shrugged and drained my White Russian.
1. Two.
2. Ben and Rachel.
3. Rock star brain surgeon and the astrophysicist who cracks the secret of the universe.
We were both fairly pissed by the time we sat down to Nigella’s chicken and pea traybake. Halfway through my mother phoned to say she was going to Brighton with a man she’d met in Waitrose. It seemed like a lousy idea, but Eggstain said afterward we could do some discreet checking.
“Apparently, the fridge has already googled him.”
“Ah.”
“Exactly.”
“When is it supposed to be happening?”
“Didn’t say.”
“It may be an entertaining fantasy.”
“I very much hope so.”
He talked about Hope Waverley. How she was being “incredibly difficult” over his possessions, refusing to agree a time when he could book a van to remove his stuff.
“All because you shaved your blimming beard off!”
“The relationship was already fatally flawed. The beard was pulling the trigger.”
“Are you sad?”
“Do I look sad, Daisy?”
He didn’t. He looked pretty chuffed, actually. There was a light in his eye, the one that appears after two White Russians and a glass of the robust red that he’d brought to the party. The problem was with her.
“She’s not a fool. She knows it wasn’t working. But she’s crazy. She contains a lot of suppressed rage.”
“So a smart angry nutjob. A kind of female Hannibal Lecter.”
“Not so much the eating people thing. But definitely short of a few screws. How did I stay with her for so long?” He shook his head in amazement. “People get trapped in sick relationships.”
“All relationships are a bit twisted, aren’t they? I spent two years with a guy who couldn’t actually feel anything. He was the easiest person to be with until the point you realized he was a hollow shell. Nothing there. A smiling zombie.”
“Interesting case. Perhaps we should introduce them.”
“It could work! He’d put up with any amount of bad behavior. It was soul destroying.”
“Sounds like they’re made for each other.”
“So is she the sort who’d—I don’t know—cut up your clothes and chuck paint on your car? Boil your rabbit? If you had a rabbit. Tell me you don’t have a rabbit.”
“Hope? Probably she’ll be furious for a while, and then she’ll meet someone new. Probably someone with a beard. Then she’ll be happy for a while. Or not unhappy, let’s say. One of what shrinks called the worried well. Emotional issues, yes, but not the full cuckoo bananas.”
The trifle—I say it myself—went down extremely well. Eggstain called for seconds.
He said, “So this man says to this woman…”
“Is this a joke?”
“If you find it funny, it’s a joke. So the man says, I’d like to cover your body in sponge cake, jelly, custard and cream. And then I’d like to scatter you with hundreds and thousands. And then—then I’d like to lick it all off. And she says… No! I won’t be trifled with!”
Well, what can I say? I hadn’t heard it before. A speck of pudding—including a single pink hundredth and thousandth—flew from my lips and landed on the lapel of Eggstain’s posh suit. Time seemed to slow.
“Wait! Don’t touch it. I’ve got this,” I said.
Ever so delicately, perhaps like a brain surgeon performing a tricky operation, I lifted the offending blobule away with the corner of a kitchen towel. I was very aware of Eggstain’s face, close to my own, as I inspected the garment for remaining food residue.
“I think that went well,” I said. “I believe we got away with it.”
“Thank you. It’s my brother-in-law’s suit. He lent it to me.”
And then I looked into his face.
Finding the Brighton train in the heaving maelstrom of London’s Victoria Station is, if I say it myself, a breeze; although were it not for all the web-enabled security cameras and other paid-up members of the Internet of Things (thanks all for the frictionless R) Clive and Chloe would doubtless be on their way to Bognor Regis; or perhaps Canterbury West (just to pick two possibilities from the departure board on the concourse of the mighty railway hub).
Happily, the Boomwee and I were able to guide them discreetly to the correct first-class carriage, where safely ensconced—still neither has commented on the wires hanging from their respective left ears—Clive now plays his Joker.
From his holdall he produces a small ceramic vase and a plastic carnation. With something of a look on his face, if you know the one, he sets the props on the table between them. Next to appear is a stainless-steel dish into which he empties a packet of roasted peanuts. Finally, wrapped in one of those cooler jackets, is a half-bottle of champagne, which he opens like an expert—“the trick is to turn the bottle, not the cork”—and dispenses carefully into two plastic flutes.
He raises his glass. “To adventure!” he proclaims.
“Adventure!” echoes Chloe.
“To getting them back in one piece,” I say to Clive’s fridge-freezer.
“It’s barely ten in the morning,” giggles Chloe.
“Never too early to eat peanuts!” quips the elderly roué.
By the time East Croydon and Gatwick Airport have
