Days 3-10, Part 3

13,387 words total. This is where I’m up to now. From today on, I’ll go back to posting daily.

15. London Love Match #1

 

The dating agency that Mark Selwyn and Camille Barrett belonged to was called London Love Match. Camille was not only the first woman Mark had dated from that agency, she was the first woman he had dated from any agency. This was unfortunate for him because had he met any other woman—any woman at all—he probably would have been more willing to see dating agencies as a viable route to finding a long-term partner. 

For Mark, going through London Love Match represented a secret, desperate attempt to find some companionship. As soon as he saw the newspaper advert, he cut it out. But it took him weeks to call. In fact, he almost never found the courage to phone the number at all. What tipped him over the edge was when he found a few meagre, tatty photos of himself in sixth form college. It got him thinking back over his life, in particular the women in his life. 

He recalled year after year of school passing without so much as a kiss. Then semesters of university, where all he ever managed to get was the occasional crying girl outside the union bar: all too insecure or drunk to cope with the pressures of student life. And even those were few an far between. And now work, of course, which seemed to only show him glimpses of his own pitiful future. His first boss died at forty-nine of a heart attack. He was single. He was alone.

Then there was Camille, who called him awful.

And now there was no-one. No-one except the temp. He had spent days next to her. Scrawny Sara. He caught himself glancing covertly at her flat chest as often as every few minutes. He didn’t feel guilty for looking. If anything, he felt a kind of despondency. Is this really the best he could covet? This gawky twenty-something, who clearly wanted to be anywhere at all but in a room with Mark fucking Selwyn.

Sara said that working life was meaningless. Mark wished he felt like that, he really did. He had even pretended to agree, to impress her. To impress his temp! How low had he sunk? She was ten years his junior! Yes—he’d agreed, but he didn’t think working life was meaningless, not for a moment. If anything, his job was a stabiliser. It was the plug that kept everything in. 

He didn’t know Sara outside of work. For all he knew, Sara thought that all life was meaningless. His brother used to say that: “Nuffin’ means nuffin’.” In some ways, that was a comforting thought, but again, it wasn’t one Mark could hold onto. Life is meaningless. Such an arrogant assertion! His brittle self-confidence wouldn’t allow his mind to give credence to it. His soul, that clunky motor driving his plodding melancholic existence, rallied against it.

He told himself: Life isn’t meaningless to you; you are meaningless to life.

 

16. London Love Match #2

 

Mark was not the first man Camille had dated from London Love Match. There had been many others. She didn’t keep count of these things. Certainly, it ran into the hundreds—and that was just from the one dating agency.

Camille, like her mother, was very interested in men.

The night after the Mark debacle, Camille had another date. She chose him from a pile of photos and profiles that the agency had sent her, that she had left lying across her bedroom floor for days. His name was Tom and he was twenty-eight, the same age as Camille. He said he worked in the music business. He had a squarish head with short front-combed dusty-blond hair that seemed to peek over his forehead. Thin eyebrows—plucked, perhaps?—reclined sincerely above blue-grey eyes. His complexion was good; he had tanned and clean skin, if a little red in places. Camille would have been impressed, if she had even the vaguest comprehension of interpersonal sexual attraction or had even the remotest tingling of sensual anticipation. However, she had neither of those things, so she wasn’t impressed in the slightest. This was a man like any other, and all men were essentially interchangeable.

They agreed to meet at Ribeiro’s, an intimate French restaurant close to Archway tube. Tom turned up on time and was surprised to find Camille was already there, sitting at the table with a glass of wine in her hand. He recognised her from the profile and photos instantly of course. She was quite pretty, with a great body. The top she wore really showed it off, as well.

He kissed her cheek and took the seat opposite. Their table was sandwiched between two others, at both of which married couples were seated. This made Tom’s conversation quite stilted at first. He was acutely aware of how first-date-from-an-agency it all seemed. Camille wasn’t helping either. She sat with a constantly hand hovering immediately above her wine glass. When he asked why, she replied: “The last guy I dated from this agency tried to get me with those rape-your-date drugs.” Tom, still playing the role of gentleman feigned shock and concern. He had got it into his mind that the man on the table to his right was amused by him somehow, was laughing at him. This had the unfortunate knock-on effect of causing Tom to ham it up even more when he spoke, particularly when he replied to Camille’s revelation with a hand over his mouth and a gasped, “That’s awful!”

“Quite right,” Camille said. “Awful.”

“Did you tell someone? The agency or the police..?” asked Tom, desperately trying to get his voice under control.

“No point,” shrugged Camille.

“Well,” said Tom. “I can assure you I wouldn’t do anything like that,” said Tom. When Camille didn’t move her hand or reply, he laughed nervously and returned to looking at the menu.

“Do you think French is romantic, then?” Camille asked.

“French what?”

“You know… French.”

“The language?”

“Yeah, the language. And the films and that.”

“Well, it depends. I mean, some—”

“I think it is,” said Camille authoritatively. 

Tom looked at her, unsure quite what to say. “Okay,” was the best he could do. Being a man of some experience with women, he knew something wasn’t right with this one. He excused himself and went to the toilet. There, in secret, he summed up his feelings in a text to his best friend as he made his way back to the table where Camille waited for him, adjusting her cleavage.

The text message read said one word only, and the word was: Nutter.

 

 17. Unfortunate Consequences

 

The text message containing the single word Nutter caused its recipient a lot of trouble that night.

“Who was that, Luke?” his girlfriend asked.

“What?”

“Didn’t you get a text?”

“Oh. Yeah. It was nothing.”

“It was from a woman, wasn’t it?”

“What woman?”

“You tell me.”

“There’s no woman.”

“Why are you always like this now?”

“Like what?”

“So… rude. So short with me all the time.”

“For fuck’s sake, Amanda. Just leave it.”

“That’s your answer to everything: ‘Just leave it, just leave it.’ Why can’t you ever talk things through?”

“There’s nothing to talk about…”

“What was the text?”

“Jesus! Look for yourself: it was Tom!”

“‘Nutter’. What’s that about?”

“He’s on some blind date or—”

“Is he referring to me?”

“What?!”

“What did you say to him to make him call me that?”

“Amanda, shut up. This is ridiculous.”

“Oh, so I’m ridiculous now am I?”

“That’s not what I said. I said this is ridiculous…”

As an unfortunate consequence of Tom’s frustration at being on a date with crazy Camille, Luke and his girlfriend carried on arguing like that for three hours. 

Unlucky them!

 

18. Quiet Time for Valerie

 

A few mornings after the plumber’s last visit, Valerie called him again. “Would you come over please Mr Wall—I mean, Fred. I think there’s another problem with the toilet.”

Fred Wallace explained he was busy.

“I can pay double,” Valerie said, he voice quivering slightly.

Fred declined. He really couldn’t make it today… No, not tomorrow either… Or the next day… Perhaps it might be better for her to find herself a new plumber?

“Oh,” said Valerie. 

She didn’t hang up straight away, but neither had anything more to say. The silence was heavy and on the other end of the line, Fred began to fidget nervously. Finally, he couldn’t bear it anymore and told her that he was sorry, that he really should be getting on but if she wanted he could recommend a colleague.

“No,” Valerie said. “I’ll be okay.”

Fortunately for her, she hadn’t yet sabotaged the toilet. 

Valerie felt very small inside her big kitchen, compared with her large cupboards, oversized family table and expansive window looking out on her garden. So much space, but so little to fill it. Camille was out, again. Beth was coming home from work later and later each day, and increasingly drunk, too. Jim looked himself in his room—they hadn’t spoken since he refused to watch the film with her. And Rowan, well, he hadn’t been home in days. He had told her he was staying at a friend’s house, and she was grateful for that, grateful for the phone call. Would you imagine it? The day had come when she was indebted to her children just for taking he time to telephone once every few days. 

These weren’t the values she brought them up with.

She had her faith for solace, of course. But her faith didn’t talk back, didn’t laugh with her at a joke on the radio, didn’t ask her for sandwiches. Like any mother, Valerie needed to be needed.

She could have talked with Fred, laughed with him, fed him. But he wouldn’t let her and she couldn’t understand why. She knew she wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world, the she wasn’t young and all that went with it anymore, but that didn’t seem to have any bearing. It wasn’t about what Fred saw when he looked at her—his opinion didn’t count at all. What Valerie couldn’t understand was why she couldn’t have him when she so clearly deserved him. Why had he not been given to her? If there was justice, divine balance, that should trump his personal desires and preferences, should it not? He should be drawn to her as if pierced with cupid’s arrow and filled with an irresistible and welcome urge to—what? No, she was getting carried away with herself again. 

Her faith kept her calm, reined her in. She told herself again: His love and warmth was all she needed. He taught her purity, restraint, and most of all, patience.

Focusing on that, on what was important, she found her mind was once again quiet. Silent, in fact, apart from the quiet prayer she repeated: a subtle mantra, meek and small in the corner of her thoughts.

Valerie smiled, meek and small in the corner of her kitchen.

 

19. What Became of Rod and Beth: One Version of Events

 

Beth, the woman that ran over the little flame-haired man called Rod, was on her way home from her bar job in a club near Hampstead when it happened.

The experience of running someone over in a car changes people. Beth was no exception. The experience of being run over by a car changes people too, of course. And Rod was certainly no exception there.

Rod survived the emergency operation. The doctors worked on him for hours, trying to stop the bleeding and so on. Finally, they decided they needed to amputate both legs at the thigh. On a more positive note, they safely removed his tangled penis from the zipper of what remained of his jeans with no risk of long-term damage. Rod had quite a large penis and one of the doctors inappropriately joked that if you held Rod upright above the ground, the part of him nearest the ground would now be his foreskin. Everyone laughed at that. Someone else suggested they could pretend to sword fight with his amputated legs. A nurse rightly pointed out that a man had just lost about forty percent of his body mass, and that was no laughing matter.

The police took CCTV footage from a nearby off licence. It corroborated Beth’s version of events. She certainly wasn’t speeding and Rod was acting wholly irresponsibly; there was no question of charges being pressed. They told her she was free to go, but she said she couldn’t bear to leave until she found out what became of Rod.

It turned out Rod had parents who hadn’t heard from him in ten years or more. They were notified by police when the accident happened as his records were on their database—he had committed a number of petty offences over the years. His parents thought he was dead and, although they were obviously distraught at the news of the accident, they were completely overwhelmed to discover he was alive and came to London at once. 

Beth was in the room when they arrived. The reunion was emotional, everyone cried. Rod’s father paid for him to be moved to a special rehab centre where he could learn to adapt to his new two-limbed life.

Months passed. With his hair cut, beard shaven, body toned for wheeling himself around, Rod emerged from rehab a new man. Beth stayed with him the whole time, and  soon after they began dating. Inspired by his new lease of life, Rod trained hard and eventually tried out for the Paralympics. He went on to marry Beth and represent England internationally.  People called him “Rocket Rod”.

One day Rowan saw him on TV talking about the under representation of people with disabilities in discrimination legislation, but Rod had changed so much he didn’t recognise him at all.

Good for Rod!

 

20. What Became of Rod and Beth: Another Version of Events

 

Beth, the woman that ran over the little flame-haired man called Rod, was on her way home from her bar job in a club near Hampstead when it happened.

The experience of running someone over in a car changes people. Beth was no exception. The experience of being run over by a car changes people too, of course. And Rod was certainly no exception there.

Rod survived the emergency operation. The doctors worked on him for hours, trying to stop the bleeding and so on. Finally, they decided they needed to amputate both legs at the thigh, and his penis. A nurse joked that with the size of his penis, it was hard to tell what was a leg and what wasn’t. Nobody laughed. It wasn’t a laughing matter.

The police took CCTV footage from a nearby off licence. It contradicted Beth’s version of events completely. She was certainly speeding when poor Rod stumbled into the road; there was no doubt that charges would be pressed. She ended up serving two years in prison for dangerous driving.

It turned out Rod had parents who hadn’t heard from him in ten years or more. They were notified by police when the accident happened as his records were on their database—he had committed a number of petty offences over the years. His parents thought he was dead and hearing he was alive was no comfort. He had always been the black sheep of the family. His father wanted nothing more to do with him: “Breathing or not,” he told his wife, “he is dead to me.”

Beth was subject to terrible bullying in prison because of her mild nature. She committed suicide in her cell. Few people attended her funeral, which, because of the circumstances, was quite a dour, unemotional event. Rod didn’t know about it so didn’t even have the opportunity to attend. Besides, he had enough problems of his own. Being on the streets meant he couldn’t be contacted, so he never heard of the compensation to which he was entitled.

Months passed. Rod was in poor shape and the NHS wheelchair he had was hard to control, it veered to the left. He returned to the streets, alone and destitute. He began to literally rot in the chair. People called him “Rusty Rod”.

One day Rowan saw him through a bus window begging for money from passing tourists, but Rod had deteriorated so much he didn’t recognise him at all.

Poor Rod!

 

21. The Laws of Probability According to Jim Barrett

 

It had been so long since Jim had been out of his room or opened his curtains that his skin had become almost transparent. He just sat there in the dark, rolling dice. 

When Jim first became interested in the fallacy of popular maths, one of the first places he turned was to Chaos Theory, which he believed for a while would have the answers he sought. It did not.

But one of the ideas that stuck with him was that a seemingly straightforward, regular system can suddenly and unexpectedly go haywire.

Jim felt that this was evidently so, not least as a description of life itself. He cited the human heart as an example. It beats every day a number of times—100,000 on one day; 95,000 the next; 110,000 the day after. The probability of it beating a certain number of times on ay future day can be calculated reasonably accurately if enough data is available on past days. But then one day, the beat count will become zero. And for every day after that to all eternity, zero.

A seemingly straightforward, regular system, suddenly going haywire; in this case, becoming static at zero. And this principle, believed Jim, applied to all things.

He believed if he rolled his dice enough times, eventually he begin rolling the same number over and over, and he would roll that number forever. Popular Mathematical probability would simply give up trying to apply itself.

That was Law 1 of Jim’s Laws of probability, then: 

 

There is an ‘elastic limit’ to task repetitions, beyond which mathematical probability ceases to apply.

 

The other thing Jim had been obsessing over was the lottery. He had a detailed theory about the numbers that come up. 

Law 1 would apply at some point, of course: eventually the same numbers would come up week in, week out. But in the meantime he didn’t believe for a moment that the odds of winning were fourteen million to one, as calculated by popular mathematics. It was nonsense.

It was nonsense because there were a vast array of ball combinations that everyone knows will never come up. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, for instance. That was a priori knowledge: people didn’t need to be told that, they just knew. It would be considered ironic by most people, to place that bet. If someone were bet on those a friend would invariably say, “Don’t be silly, what are the odds of those coming up?” And the friend would be right: only if chance was making a joke would those numbers appear. And chance doesn’t make jokes. Chance has no sense of humour.

The likelihood of numbers coming up was directly affected by the strength of the numerical pattern. There was a definite heirarchy. For example:

Any six consecutive numbers were highly unlikely. 

Slightly less unlikely were combinations such as 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12.

Slightly less unlikely still were combinations such as 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32.

More likely, but still unlikely, were more unusual mathematical patterns like the Fibonacci sequence or some kind of logarithmic spiral. 

Once all of these possible combinations are discounted, the odds of winning the lottery, was somewhere around a million to one. Not bad.

Law 2 of Jim’s Laws of probability, then: 

 

Probability is incapable of generating ironic results.

 

Jim had his two laws scribbled on a piece of paper that he’d taped to the wall above his desk, where he sat, rolling dice in the near perfect dark.

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