The book of other people - By Zadie Smith Page 0,3

hadn’t put the window key back where it lives, so I couldn’t air the place. I began a round of pelvic-floor exercises. Somewhere nearby, a car alarm was going on and on and on and on and on and on, like an incurable migraine. God, I despise people who can’t set their car alarms properly. I despise Fancy-Piece’s pleased-to-see-you smile. I despise liver cooked in cream.

Where the hell was everyone?

‘June, where the hell is everyone?’

‘Who is this and where the hell is who?’

What sort of actress doesn’t know her whos from her whoms?

‘Judith, of course. Doesn’t your mobile tell you who’s calling? Didn’t have you down as a technophobe, June. Let me show you how. Then you’ll always know who’s trying to reach you.’

‘I know perfectly well how to do it, thank you, Judith. Your number isn’t programmed in, for some bizarre reason.’

‘Well, I’m here at the theatre and not a soul has shown up for the meeting, and if people think they can put on a musical worthy of the name with this level of commitment, they - ’

‘The meeting was yesterday.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The meeting was yesterday.’

‘Since when were Phantom meetings held on a Thursday?’

‘Since last meeting. Nadine couldn’t make it this Friday, so Janice switched it to Thursday. Don’t you remember?’

‘No wonder people get muddled, if days get swapped around at the drop of a - ’

‘Nobody else managed to get muddled, Judith.’

If June Nolan weren’t such a Lady Muck - Terry’s a big nob at the cider factory in Hereford better known for an outbreak of Legionnaires’ Disease than for cider - I’d never have let it slip. ‘Well, I am a tad distracted. My lover has died. It’s rather thrown me for a loop, I confess.’

‘Oh.’ That made Lady Muck change her tune. ‘How . . . did it happen, Judith? Were you very close?’

‘A hit-and-run. The police are still hunting the killer. Oh, I’m not sure if anyone could understand how close Olly and I were. It was beyond closeness. We were one, June. One. I shall never be whole again.’

When June Nolan finally let me go, Muggins here cleaned up the needlessly made tray of coffees, locked up my theatre and headed back towards the clinic car-park. That car alarm was still blaring. Outside the clinic stood a young family, which sounds sweet, but this one made my heart sink. She was about sixteen, fat, dressed like a sporty tramp, and holding a newborn baby in one hand and a giant sausage roll in the other. He looked about eleven, had a lip stud, a rice-pudding complexion, and that hairstyle where strands drip over the criminal forehead. He was a two-thirds scale model of one of those English yobs you see littering European street cafés since budget air-travel came to the masses. Right outside the clinic, right next to his own baby, this boy-father was smoking. Had it been any other morning I might have passed by, but the universe, via Leo, had just sent me a message about the fragility of life.

‘How dare you smoke near that baby!’

The boy-father looked at me with dead eyes.

‘Haven’t you heard of lung cancer?’

Instead of yelling abuse, he inhaled, bent over his baby and blew out cigarette smoke straight into the poor moppet’s face.

Is that family the future of Great Britain?

Yes? Then perhaps eugenics is due a rethink.

A care home spies on the clinic car-park. Yvonne, an aromatherapist I was briefly friendly with, told me that on average its inmates last only eighteen months. The elderly wilt when transplanted. Queen Elizabeth opened this very building a few years ago. I made sure I got to shake the royal hand. She’s smiling at me, in our photograph. Thankful for my assurance that not all her loyal subjects think she organized poor Diana’s assassination. Mind you, I’d put nothing past that Duke of Edinburgh. Told her that, too. A subject has a duty to tell her monarch what’s what.

A janitor-type was peering into my Saab with a knotted-up face.

I realized the offending alarm was, in fact, mine.

With a crisp ‘Excuse me’, I nudged him to one side.

The janitor reared his bulk at me. ‘Is this your car?’

Without responding, I unlocked my car and disabled the alarm.

‘Is this’ - in the sudden silence he was shouting - ‘is this your car?’

‘Do I look like a joy-rider?’

‘Thirty minutes, this sodding alarm’s been going. Nobody over there’ - he gestured at the care home’s windows, each framing a pale wispy face