I've Got Your Number (12 page)

The fact is, I feel a total affinity for Vivien. I’d be freaked out by being on Radio 4 too. All the presenters sound like Antony and Wanda.

There’s another silence, so long that I wonder if Sam’s still there.

“You might have something,” Sam says at last. “You might just have something.”

“It’s only an idea.” I backtrack instantly. “I mean, I’m probably wrong.”

“But why wouldn’t she
say
this to me?”

“Maybe she’s embarrassed.” I shrug. “Maybe she thinks she’s already made the point and you’re not going to do anything about it. Maybe she thinks it’s just easier to move jobs.”

“OK.” Sam exhales. “Thank you. I’m going to pursue this. I’m very glad I rang you, and I’m sorry I disturbed your evening.”

“No problem.” I hunch my shoulders gloomily and scoop up some more cake crumbs. “To be honest, I’m glad to escape.”

“That good, huh?” He sounds amused. “How did the bandage go down?”

“Believe me, the bandage is the least of my problems.”

“What’s up?”

I lower my voice, glancing at the door. “We’re playing Scrabble. It’s a nightmare.”

“Scrabble?” He sounds surprised. “Scrabble’s great.”

“Not when you’re playing with a family of geniuses, it’s not. They all put words like
iridiums
. And I put
pig
.”

Sam bursts into laughter.

“Glad it’s so funny,” I say morosely.

“OK, come on.” He stops laughing. “I owe you one. Tell me your letters. I’ll give you a good word.”

“I can’t remember them!” I roll my eyes. “I’m in the kitchen.”

“You must remember some. Try.”

“All right. I have a
W
. And a
Z
.” This conversation is so bizarre that I can’t help giving a little giggle.

“Go and look at the rest. Text them over. I’ll give you a word.”

“I thought you were at a seminar.”

“I can be at a seminar and play Scrabble at the same time.”

Is he serious? This is the most ridiculous, far-fetched idea I’ve ever heard.

Plus, it would be cheating.

Plus, who says he’s any good at Scrabble?

“OK,” I say after a few moments. “You’re on.”

I ring off and head back into the drawing room, where the board has spawned another load of impossible words. Someone has put down
UG
. Is that English? It sounds like Eskimo.

“All right, Poppy?” says Wanda, in such bright, artificial tones that I instantly know they’ve been talking about me. They’ve probably told Magnus that if he marries me they’ll cut him off without a penny or something.

“Fine!” I try to sound cheerful. “That was a patient on the phone,” I add, crossing my fingers behind my back. “Sometimes I do online consultation, so I might have to send a text, if you don’t mind?”

No one even replies. They’re all hunched over their tiles again.

I line my phone up so the screen takes in the board and my rack of tiles. Then I press the photo button.

“Just taking a family snap!” I say quickly as the faces rise in response to the flash. I’m already sending the photo over to Sam.

“It’s your turn, Poppy,” says Magnus. “Would you like some help, darling?” he adds in an undertone.

I know he’s trying to be kind. But there’s something about the way he says it that stings me.

“It’s OK, thanks. I’ll be fine.” I start moving the tiles back and forth on my rack, trying to look confident.

After a minute or two I glance down at my phone, in case a text has somehow arrived silently—but there’s nothing.

Everyone else is concentrating on their tiles or on the board. The atmosphere is hushed and intense, like an exam room. I shift my tiles around more and more briskly, willing some stupendous word to pop out at me. But no matter what I do, it’s a fairly crap situation. I could make
RAW
. Or
WAR
.

And still my phone is silent. Sam must have been joking about helping me. Of
course
he was joking. I feel a wave of humiliation. What’s he going to think, when a picture of a Scrabble board arrives on his phone?

“Any ideas yet, Poppy?” Wanda says in encouraging tones, as though I’m a subnormal child. I suddenly wonder if, while I was in the kitchen, Magnus told his parents to be nice to me.

“Just deciding between options.” I attempt a cheerful smile.

OK. I have to do this. I can’t put it off any longer. I’ll make
RAW
.

No,
WAR
.

Oh, what’s the difference?

My heart low, I put the
A
and
W
down on the board—as my phone bleeps with a text.

WHAIZLED. Use the D from OUTSTEPPED. Triple word score, plus 50-point bonus.

Oh my God.

I can’t help giving a laugh, and Antony shoots me an odd look.

“Sorry,” I say quickly. “Just … my patient making a joke.” My phone bleeps again.

It’s Scottish dialect, btw. Used by Robert Burns.

“So, is that your word, Poppy?” Antony is peering at my pathetic offering. “
Raw?
Jolly good. Well done!”

His heartiness is painful.

“Sorry,” I say quickly. “My mistake. On second thought, I think I’ll do
this
word instead.”

Carefully, I lay down
WHAIZLED
on the board and sit back, looking nonchalant.

There’s an astounded silence.

“Poppy, sweets,” says Magnus at last. “It has to be a
genuine
word, you know. You can’t make one up—”

“Oh, don’t you know that word?” I adopt a tone of surprise. “Sorry. I thought it was fairly common knowledge.”

“
Whay-zled?
” ventures Wanda dubiously. “
Why-zled?
How do you pronounce it, exactly?”

Oh God. I have no bloody idea.

“It … er … depends on the region. It’s traditional Scottish dialect, of course,” I add with a knowledgeable air, as though I’m Stephen Fry.
⁴²
“Used by Robert Burns. I was watching a documentary about him the other night. He’s rather a passion of mine, in fact.”

“I didn’t know you were interested in Burns.” Magnus looks taken aback.

“Oh yes,” I say as convincingly as possible. “Always have been.”

“
Which
poem does
whaizled
come from?” Wanda persists.

“It’s …” I swallow hard. “It’s actually rather a beautiful poem. I can’t remember the title now, but it goes something like …”

I hesitate, trying to think what Burns’s poetry sounds like. I heard some once at a Hogmanay party, not that I could understand a word of it.

” ‘
Twas whaizled … when the wully whaizle … wailed
. And so on!” I break off brightly. “I won’t bore you.”

Antony raises his head from the N-Z volume of the dictionary, which he instantly picked up when I laid my tiles down and has been flicking through.

“Quite right.” He seems a bit flummoxed. “
Whaizled
. Scottish dialect for
wheezed
. Well, well. Very impressive.”

“Bravo, Poppy.” Wanda is totting up. “So, that’s a triple word score, plus your fifty-point bonus … so that’s … one hundred and thirty-one points! The highest score so far!”

“One hundred and thirty-one?” Antony grabs her paper. “Are you sure?”

“Congratulations, Poppy!” Felix leans over to shake my hand.

“It was nothing, really.” I beam modestly around. “Shall we keep going?”

³⁵
I finally winkled this out of him on the phone at lunchtime.

³⁶
Magnus says Wanda has never sunbathed in her life, and she thinks people who go on holiday in order to lie on beds must be mentally deficient. That’ll be me, then.

³⁷
“Study of Continuous Passive Motion Following Total Knee Arthroplasty.” I’ve still got it, in its plastic folder.

³⁸
She didn’t say exactly where it was questing
to
.

³⁹
Although I am rather good at footnotes. They could put me in charge of those.

⁴⁰
No idea what most of these words mean.

⁴¹
Which apparently
is
a word. Silly me.

⁴²
Stephen Fry off
QI
, I mean. Not
Jeeves and Wooster
. Although Jeeves probably knew a fair bit about Burns’s poetry too.

I
won! I won the Scrabble game!

Everyone was gobsmacked. They pretended not to be—but they were. The raised eyebrows and astonished glances became more frequent and less guarded as the game went on. When I got that triple word score with
saxatile
, Felix actually broke out into applause and said, “Bravo!” And as we were tidying the kitchen afterward, Wanda asked me if I’d ever thought of studying linguistics.

My name was entered in the family Scrabble book, Antony offered me the “winner’s glass of port,” and everyone clapped. It was such a sweet moment.

OK. I know it was cheating. I know it was a bad thing to do. To be honest, I kept expecting someone to catch me
out. But I put the ring tone on
silent
and no one realized I was texting Sam all the way through.
⁴³

And, yes, of
course
I feel guilty. Halfway through, I felt even worse when I texted Sam in admiration,
How do you know all these words?
and he replied,
I don’t. The Internet does
.

The
Internet
?

For a moment I felt too shocked to reply. I thought he was
thinking
of the words, not finding them on Scrabble words.com or whatever.

That’s CHEATING!!!!
I typed.

You already crossed that line
, he texted back.
What’s the difference?
And then he added,
Flattered you thought I was a genius
.

Then, of course, I felt really stupid.

And he had a point. Once you’ve started cheating, does it matter what your methods are?

I know I’m storing up problems for the future. I know Sam Roxton won’t always be on the end of my phone to feed me words. I know I couldn’t possibly repeat the feat. Which is why I’m planning to retire from family Scrabble, as of tomorrow. It was a short, brilliant career. And now it’s over.

The only person who wasn’t entirely fulsome in his praise was Magnus, which was a bit surprising. I mean, he said, “Well done,” along with everyone else—but he didn’t give me a special hug or even ask me how come I knew all those words. And when Wanda said, “Magnus, you didn’t
tell us Poppy was so talented!” he flashed her this quick smile and said, “I told you, Poppy’s brilliant at everything.” Which was nice—but kind of meaningless too.

The thing is … he came in second.

He can’t be
jealous
of me, surely?

It’s about eleven now, and we’re back in my flat. I’m half-tempted to go and talk to Magnus about it, but he’s disappeared off to do some preparation for a lecture on Symbols and Symbolic Thought in Dante
⁴⁴
which he’s giving tomorrow. So instead I curl up on the sofa and forward some emails which came in earlier for Sam.

After a few I can’t help clicking my tongue with frustration. Half these emails are reminders and chasers. He still hasn’t replied about the conference accommodation at Chiddingford Hotel, or the Fun Run, or the dentist.
Or
the new James & James bespoke suit waiting for him to pick up at his convenience. How can you ignore new clothes?

There are only a few people he ever seems to reply to immediately. One is a girl called Vicks, who runs the PR department. She’s very businesslike and curt, just like him, and has been consulting him about some press launch they’re doing together. She often cc’s Violet’s address, but by the time I forward the email, Sam’s already replied to her. Another is a guy called Malcolm, who asks Sam’s opinion about something nearly every hour. And, of course, Sir Nicholas Murray, who’s clearly very senior and important and is doing some work for the government at the
moment.
⁴⁵
He and Sam get on incredibly well, if their emails are anything to go by. They zing back and forth like conversation between old friends. I can’t really understand half of what they’re saying—especially all the in-jokes—but the tone is obvious, and so is the fact that Sam has more emails to and from Sir Nicholas than anybody else.