‘But Gran, it’s not… you won’t ever…’

‘Lemme tell you someting. I’m not like dem Witnesses jus’ scared of dyin’. Jus’ scared. Dem wan’ everybody to die excep’ dem. Dat’s not a reason to dedicate your life to Jesus Christ. I gat very different aims. I still hope to be one of de Anointed evan if I am a woman. I want it all my life. I want to be dere wid de Lord making de laws and de decisions.’ Hortense sucked her teeth long and loud. ‘I gat so tired wid de church always tellin’ me I’m a woman or I’m nat heducated enough. Everybody always tryin’ to heducate you; heducate you about dis, heducate you about dat… Dat’s always bin de problem wid de women in dis family. Somebody always tryin’ to heducate them about someting, pretendin’ it all about learnin’ when it all about a battle of de wills. But if I were one of de hundred an’ forty-four, no one gwan try to heducate me. Dat would be my job! I’d make my own laws an’ I wouldn’t be wanting anybody else’s opinions. My mudder was strong-willed deep down, and I’m de same. Lord knows, your mudder was de same. And you de same.’

‘Tell me about Ambrosia,’ said Irie, spotting a chink in Hortense’s armour that one might squeeze through. ‘Please.’

But Hortense remained solid. ‘You know enough already. De past is done wid. Nobody learn nuttin’ from it. Top of page five please – I tink dat’s where we were.’

At that moment Ryan returned to the room, face redder than ever.

‘What, Mr Topps? Is it? Do you know?’

‘God help the heathen, Mrs B., for the day is indeed at hand! It is as the Lord laid out clearly in his book of Revelation. He never intended a third millennium. Now I’ll need that article typed up, and then another one that I’ll dictate to you off the cuff – you’ll need to telephone all the Lambeth members, and leaflet the-’

‘Oh, yes, Mr Topps – but jus’ let me tyake it in jus’ a minute… It couldn’t be any udder date, could it, Mr Topps? I tol’ you I felt it in my bones.’

‘I’m not sure as to how much your bones had to do wiv it, Mrs B. Surely more credit is due to the thorough scriptural study done by myself and my colleagues-’

‘And God, presumably,’ said Irie, cutting him a sharp glare, going over to hold Hortense, who was shaking with sobs. Hortense kissed Irie on both cheeks and Irie smiled at the hot wetness.

‘Oh, Irie Ambrosia. I’m so glad you’re here to share dis. I live dis century – I came into dis world in an eart-quake at de very beginning and I shall see the hevil and sinful pollution be herased in a mighty rumbling eart-quake once more. Praise de Lord! It is as he promised after all. I knew I’d make it. I got jus’ seven years to wait. Ninety-two!’ Hortense sucked her teeth contemptuously. ‘Cho! My grandmudder live to see one hundered-and-tree an de woman could skip rope till de day she keel over and drop col’. Me gwan make it. I make it dis far. My mudder suffer to get me here – but she knew de true church and she make heffort to push me out in de mos’ difficult circumstances so I could live to see that glory day.’

‘Amen!’

‘Oh, hamen, Mr Topps. Put on de complete suit of armour of God! Now, Irie Ambrosia, witness me as I say it: I’m gwan be dere. An’ I’m gwan to be in Jamaica to see it. I’m going home that year of our Lord. An’ you can come dere too if you learn from me and listen. You wan come Jamaica in de year two thousand?’

Irie let out a little scream and rushed to give her grandmother another hug.

Hortense wiped her tears with her apron. ‘Lord Jesus, I live dis century! Well and truly I live dis terrible century wid all its troubles and vexations. And tanks to you, Lord, I’m gwan a feel a rumble at both ends.’

‘Excuse me, you’re not going to smoke that, are you?’

Marcus closed his eyes. He hated the construction. He always wanted to reply with equal grammatical perversity: Yes, I’m not going to smoke that. No, I am going to smoke that.

‘Excuse me, I said you’re-’

‘Yes, I heard you the first time,’ said Marcus softly, turning to his right to see the speaker with whom he shared a single arm-rest, each two chairs being assigned only one between them in the long line of moulded plastic. ‘Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?’

Irritation vanished at the sight of his interlocutor: a slim, pretty Asian girl, with an alluring gap between her front teeth, army trousers and a high ponytail, who was holding in her lap (of all things!) a copy of his collaborative pop science book of last spring (with the novelist Surrey T. Banks), Time Bombs and Body Clocks: Adventures in Our Genetic Future.

‘Yes, there’s a reason, arsehole. You can’t smoke in Heathrow. Not in this bit of it. And you certainly can’t smoke a fucking pipe. And these chairs are welded to each other and I’ve got asthma. Enough reasons?’

Marcus shrugged amiably. ‘Yes, more than. Good book?’

This was a new experience for Marcus. Meeting one of his readers. Meeting one of his readers in the waiting lounge of an airport. He had been a writer of academic texts all his life, texts whose audience was tiny and select, whose members he more often than not knew personally. He had never sent his work off into the world like a party-popper, unsure where the different strands would land.

‘Pardon?’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t smoke if you don’t want me to. I was just wondering, is it a good book?’

The girl screwed up her face, which was not as pretty as Marcus had first thought, the jawline a tad too severe. She closed the book (she was halfway through) and looked at its cover as if she had forgotten which book it was.

‘Oh, it’s all right, I suppose. Bit bloody weird. Bit of a headfuck.’

Marcus frowned. The book had been his agent’s idea: a split-level high/low culture book, whereby Marcus wrote a ‘hard science’ chapter on one particular development in genetics and then the novelist wrote a twin chapter exploring these ideas from a futuristic, fictional, what-if-this-led-to-this point of view, and so on for eight chapters each. Marcus had university-bound sons plus Magid’s law schooling to think about, and he had agreed to the project for pecuniary reasons. To that end, the book had not been the hit that was hoped for or required, and Marcus, when he thought of it at all, thought it was a failure. But weird? A headfuck?

‘Umm, in what way weird?’

The girl looked suddenly suspicious. ‘What is this? An interrogation?’

Marcus shrank back a little. His Chalfenist confidence was always less evident when he strayed abroad, away from the bosom of his family. He was a direct man who saw no point in asking anything other than the direct questions, but in recent years he had become aware that this directness did not always garner direct answers from strangers, as it did in his own small circle. In the outside world, outside of his college and home, one had to add things to speech. Particularly if one was somewhat strange-looking, as Marcus gathered he was; if one was a little old, with eccentric curly hair and spectacles missing their lower rims. You had to add things to your speech to make it more palatable. Niceties, throwaway phrases, pleases and thank yous.