‘What about you? What do you want to be when—’
‘When I grow up?’
‘When you’re older,’ he said, his face flushing a little.
‘I don’t know yet,’ replied Achilles. ‘With my background, it’s not easy to have ambitions. I might end up working in food.’
‘A chef?’
‘No, McDonald’s.’
‘I’m sure you can aim higher than that.’
‘Nothing wrong with Maccy D’s. We can’t all be rich,’ he added, lowering his head and allowing his hair to fall over his eyes as he gave his best impression of a Dickensian urchin before reaching across to take the man’s hand in his own. Jeremy leapt up, as if he’d been touched by an electric cattle prod.
‘I’m just going to run to the loo,’ he said. ‘And then I’ll get another drink in, if you like? Rum and Coke again, or something different?’
‘Surprise me,’ said Achilles.
Jeremy stepped away from the table, descending the stairs in the direction of the toilets. The moment he was of sight, Achilles reached forward and put his hand in the inside pockets of the man’s coat, taking out his wallet, but it wasn’t money he was after. He flicked through it quickly and found what he wanted. A business card.
Jeremy Arlo
it said.
Arlo, Quill, Fitzgerald & Connolly
Solicitors-at-Law
1 Temple Chambers
London WC2
Interesting, he thought as he glanced back up at the television screen, where his father was shaking hands with Mick Jagger and wrapping up his show. What have you been doing that you shouldn’t, Daddy?
Part 2
* * *
21 March 2006
It’s the Cleverley family’s last morning in Dublin – George has been recording a special St Patrick’s Day edition of Cleverley in the RTÉ studios in Donnybrook – and they’re wandering around the Princess Grace suite of the Shelbourne Hotel, finishing their packing. Beverley has been quiet recently, filled with anxiety at the notion of being pregnant again. She loves her children with all her heart, but the idea of adding a fourth to their brood is too much for her, particularly since she’d almost died giving birth to Achilles.
She hasn’t said a word to George about being late, but she knows that he’s guessed something isn’t right as he’s been particularly solicitous of her since their arrival in the city. Beverley watches him now, checking his passport is in his hand luggage, and smiles. He’s a kind man and theirs is a good marriage.
Sensing that he’s being watched, he turns around.
‘What?’ he asks.
She shakes her head. ‘It’s nothing,’ she says.
He puts his bag down and comes towards her.
‘It’s not nothing,’ he tells her. ‘You’ve been acting very strangely since we got here. What’s going on?’
Beverley bites her lip. She can hear the children arguing in the next room and knows that this isn’t the time to broach the subject but, without warning, tears come to her eyes and start streaming down her cheeks.
‘Good Lord, Beverley,’ says George, stepping back a little. ‘What’s wrong? What’s happening?’
There’s no way around it other than just saying the words.
‘I think I might be pregnant,’ she tells him. ‘Again.’
He remains silent, a deep sense of worry building at the pit of his stomach. He can still feel the horrible distress he’d experienced two years earlier, on the night Achilles was born, when he thought that he might lose her.
‘No,’ he says.
She nods and the tears fall even more. Both of them know what this might mean. The consequences. The decisions that will have to be made. He wraps his arms around her.
‘I can’t …’ she begins, the words growing muffled as she buries her face in his chest.
‘I know,’ he says, feeling his own eyes begin to grow damp. ‘But if you are, then you are. And we will deal with it.’ He hesitates. He knows what he wants to say, what he needs to say, but isn’t sure whether it’s too soon to express such an idea. ‘I can’t lose you, Beverley. I won’t even run the risk.’
She smiles at him, overwhelmed with love. He is such a good husband. Kind and understanding. She places a hand to her stomach, protective and fearful at the same time.
And at that precise moment, in San Francisco, a twenty-nine-year-old man named Jack Dorsey, having finished creating the operating system and website, tweets this:
@jack: “just setting up my twttr”
Tuesday
AIDAN DOESN’T EXIST
George Cleverley had had so many dealings with the firm of Arlo, Quill, Fitzgerald & Connolly over the years that he’d come to loathe the place. Even stepping out of the lift on to the third floor, where his solicitor’s office was located, gave him a nauseous feeling in the pit of his stomach, comparable only to the smell of chlorine, which took him back to the humiliating swimming lessons of his childhood.
And then there were all the accoutrements that came with such an expensive firm, each one designed to project the idea that you were relaxing in the lobby of a luxury hotel and not seeking help for a legal problem that was, most likely, going to bring extraordinary levels of stress crashing down upon your head. The sound of pan-pipe music, for example, delivering a bilious version of Abba’s ‘Money, Money, Money’. The ironic eighties sweets gathered in a bowl on the receptionist’s desk. The incongruous framed picture of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway being riddled with gunfire in the closing scenes of Bonnie & Clyde.
He glanced over at the young woman seated behind the reception desk, tapping away at her computer. He hadn’t met her before and was impressed by how she was resisting the urge to ask for a selfie. Office protocol, he expected. Drumming his fingers on the side of his chair, he sighed dramatically and waited for her to initiate a conversation. When she didn’t, he felt that he would pass out with boredom if he didn’t say something, so he cleared his throat as he turned in her direction.
‘No Aidan today?’ he asked.
‘I’m sorry?’ replied the woman, looking up.
‘I said, no Aidan today? The male receptionist. Is there a specific word for a male receptionist?’
‘Yes,’ said the woman.
‘Are you going to tell me what it is?’
‘It’s receptionist,’ she replied.
‘I see. Got it.’ He remained silent for a few moments, aware that he had been chastised, then slapped his left hand with his right, hoping to make her smile. Not even an acknowledgement. There was a time when the ladies loved this type of playful behaviour, but not any more. Only last week, he’d held a door open for a young female intern and she’d practically taken his head off for it, telling him that she was perfectly capable of gaining ingress into and egress from the office without the assistance of a man.
‘It’s strange, isn’t it,’ he mused aloud, ‘how the words for some occupations define the gender of the employee, while others don’t? Waiter and waitress, for example. Actor and actress. Tailor and dressmaker. Each one tells us whether it’s a man or a woman performing the job. But then there are others, like engineer or doctor or teacher, which tell us nothing at all. I wonder why that is.’