‘Now, when you say we,’ replied George, ‘are you referring to yourself as a non-binary identity or to you and my daughter?’
‘To both of us.’
‘To both of who?’
‘To Elizabeth and us.’
‘Ah, good. I’m not trying to be difficult, you understand. It’s just that it makes it very confusing. If you’re a plural, how is someone to know when you’re referring to yourself alone and when you’re referring to yourself in company with others?’
‘Context will probably be all.’
‘Ah, context. I see. Good to know.’
‘The point is, we’re hoping to go there quite soon.’
‘I must admit, I’ve never actually been to Indonesia,’ declared Beverley, looking up at the ceiling. ‘But I have a friend who went there a couple of years ago – I think she stayed in the Bulgari Resort – and she raved about it. I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time. How long will you be gone? No need to rush back.’
‘We won’t be staying in the Bulgari Resort, Mother,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We’re going to a leper colony.’
Another brief silence before George and Beverley turned to each other and burst out laughing. They laughed for a long time, tears streaming down their cheeks, and when they had finally finished, George remarked on how much he’d needed that.
‘It’s been a rotten couple of days,’ he added.
‘It’s not a joke,’ said Wilkes. ‘We really are going to a leper colony.’
‘But there are no leper colonies any more,’ said Beverley, looking utterly bewildered. ‘And even if there were, why on earth—’
‘There’s a few.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘It’s true. And they need our help.’
‘Again,’ said George, ‘when you say our—’
‘I mean Elizabeth’s and our help.’
Beverley turned to her daughter, looking at her as if she couldn’t quite understand what was going on.
‘Wilkes wants us to go,’ said Elizabeth, hoping that something in her tone might make her parents realize that she was hoping they would forbid it, a prohibition that, in normal circumstances, she would not tolerate but which, on this occasion, would prove perfectly acceptable.
‘But why?’ asked George.
‘Because if we don’t help them, then who will?’ asked Wilkes.
‘Other people?’ suggested Beverley. ‘The Red Cross? Judah Ben-Hur?’
‘It’s out of the question,’ said George. ‘You’re not dragging our daughter halfway around the world so she can catch leprosy. What would happen when she came back? I can’t imagine the NHS have a lot of experience with that sort of thing, even if we didn’t go private.’
‘It’s important to us,’ insisted Wilkes.
‘Again—’
‘To us! To Elizabeth and me. Us. We. What is the point of life if we don’t do everything we can to help other people, people in need, people in depressed areas—’
‘Like Glasgow?’ asked George.
‘And then share all our work on social media. Do you know how many new followers we get every time we help out at the soup kitchen?’
‘But what does that matter?’
‘Oh my God,’ said Elizabeth, looking at her father as if he’d just sprouted horns. ‘It matters enormously. A few weeks ago, I took a selfie with a homeless man eating a ham sandwich and I got over a thousand likes.’
‘People are that interested in seeing pictures of a homeless man eating a ham sandwich?’ asked George, dumbfounded.
‘Well, no, I was the one eating the ham sandwich,’ said Elizabeth. ‘He was just in the frame. Although he did look a little hungry, now that you mention it.’
‘And how long would you intend on staying in this oasis of tranquillity?’ asked Beverley. ‘A week? A month? All the way to monsoon season?’
‘As long as they need us,’ said Wilkes.
‘You’ll fit in very well with the whole not-washing thing,’ remarked George. ‘And just for the record, I was using the word you in the plural form there, not the singular. You and your many personalities will all fit in very well.’
‘Wilkes,’ said Beverley in a calm voice, as if she was trying to reason with a four-year-old. ‘Let me ask you a question. In the unlikely event that a woman allowed you to impregnate her, and then you inflicted a daughter upon the world, would you agree to letting someone you barely knew take her to a leper colony? Is that the kind of parent you would be?’
‘We’d like to think that we would, yes.’
‘And you don’t think that Social Services would have anything to say about it?’
He frowned again, as if his brain, such as it was, was going into overdrive.
‘We can’t deal with hypotheticals,’ he said eventually. ‘We don’t have a daughter so we can’t answer that.’
‘Well, do you have a sister?’
‘We did,’ he replied in a sorrowful tone, looking down at the carpet.
‘You did?’
‘When we were growing up, yes,’ he said. ‘But not any more.’
‘Oh shit,’ said George, looking momentarily humbled.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Beverley. ‘Did she … did she die? Oh, I’m sorry, Wilkes. That was insensitive of me. I didn’t know. Elizabeth never said.’
‘No, she didn’t die,’ replied Wilkes, shaking his head.
‘Then what happened to her?’
‘She got cancelled,’ said Elizabeth.
Beverley blinked. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I said, she got cancelled.’
‘I heard what you said. It just didn’t seem to be a collection of words that, placed together in an otherwise reasonable sequence, made any sense.’
‘Our sister was cancelled late last year,’ explained Wilkes. ‘So, naturally, we haven’t spoken since. It’s sad, but there’s really nothing we can do about it.’
‘Your sister was cancelled,’ said George, trying out the phrase on his tongue. ‘I’m sorry, but is she a television programme, perhaps? Or a train timetable? A subscription service of some kind?’
‘No, she’s a human being. Well, she was.’
‘And how does one go about cancelling a human being, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘Well, what happened was, late last year Frances tweeted something about Greta Thunberg that caused a bit of an uproar.’
‘The little Swedish girl?’ asked Beverley. ‘I don’t know why, but she gives me the heebie-jeebies.’
‘Frances tweeted that she thought Greta should be in school completing her education,’ explained Elizabeth. ‘Not travelling around the world shouting at grown-ups. And that was that.’
‘That was what?’
‘That was how she got cancelled,’ said Wilkes.
‘But I still don’t—’
‘Oh, Mother,’ said Elizabeth, throwing her hands in the air. ‘It means that she lost all her followers, no one talks to her any more and she’s considered a pariah. Like, in your day, when someone was sent to Coventry. Her friends have all abandoned her and she’s not welcome in polite society. Like Harvey Weinstein, say. Or members of the European Research Group.’