The roads were already jammed with morning traffic as Eve returned to her apartment to pack. She tried to focus on something other than the purpleness by mentally filling her suitcase as she walked: homeland summers are greyer, and wetter, she reminded herself, picturing a rain mac, an umbrella, an assortment of jumpers. On the wide sidewalk, a group of young men strutted towards her, city peacocks with bare, tanned torsos, sweat-drenched t-shirts tied around their waists. They ribbed a skinny one about not yet being topless – ‘Mikey, you hot over there?’ – and as he pulled up his vest, about to slip it over his head, immediately Eve’s thoughts shifted from toothbrushes and brollies to the photo of the purple men. In the office she’d stared at the snap, closer and closer until the Portal’s pixels swam before her. She’d zoomed in on the stormy skin, wanted to reach in and touch it, to see if it could be real. Theo Fletcher is quite the magician, she mused, imagining the prime minister white-gloved and top-hatted, then, with a flourish, tapping a wand and tipping his hat to reveal… a little lilac bunny.
The lights at the pedestrian crossing had changed, and Eve re-routed herself to the shadier side of the street. The baking, Big Apple heat would do that; make you zig zag back and forth, creating a longer, marginally cooler journey. She realised that with this detour, she was about to pass the office of dermatologist, and former fling, Dr Jake Spiretti. Things between them hadn’t ended so well, but given his area of professional expertise, she figured today could be a good day to say hello.
Eve rang the bell and was buzzed into the building.
A bright-eyed, blemish-free receptionist looked up expectantly as Eve entered the waiting room.
‘Hi, can I help you?’
‘Hello. I don’t have an appointment, but I’m a friend of Dr Spiretti’s, and, well, I wouldn’t usually stop by like this, but I wondered if he might be available for a quick word.’
The receptionist’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly as if she was calculating whether Eve was actually a friend of the doctor’s, which would determine what level of politeness was required.
‘He’s very busy.’
‘Of course, I appreciate that.’
‘And he’s actually not here right now.’
‘Ah,’ said Eve, wondering how long she could wait. She glanced at the wall, at a poster identifying friendly versus not so friendly moles. She imagined the peachy skin in these pictures purpled.
‘Perhaps you can make an appointment? Or speak outside of office hours?’
‘I’m going to be away. I’ve got a flight this evening, so…’
The receptionist said nothing, but some seconds into the wall of silence, her gaze shifted just past Eve, with a sense of battle-lost disappointment.
‘Hey, Samantha,’ said Dr Jake Spiretti.
Eve turned.
‘Oh! And hey there, Eve.’
‘Hello, Jake.’
‘This is a surprise.’
‘I know. Sorry to drop in like this. It’s been a while, but… I was just passing and I thought you might have some illuminating wisdom that few others would.’
‘Intriguing,’ said Jake, his chest puffing out a little. ‘I guess that’s medical and not dating advice? You know I’m engaged now, right?’
Ouch. Of course he was, thought Eve. Weren’t they all.
Samantha’s lips twitched, forming a mildly triumphant smile.
‘I didn’t,’ said Eve. ‘But congratulations! How exciting.’ She hoped for his future spouse’s sake that he’d developed a better grasp of the concept of fidelity.
‘I’ve got a few minutes before the next one, right, Sam?’
Samantha nodded. Eve followed Jake through to his office.
‘It’s good to see you.’ Jake sat on the edge of his desk, ran his tongue back and forth along his bottom lip; Eve remembered that at one time she had – briefly – found this quirk alluring. It had made her want to kiss him. Now she berated herself for such poor judgement.
‘Mm, you too,’ said Eve, wondering if she should cross her fingers behind her back. ‘So, have you heard about this crazy new scheme in Blighty, of turning people purple?’
Jake smirked. ‘Yeah, I saw it on the news this morning. It’s nuts.’
‘How would they do it?’
‘Change a person’s colour?’
‘Yep.’
Jake shook his head, raised his hands in a ‘who can say?’ gesture. ‘Hard to guess. There are plenty of possibilities…’
‘There are?’
‘Sure.’
‘Such as?’
‘Supplements.’
‘Supplements? Like vitamins?’
‘Sure.’
‘Wouldn’t you have to take a lot?’
‘Probably. There was a guy who regularly took a silver-based preparation, and his skin turned blue.’ Jake smiled. ‘Remember that?’
Eve vaguely recalled having seen the man on television.
‘I do, now you mention it. Sort of metallic-looking, wasn’t he?’
Jake nodded. ‘Poor guy. But medically fascinating. Remember that bar on 4th Street?’
Where they’d met. Jake had seemed charming, and single. Had made her laugh, and they’d ended up in a diner, talking until three am.
‘Of course. Haven’t been there for a long time. What else would cause the purpleness?’
‘Make up.’
‘Make up?’ Eve looked doubtful. Jake was doing the lip-licking thing again.
‘It could be a hoax. No real skin change, just some paint and imagination. People will believe anything you tell them.’
You would know, thought Eve.
‘True. But if it isn’t… how else could they do it?’
Leaning forward, Jake said, ‘We should go for a drink sometime.’
‘Well,’ said Eve, sweetly, ‘I would love to know more about the purpling, but no doubt your free time is filled with wedding preparations.’
Slowly, Jake straightened up. ‘Look, there are plenty of ways a person’s skin colour could be affected,’ he said, casually. ‘None would be instant. Quickest way to find out, just ask one of these purple guys what happened, right?’
His phone rang.
‘So sorry, my next patient is here,’ Jake said, standing, and shooting Eve one final charm-offensive smile. ‘It’s been good to see you. Thanks for stopping by.’
That was about as helpful as I should have expected, Eve thought, heading, back on track, towards her suitcase. Really she’d had no desire to see Jake Spiretti again, and it was certainly a shame he hadn’t been more dermatologically insightful. But to be finding her way into this story… that was a better high than the finest whisky, or a charming stranger in a bar.
Later Adio arrived at Eve’s apartment laden with Mexican food, and they spent the afternoon anxiously awaiting an update on Eve’s dad, whose state remained unchanged, while watching the now delirious news outlets. Eve packed while Adio, between mouthfuls of tortilla chips, read aloud more reports of the purpleness, Eve gasping an occasional ‘Really?’ and crossing the room, half-folded garment in hand, to peer over his shoulder and read for herself.
Already the media was gorging itself on purpleness, conducting opinion polls, and speculating on both the way the colour change was occurring (claiming security reasons, so far the government remained tight-lipped about that) and how long the scheme would last. Every comment seemed glazed with disbelief, from the folk stopped on the street to the psychologists and opposition party MPs being wheeled onto rolling news coverage (‘We could do a cool montage of people’s amazed faces,’ Joe had mused, noting just how many mouths were caught agape).
The shadow home secretary said, ‘I’m dumbfounded. This is utterly preposterous.’
The representative for an association of criminal psychologists gazed offscreen for a few seconds before eventually saying, ‘I think I can honestly say that myself and many of my colleagues are quite speechless.’
A grandmother interviewed in a park playground said, ‘It’s mind-boggling, really. Next we’ll be seeing flying saucers.’ (This was badly timed, as a frisbee flew across the screen just behind her).
And approaching her as she arrived home, reporters nabbed a quote from Theo Fletcher’s mum, whom Eve considered impressively composed, given the circumstances.
‘It’s unprecedented, of course,’ said Marianne Fletcher. ‘But we have complete faith in Theo, and know that whatever he does, he does it with thought and consideration, and through honestly wanting the best for us all.’
As the Fletcher seniors’ front door closed, the camera swerved joltingly to a journalist who quipped, ‘If I’d started dyeing people, I don’t think my mum would have taken it so well.’
It was too early, Eve thought, still too much of a shock, to try and make any real sense out if it. Blindsided opinion pieces babbled, most praising the prime minister for such brave, decisive action (his popularity was so immense that pundits frequently joked about what he would be able to get away with before his approval ratings dipped), while others were appalled, calling this an astonishing plot that felt like something out of a garish comic book, with Theo Fletcher the maniacal madman. There was a similar divide in the news reports themselves, scrambled together with the few available story-knitting facts. Despite this limited information, articles were padded with plenty of bluster and lots of distracting capitalised letters to reinforce the shock.
The PM was pretty much the only person NOT looking off-colour today, after his GOBSMACKING announcement that criminals are to be turned PURPLE. FED UP with soaring crime rates, the government hatched an ASTONISHING plan to keep the badly behaved in check, publicly SHAMING them as ‘bruises on society’, and giving them a matching SKIN OF SIN.
HUE DONE IT?
What he didn’t reveal was how these undesirables are getting their DUBIOUS makeovers – but it sounds as though there could be TROUBLE ahead for anyone seen misbehaving near their local bobby. Forget being caught red-handed, now UNLUCKY lads and lasses who commit illegal or anti-social acts will be finding themselves MAUVE from head to toe…
Naturally, the newspapers were having a whale of a time finding ways to say purple: plum, heather, mauve, indigo, violet (it had reminded Eve of the song in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, the one with all the colours, which they’d had to sing in junior school. She could never remember the full list of fantastic tints in that – or when to take a breath, for that matter – so she’d made the shades up as she went along, while trying to pause often enough that she didn’t turn turquoise or cobalt or azure or sky or electric blue in the process). But The Sun had won with lavender. More precisely, they had shortened it, from the soothingly fragranced flower known to enhance sleep, invoking images of an oh-so-English country garden and box sets of soap given to elderly aunts at Christmas, to a derivative term coined with lickety split wit. Combine the derogatory ‘chav’ with a dose of purple colouring and some toilet humour, and what did you have? Lav.
Lee had become the first official Lav and his face was everywhere. All the papers had latched on to before and after shots, showing a young, surly, but pink Lee, alongside a shot of him from the press conference, now mottled and rattled. He was currently the only named Purpled person, and still quarantined at a secure facility with the others that the prime minister had mentioned, though the hunt was on for the three escapees who’d been snapped in the leaked picture. Unfortunately for them, it wasn’t just the police who were on their trail, but every newspaper too. Those within the facility were due to be released imminently, but judging by photos of the place, it was already swarming with reporters, who were currently being kept at bay by a ring of uniformed police officers.
‘A police doughnut,’ said Adio, as he took a bite from a more edible one.
He and Eve watched a clip of a policewoman speaking to a journalist.
‘It’s quite a scene here,’ said the reporter.
The policewoman raised her eyebrows, gave a curt nod.
‘Were you aware of what was going on, of who was being held here?’
The policewoman looked at him, unflinching. ‘I arrived today, I couldn’t speculate on what was happening before then.’
‘How will the inmates’ security be maintained upon release?’
‘Their security? I can imagine they’ll get some attention, but I don’t think their safety’s at risk.’
‘You don’t think that the public might react quite strongly when they’re back in their own communities?’
‘In their current – ’ the briefest of pauses – ‘condition, these individuals should pose a substantially lessened risk once they’re back in their communities. Hopefully the public will appreciate that. Obviously, members of the public are also reminded that this initiative is now fully operational, and anyone can be affected, so everyone should show consideration and caution in their behaviour.’
‘When you return to your usual patrols, will you be responsible for making culprits Purple?’
With what Eve had considered to be an exemplary poker face, the policewoman replied, ‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’
Eve gazed out of the window as the taxi pulled away. Across the road, a man with a dog exited the all-hours deli which she and Saffron sometimes ventured to late at night, giggling, already in their pajamas, but craving a slumber party fix of ice cream or potato chips. The dog stopped, squatting near the flowers bursting with almost surreal, technicolour brightness that filled rows of buckets outside the shop, reminding Eve of blooms as seen in a View-Master camera. The man lingered too, holding up a New York newspaper that had been tucked under his arm and scanning the headlines. It was still too early for it to have hit the presses, but Eve squinted, trying to catch an inky update, and any mention of the Purpleness.
The cab sped on, through streets swarming with high-spirited bodies spilling out of bars and into the clammy night air. They passed Eve’s favourite seafood restaurant (the scene of one of her most memorably awful dates), and the first Say Fantastique! office, a fourth-floor walk-up in Chinatown which had framed paintings of dragons on every landing (she and Adio had spent many a sticky summer evening sitting on the fire escape there, watching the city below and pinching themselves that this was their new life). Then they crossed the bridge and were out onto the freeway, where billboards advertised action films and sci-fi shows, each of which had a premise that, however daft, seemed less preposterous than what she was about to go home to.
‘So,’ said the taxi driver, with an affable smile via the rear view mirror, ‘you’re English?’
Eve nodded, ‘Yup. Been here a long time though.’
She looked at the ID badge displayed on the partition between them. His name was Earl, and he was smiling in the photo too.
‘Hard to leave, right?’ he said. ‘A land of plenty. Plenty crazy, but good.’
‘It’s true,’ said Eve.
‘So you English got all these crazy people who’re purple now, right? What d’you make of that?’
‘I don’t know.’ Eve sighed. ‘It seems unreal. I’m still getting my head around it. What do you think?’
Earl tutted. ‘I’m not going to say judging a man by his colour could be a good thing. Seems backwards. Can’t see how that’ll help anybody, right?’
Eve murmured in agreement and looked out of the window. In truth, she wasn’t yet sure how she felt about the Purpleness. It was, of course, insane – ludicrous, unbelievable and indefensible. But perhaps a crazier deterrent was called for, given the dreadful, intolerable things people seemed willing to do to one another, which often beggared belief. It wasn’t just the foul play taking place behind closed doors, or large-scale atrocities planned by determined, detestable organisations. Since shocking tales of road rage and a tortured toddler led from a shopping centre to an unimaginable death, there seemed to be a level of violence that was almost banal, where inadvertently queue-jumping or looking at someone the wrong way could land you in casualty or worse.
Not long ago, a friend of Womble’s had been ambling home from the pub when a couple of lads approached him with flying fists and no reason, leaving him lying in the street with a broken jaw. And the teenage nephew of one of Eve’s schoolfriends had recently been stabbed after an accidental slight en route to a nightclub; instead of a merry evening peppered with lager and lasses, his night was deflated by a near-fatal punctured lung. Whenever she read of another hateful, mindless crime, Eve would wonder why people were like that, how the perpetrators of such acts became that way. To a lesser degree, she’d thought the same about her brother Simon, who seemed to have so little consideration for anyone or anything. No apparent empathy, no sense of responsibility, no concern for those he hurt.
But had things truly declined? Eve wondered. Or were they the same as ever, and she had just been too young to notice before? Was it the speed and volume of information to which everyone had access, with the Portal feeding an increasingly super-sized diet of news, that meant we could now know about everything that happens rather than a more digestible portion of it? Had we simply been cocooned before?
Or did the world seem more disturbed because that was how everyone was being programmed to feel? This was always Eve’s next stop on this train of thought, and she guessed it would be pivotal in the popularity of the prime minister’s new scheme. She loathed the sense of fear that had become such a popular currency and was relentlessly instilled in everyone, usually to peddle something, from dodgy foreign policies to antibacterial hand wash, and left you feeling under siege, constantly in danger from unseen enemies.
Even before her move across the pond, the persistent scaremongering had begun to dampen Eve’s enthusiasm for a life in the news. Not long after her arrival in America, there had been a major terrorist attack. With the world on anxiety-pill-popping, terror-stopping high alert, every morning began with a reminder of that day’s threat level, usually at the higher, hotter end of the spectrum, flagged in dangerously warm red or orange (Eve had thought they could jolly up the system with some appropriately coloured alarming icons – molten lava, sunburn, or the dwarf in the red coat from Don’t Look Now). The increasing popularity of panic seemed at best unhelpful and at worst irresponsible. But how could you unravel the truth? She thought again of Theo Fletcher, of Lee the Lav, and how there was probably little you couldn’t convince people of if they’d been successfully infected with enough unease.
And then, of course, there had been the Repeal, which seemed like a gateway drug to the Purpleness, when Eve thought of it now. Restricting access to some technologies, such as the relaunched Portal, where every move was tracked, and disposing of others, like the previously indispensable PortAble. The device had been held at least partially responsible for an escalation of inconsiderate behaviour, from the seeping, thoughtless cacophony of excess noise on trains and buses to invasive video-filming that ran the gamut from an irritation, and unsettling invasion of privacy (‘You just never know when someone is recording you,’ Eve’s mum had said once, bewildered, having spotted a man surreptitiously filming from behind a rack of department store dressing gowns), to trophy tapings of a far more sinister kind.
When the Repeal was first announced, the outcry was extreme, with hundreds of thousands attending a Refuse to Repeal demonstration in London (organisers estimated attendance to have been two million; the police claimed half that). ‘These things give us power, and you want to take our power away,’ protesters exclaimed. Then prime minister Milton Hardy had proclaimed the PortAble’s dark side: ‘A contrary, ability-reducing enabler of narcissism and social withdrawal.’ Adding, ‘Didn’t we manage perfectly well before?’
With the new regulations, nothing could be posted on the Portal anonymously, and all online activity could be traced to an individual civilian identifier called a CIV code. Critics claimed that it was an invasion of privacy, an infringement of human rights; supporters that it was for the greater good, protecting human rights by regulating what had become the Wild West, and that if you weren’t doing anything dodgy then you had no cause for concern. In the physical world, they said, behave badly and the ISON cameras would catch you; why should life on the Portal be any different? Later, everyone had to admit that the Repeal had made life online more cordial, that it felt safer. Bullying and vitriol became a less easy fix when you had to expose yourself; weapons lost, power snatched from the nasty, the attention-seeking, the insecure. Initially dismissed as blustery legislation that was unlikely to be enforced, folk were soon unpleasantly surprised. Employers were encouraged to see casually insidious and unpleasant behaviour as toxic. Many companies introduced a declaration for staff to sign, and there were petitions and – ironically – public shaming for those that did not. At the point when prosecutions for Portal offences peaked, hundreds were losing their job every week; recruitment agencies rubbed their hands with glee.
That was, as the phrase went at Say Fantastique!, just the tip of the asparagus. The anti-social elements could perhaps have been overlooked. But what sealed the Repeal was the malicious bug that had infiltrated not one but two superpowers’ nuclear systems and caused a simultaneous flushing of every automated toilet in Japan (naturally, for Say Fantastique! the flush-a-thon had been a winning story. Also, Eve remembered that, despite multiple technology experts asserting that the bug had been initiated from a PortAble, with many world leaders subsequently banning such devices, Womble’s friend Bob maintained that this was a smokescreen related to the device manufacturers’ not paying enough tax). In quite the photo opportunity, Milton Hardy had been pictured disposing of his; there had been a lot of recycling to do. And while it had been controversial, you couldn’t argue with the results.
So what was this, then, the Purpleness? A diabolical scheme built on a handy foundation of fear, or a necessarily extreme measure to protect the good folk, the decent and deserving? And would Eve despise herself for believing the latter?
The cab swerved to the kerb, pulling in sharply behind a shuttle bus from which spilled a pick ’n’ mix of bags and passengers.
‘Here we are,’ said Earl, as a plastic crucifix swung from his rear view mirror. He got out of the cab and took Eve’s suitcase from the boot while she gathered cash to pay him. As she took her case, he turned to her and said, ‘Have a blessed trip.’
‘Thanks,’ said Eve, rolling into the airport terminal, thinking, I’m not sure blessed will be quite the word for it.
On the plane, Eve found herself thinking of a family holiday they’d taken when she was ten. Her father had booked for them to go on a package trip to Portugal, but for some reason – she couldn’t quite remember now, but thought it was down to a problem with the travel agency – they’d instead ended up at a bed and breakfast on the Isle of Wight. Whether or not a troublesome travel agent, or some equally plausible excuse, had been the reason for their switch of locale, the trip had been during one of the brighter spells in her parents’ marriage and, for a change, her father wasn’t in the doghouse. Although she couldn’t have articulated it until she was older, even then Eve had a grasp of the circular dynamic of their relationship: father does wrong by mother, mother is upset, father feels guilt (or irritation) and avoids facing both reminders of this disappointment and arguments at home by spending more time seeking solace elsewhere. Now, Eve wondered why her mum hadn’t been firmer with him, refused to put up with his exploits; but Eve guessed it was something of a tightrope: she’d wanted him to stay and figured that challenging his behaviour would only push him further away.
The teenage Eve had fretted about whether her dad had ever really wanted to be with them, wondered if he’d been happy with their mum until she and Simon came along – if it was they who had caused the cracks in the marriage. She hadn’t known that aside from being ridiculously in love with him, her mum had also felt the giddy thrill of winner’s luck; Vince Baxter was handsome and charming, with the so-sure swagger of a rock star, and he had picked her. Linda, who was pretty and smart, but longed for the poise and confidence that some of the other girls possessed, hadn’t expected to be swept off her feet by the kind of chap she usually only encountered in romance novels. In keeping with her parents’ assumptions, she had expected to marry someone kind and dependable, reliable in providing all except excitement. She’d been courting such a fellow – a couple of years older than her, he was a man about town with good prospects – and she could picture their life together (although sometimes, in quiet moments, she’d feel a shortness of breath, and wonder if this was the thinning air of predictability).
In turn, Vince hadn’t reckoned on the elegant, unattainable-seeming Linda who came from a nice part of town and whom he’d sometimes spot in a cafe near where he worked, nose in a book which she’d occasionally put down to gaze wistfully out of the window. Vince had a knack for attracting the gals who wanted something more, something else; but when he crossed paths with Linda at the pub, or down the dance hall, she was usually on the arm of a well-heeled sort of chap, all greased hair and shiny shoes, and she’d often seem to look right through Vince – which, naturally, made her all the more enticing (he wouldn’t know until later that such apparent coolness was in fact poor eyesight). How proud he’d been when Linda accepted his proposal – that he, the wild card, had won her over the shiny-shoed sure thing! Her devotion was a high, and though he did love her, in his own way, was most intoxicated by the idea of snagging such an unlikely prize: a bird – and maybe a life? – so much fancier than he’d aspired to. Plus her reverence Teflon-coated his confidence, making him all the more alluring – and why should he deny himself? Linda knew how desirable he was, wouldn’t have expected them to live the same life of monotony, monogamy, that everyone else signed up for. She found Vince’s unpredictable-ness exciting, and unpredictability was the one thing he could guarantee to provide.
It was the night after their arrival on the Isle of Wight, and the family had gone out for dinner. It had been a warm evening, and they’d walked along the seafront enjoying the early evening sun, the laugh-filled chatter of other holiday-makers, and the tinny clatter of the amusement arcades, the beeps of the machines and cascading coins chiming with the chart hits that blared through cheap speakers. Her mum was wearing a white dress covered in little flowers, with spaghetti straps which tied at the shoulders, and silver sandals. Her dad sported a sky-blue shirt and a moustache. They strolled hand in hand, looking like something out of a glossy American TV show, glamorous, attractive – and not arguing – and Eve had felt like the girl who had it all. Even Simon wasn’t behaving disastrously, though he did keep trying to kick seagulls, who were always too quick to fly away. Eve had breathed in the heady aroma of summer freedom: chips, suntan lotion, sea air and expectation, mingling with her dad’s aftershave and her mum’s perfume to create a scent so intoxicating Eve thought she might never again feel this content.
They ate at an Italian restaurant (a place that to the young Eve seemed so sophisticated, but which also served all-day fry-ups), where the waiter commented on how beautiful Linda looked. Vince looked peacock proud, whispering something in his wife’s ear before leaning back and winking at her. Linda beamed and, catching Eve’s eye, gave one of the most genuinely happy smiles Eve had witnessed from her mother (it still saddened her when she thought of it). Despite having already enjoyed Flake 99 Cones on the seafront that afternoon, they’d ordered ice cream for pudding. Simon had a monster amount of chocolate, nuts and whipped cream, their parents shared a banana split, while Eve had a knickerbocker glory all to herself, and as she held her extra long spoon above the towering bowl, she wondered if this was too good to be true.
Their parents had got talking to the family at the next table, who were also on holiday. The wife was pretty, blonde, wore shimmering blue eyeliner, and laughed at Eve’s dad’s jokes. The husband was stocky and would chime into what Vince was saying with a joke of his own before downing a long glug of beer. The four of them decided to move to the bar and share a couple more drinks, and gave the children some change to spend at the amusement arcade. Simon had badgered Eve to give him some of her coins, threatening her with a Chinese burn, but Eve had refused, and as they stood in a scowling stand off, she had very, very nearly stamped on his flip-flopped foot with her new mini-heeled party shoes. She could imagine how much that would have hurt. But then she’d pictured her newsreading heroines looking at her calmly and saying, don’t let him get to you, don’t let him spoil this evening that you’ve enjoyed so much. So instead she turned and walked into the maze of machines, ringing and whirling and clattering, taking herself and her money as far away from her brother as she could.
Eve won some coppers at the sliding games, and when one of the other kids came to tell her that it was time to go she still had twenty pence in her hand. Mum and dad will be impressed, she thought. But when they reached the bar, her father had a swollen eye and her mother’s mascara was smudged from tears. Eve had clutched the twenty pence, thought of her parents’ clasped hands, the wink and the smile, and her knickerbocker glory, and scorned herself for thinking such enchantment could last.
Simon had scowled at them. ‘What happened?’
‘Is he all right?’ Eve asked her mum, quietly.
Linda sighed and nodded.
‘Stupid people,’ said Vince.
‘They weren’t stupid. Just drunk and… provoked.’
‘Provoked? It wasn’t my fault! We were being social. Friendly.’
Linda looked at him, saying nothing.
‘What? I was only talking to his wife. He was all chatty-Cathy, complimenting you, and I didn’t deck him one.’
‘He didn’t have his arm around me and he wasn’t sniffing my neck.’ Eve’s mother sounded not angry but resigned.
‘I wasn’t sniffing her neck. I was asking her what her perfume was. It reminded me of yours.’
A flicker of crushed disappointment had crossed Linda’s face.
‘You think I deserved to be whacked for a bit of harmless fun? You were right there – you saw. We were just chatting. He must be mad.’
Linda turned away, towards the sea. Eve had tried to guess what she was thinking, whether she was considering stamping on his foot with one of her silver sandals. Instead she turned around, looked at his swollen eye and said, ‘We should get back to the hotel and put some ice on that. And you two,’ she told Eve and Simon, ‘should get to bed soon.’
At the B&B, Vince checked his face in the dressing table mirror before again pressing the bag of ice that Linda had sheepishly requested from their landlady against the swelling. Simon, en route to fetch some toothpaste from their suitcase, stood next to him.
‘Y’alright, Dad?’
Vince nodded. ‘Yeah, thanks. Just irresistible, eh son?’ he said, winking with his good eye.
Eve glanced across at her mum, who was reading – or pretending to. Eve had been watching, and hadn’t seen her turn a page.
Eve leant back in her seat, eyes closed, still picturing them all in that room. She might be entirely wrong – and of course that wouldn’t excuse her dad from blame for his current injuries – but she couldn’t help but wonder if somehow history had now repeated itself. This thought was interrupted as the captain’s voice announced that they would soon be landing, and with a ringing sound, the seatbelt sign blinked on. Oh, green and pleasant and now purple land, Eve thought, looking out of the window as the plane began its descent.