One Plus One: A Novel (20 page)

“It’s just sheer weight of traffic.”

“That’s such a lame expression,” said Nicky. “Of course a traffic jam is sheer weight of traffic. What else would it be down to?”

“There could have been an accident,” said Tanzie.

“But the jam itself would still comprise the traffic,” Ed mused. “So technically, the problem is still the sheer weight of traffic.”

“No, the volume of traffic slowing itself down is something completely different.”

“But it’s the same result.”

“But then it’s an inaccurate description.”

Jess peered at the GPS. “Can we just focus here, people? Are we in the right place? I wouldn’t have thought the docks would be near the university.”

“We have to get through the docks to get to the university.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure, Jess.” Ed tried to suppress the tension in his voice. “Look at the GPS.”

There was a brief silence. In front of them the traffic lights changed through two cycles without anybody moving. Jess, on the other hand, moved incessantly, fidgeting in her seat, peering around her to see if there was some clear route they might have missed. He couldn’t blame her. He felt the same.

“I don’t think we’ve got time to get new glasses,” he murmured to her, when they’d sat through the fourth cycle.

“But she can’t see without them.”

“If we look for a chemist, we’re not going to make it there for midday.”

She bit her lip, then turned round in her seat. “Tanze? Is there any way you can see through the unbroken lens? Any way at all?”

A pale green face emerged from the plastic bag. “I’ll try,” it said.

Traffic stopped and stalled. They grew silent, the tension within the car ratcheting up. When Norman whined, they growled, “Shut up, Norman!” as one. Ed felt his blood pressure rising. Why hadn’t they left half an hour earlier? Why hadn’t he worked this out better? What would happen if they missed it? He glanced sideways to where Jess was tapping her knee nervously and guessed that she was thinking the same thing. And then finally, inexplicably, as if the gods had been toying with them, the traffic cleared.

He flung the car through the cobbled streets, Jess yelling, “
Go!
Go!
” and leaning forward on the dashboard as if she were a coachman driving a horse. He skidded the car around the bends, almost too fast for the GPS, which hiccupped its instructions, and entered the university campus, then followed the small printed signs that had been placed haphazardly on random poles until they found the Downes Building, an unlovely 1970s office block in the same gray granite as everything else.

The car screeched into a parking space in front of it, and as Ed cut the ignition, everything stopped. He let out a long breath and glanced at the clock. It was six minutes to twelve.

“This is it?” Jess said peering out.

“This is it.”

Jess appeared suddenly paralyzed, as if she couldn’t believe they were actually there. She undid her seat belt and stared at the car park, at the boys strolling in as if they had all the time in the world, reading off electronic devices, accompanied by tense-looking parents. The kids were all wearing private school uniforms. “I thought it would be . . . bigger,” she said.

Nicky gazed out through the dank gray drizzle. “Yeah. Because advanced maths is such a crowd-pleaser.”

“I can’t see anything,” said Tanzie.

“Look, you guys go in and register. I’ll get her some glasses.”

Jess turned to him. “But they won’t be the right prescription.”

“It’ll be better than nothing. Just go.
Go
.”

He could see her staring after him as he skidded out of the car park and headed back toward the city center.

—

It took seven minutes and three attempts to find a chemist large enough to sell reading glasses. Ed screeched to a halt so dramatic that Norman shot forward and his great head collided with his shoulder. The dog resettled himself on the backseat, grumbling.

“Stay here,” Ed told him, and bolted inside.

The shop was empty aside from an old woman with a basket and two assistants talking in lowered voices. He skidded around the shelves, past tampons and toothbrushes, corn plasters and reduced Christmas gift sets until he finally found the stand by the till. Dammit. He couldn’t remember if she was far- or nearsighted. He reached for his phone to ask, then remembered he didn’t have Jess’s number.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Ed stood there, trying to guess. Tanzie’s glasses looked as if they might be pretty strong. He had never seen her without them. Would that mean she was more likely to be nearsighted? Didn’t all children tend to be nearsighted? It was adults who held things away from them to see, surely. He hesitated for about ten seconds and then, after a moment’s indecision, pulled them all from their rack, far- and nearsighted, mild and super strength, and dumped them on the counter in a clear plastic-wrapped pile.

The girl broke off her conversation with the old woman. She looked down at the glasses, then up at him. Ed saw her clock the drool on his collar and tried to wipe it surreptitiously with his sleeve. This succeeded in smearing it across his lapel.

“All of them. I’ll take all of them,” he said. “But only if you can ring them up in less than thirty seconds.”

She looked over at her supervisor, who gave Ed a penetrating stare, then an imperceptible nod. Without a word, the girl began to ring them up, carefully positioning each pair in a bag. “No. No time. Just chuck them in,” he said, reaching past her to thrust them into the plastic carrier.

“Do you have a loyalty card?”

“No. No loyalty card.”

“We’re doing a special three for two offer on diet bars today. Would you like—”

Ed scrambled to pick up the glasses that had fallen from the counter. “No diet bars,” he said. “No offers. Thank you. I just need to pay.”

“That’ll be a hundred and seventy-four pounds,” she said finally. “Sir.”

She peered over her shoulder then, as if half expecting the arrival of a prank television crew. But Ed scribbled his signature, grabbed the carrier bag, and ran for the car. He heard “No manners” in a strong Scottish accent as he left.

There was nobody in the car park when he returned. He pulled up right outside the door, leaving Norman clambering wearily onto the backseat, and ran inside, down the echoing corridor. “Maths competition? Maths competition?” he yelled at anyone he passed. A man pointed wordlessly to a laminated sign. Ed bolted up a flight of steps two at a time, along another corridor, and into an anteroom. Two men sat behind a desk. On the other side of the room stood Jess and Nicky. She took a step toward him. “Got them.” He held up the carrier bag, triumphantly. He was so out of breath he could barely speak.

“She’s gone in,” she said. “They’ve started.”

He looked up at the clock, breathing hard. It was seven minutes past twelve.

“Excuse me?” he said to the man at the desk. “I need to give a girl in there her glasses.”

The man looked up slowly. He eyed the plastic bag Ed held in front of him.

Ed leaned right over the desk, thrusting the bag toward him. “She broke her glasses on the way here. She can’t see without them.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t let anyone in now.”

Ed nodded. “Yes. Yes, you can. Look, I’m not trying to cheat or sneak anything in. I just didn’t know her glasses type so I had to buy every pair. You can check them. All of them. Look. No secret codes. Just glasses.” He held the bag open in front of him. “You have to take them in to her so she can find a pair that fits.”

The man gave a slow shake of his head. “Sir, we can’t allow anything to disrupt the other—”

“Yes. Yes, you can. It’s an emergency.”

“It’s the rules.”

Ed stared at him hard for a full ten seconds. Then he straightened up, put a hand to his head, and started to walk away from him. He could feel a new pressure building inside him, like a kettle juddering on a hot plate. “You know something?” he said, turning around. “It has taken us three solid days and nights to get here. Three days in which I have had my very nice car filled with vomit, and unmentionable things done to my upholstery by a dog. I don’t even like dogs. I have slept in a car with a virtual stranger. Not in a good way. I have stayed places no reasonable human being should have to stay. I have eaten an apple that had been down the too-tight trousers of a teenage boy and a kebab that for all I know contained human flesh. I have left a huge, huge personal crisis in London and driven five hundred and eighty miles with people I don’t know—very nice people—because even I could see that this competition was really, really important to them. Vitally important. Because all the little girl in there cares about is maths. And if she doesn’t get a pair of glasses she can actually see through, she can’t compete fairly in your
competition. And if she can’t compete fairly, she blows her only chance to go to the school that she really, really needs to go to. And if that happens, you know what I’ll do?”

The man stared.

“I will go into that room of yours, and I will walk around to every single maths paper and I will rip them into teeny-tiny pieces. And I will do it very, very quickly, before you have a chance to call your security guards. And you know why I will do this?”

The man swallowed. “No.”

“Because all this has to have been worth something.” Ed went back to him and leaned close to him. “It has to.”

Something had happened to Ed’s face. He could feel it, the way it seemed to have twisted itself into shapes he had never felt before. And in the way Jess stepped forward and gently put her hand on his arm.

She passed the man the bag of glasses. “We’d be really, really grateful if you took her the glasses,” she said quietly.

The man stood up and walked around the desk toward the door. He kept his eyes on Ed at all times. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. And the door closed gently behind him.

—

They walked out to the car in silence, oblivious to the rain. Jess unloaded the bags. Nicky stood off to the side, his hands thrust as far into his jeans pockets as he could manage. Which, given the tightness of his jeans, wasn’t very far.

“Well, we made it.” She allowed herself a small smile.

“I said we would.” Ed nodded toward the car. “Shall I wait here until she’s finished?”

She wrinkled her nose. “No. You’re fine. We’ve held you up long enough.”

Ed felt his smile sag a little. “Where will you sleep tonight?”

“If she does well, I might treat us to a fancy hotel. If she doesn’t . . .” She shrugged. “Bus shelter.” The way she said this suggested she didn’t believe it.

She walked around to the rear door of the car. Norman, who had glanced at the rain and decided not to get out, looked up at her.

Jess stuck her head through the door. “Norman, time to go.”

A small pile of bags sat on the wet ground behind the Audi. She hauled a jacket out of a bag and handed it to Nicky. “Come on, it’s cold.”

The air held the salt tang of the sea. It made him think suddenly of Beachfront. “So . . . is this . . . it?”

“This is it. Thank you for the lift. I . . . we . . . all appreciate it. The glasses. Everything.”

They looked at each other properly for the first time that day, and there were about a billion things he wanted to say.

Nicky lifted an awkward hand. “Yeah. Mr. Nicholls. Thanks.”

“Oh. Here.” Ed reached into his pocket for the phone he had pulled from the glove compartment and tossed it to him. “It’s a backup. I, um, don’t need it anymore.”

“Really?” Nicky caught it with one hand and gazed at it, disbelieving.

Jess frowned. “We can’t take that. You’ve done enough for us.”

“It’s not a big deal. Really. If Nicky doesn’t take it, I’ll only have to send it off to one of those recycling places. You’re just saving me a job.”

Jess glanced down at her feet as if she were going to say something else. And then she looked up and hauled her hair briskly into an unnecessary ponytail.

“Well. Thanks again.” She thrust a hand toward him. Ed hesitated, then shook it, trying to ignore the sudden flash of memory from the previous evening.

“Good luck with your dad. And the lunch. And the whole work thing. I’m sure it will come out good. Remember, good things happen.” When she pulled her hand away, he felt weirdly as if he’d lost something. She turned and looked over her shoulder, already distracted. “Right. Let’s find somewhere dry to stick our stuff.”

“Hold on.” Ed hauled a business card from his jacket, scribbled a number, and walked over to her. “Call me.”

One of the numbers was smudged. He saw her staring at it.

“That’s a three.” He altered it, then shoved his hands into his pockets, feeling like an awkward teenager. “I’d like to know how Tanzie gets on. Please.”

She nodded. And then she was gone, propelling the boy in front of her like a particularly vigilant shepherd. He stood and watched them, lugging their oversized holdalls and the huffing, recalcitrant dog, until they rounded the corner of the gray concrete building and were gone.

—

The car was silent. Even in the hours when nobody spoke, Ed had become used to the faintly steamed windows, the vague sense of constant movement that came from being in close confinement with other people. The muffled ping of Nicky’s games console. Jess’s constant fidgeting. Now he gazed around the car’s interior and felt as if he was standing in a deserted house. He saw the crumbs and the apple core that had been stuffed into the rear ashtray, the melted chocolate, the newspaper folded into the pocket of the seat. His damp clothes on wire hangers across the rear windows. He saw the maths book, half wedged down the side of the seat, which Tanzie had evidently missed in her hurry to get out, and wondered whether to take it to her. But what was the point? It was too late.

It was too late.

He sat in the car park, watching the last of the parents walking to their cars, killing time as they waited for their charges. He leaned forward and rested his head on the steering wheel for some time. And then, when his was the only car left there, he put his key into the ignition and drove away.