I squeeze my eyes closed to stop the room from swimming. But instead the theorem forms behind my eyelids. Ha! I might not remember the exact train of thought that got me there, but I have a photographic memory and I can see the page of notes I scribbled out in the middle of the night. Or evidently didn’t scribble out. But if I didn’t … well, how can I see them now? My mind’s eye is showing me exactly what I’d calculated last night. I jot it down quickly, determined to embed it back into my subconscious before I forget it again.
Just as I dot the final sentence, my phone rings, the shrill ringtone bouncing around my small – research positions don’t exactly pay the big bucks – bedroom. It’s Cesca. ‘Get dressed. I’ll be there in ten minutes,’ she barks down the phone.
‘But—’
‘Nope, not today, missy. I need your smooth and calm analytical brain. And pancakes.’
‘I don’t have the—’
‘If you’re about to say time, I know that’s a lie.’
‘I was going to say ingredients,’ I reply.
‘Don’t sass me, missy.’ This is something our stepmum would always say, and she sounds so much like her it stops my next protestation in its tracks. ‘We’re going to the Pancake House. Make sure you’re waiting when I drive past. You have six minutes.’
I want to tell her no. But I can’t. And so, somehow, I manage to pee, throw on a pretty sage green sundress, scrape my long dark hair into a bun and wipe yesterday’s mascara off in less than three minutes. It takes me another minute to find my keys and wallet and pack them into a small cross-body bag in the softest brown leather. It was a graduation gift from my father, who has this set of rather stringent commandments about things – one of which being that you should buy quality for the important things in life. Cesca had told him nothing was more essential to a woman than a good casual handbag. Thank God for my sister as otherwise I would have ended up with an expensive screwdriver set or something.
I have one minute to spare and so I use it wisely; grabbing a can of Diet Coke from the fridge, tipping the cold bubbles down my throat and relishing the slight brain freeze accompanying it. Then I slide my feet into my white Havaianas by the front door—
Hang on. My Havaianas aren’t white. They’re a subtle beige, the same colour as a milky cup of tea.
I peer down at them. These are most definitely white. A bright brilliant white.
A car horn outside drags me back to reality and I rush down the steps to Cesca’s Corsa. I don’t even say hello. ‘When did I buy white flip-flops?’ I ask my sister.
‘We got them from Westfield last week,’ she says. She doesn’t add the word loser at the end of the sentence, but I can tell she wants to.
‘I bought the beige ones.’ I remember we had a conversationabout how the white ones would get grubby too quickly and the beige would be better.
Cesca huffs loudly as she pulls out of my street and joins the barely moving stream of traffic heading towards Tooting. ‘No. You debated their relative merits for almost twenty minutes and then you flipped a coin.’
I can see the coin sailing through the air, hear the slap as Cesca caught it and slammed it against the back of her hand. ‘Heads,’ I whisper. ‘Heads for beige.’
‘Tails. Tails for white.’ She drums her fingers on the steering wheel. ‘Are you all right, Beth?’
‘Yeah, sorry,’ I say. ‘Just a bit tired.’ I offer her a thin smile, even though she’s watching the road.
‘You’ve been working too hard.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, thinking back to the notebook and the theorem scratched into it.
Chapter Three
I don’t tell Cesca about the theorem. Not because I don’t think she’d understand; she has a background in theoretical physics too, even if she now spends most of her time teaching spotty overly privileged man-boys at that stupidly expensive public school. But because … well, I just want to keep it to myself. At least for a short while. It could change everything. The way we think about who we are and the position we play in the universe. There’s something melancholic – maybe even nihilistic – about the theorem too. If it’s true then we are mere specks of dust and nothing really matters. Cesca has spent swathes of her life convincing herself that things do matter and I’m not about to undo over a decade of therapy for a pat on the back about how clever I am for figuring it all out.
Instead I order us pancakes – huge stacks of the things dripping in maple syrup and with a side of crispy American-style bacon, despite Cesca’s protestation she should have fruit with hers to at least pretend to be healthy – and frothy cappuccinos with powdered chocolate in the shape of a house.
‘Why is it a pancake house?’ Cesca asks staring at the chocolate pattern.
I cock my head to one side so she elaborates.
‘Well, pancake places are always houses. The PancakeHouse. InternationalHouseof Pancakes. But why house?’
‘No idea.’
‘Crabshack. Burgerjoint. Pizzaparlour. Who thought of all these? Who decided them?’
Cesca has one of the most brilliantly enquiring minds I have ever met, although she burns an inordinate amount of that brain power on questions so inconsequential I have to fake my enthusiasm. Well, I am a good big sister after all. Even though technically there are only eleven months between us. Irish twins, my dad used to say. More efficient than actual twins, no need for duplication, items simply passing from me to Cesca as soon as I outgrew them.
