The message came in while Dai was still scraping the frost off the van.
Hi, it’s Jack Portmant. We met at Lord Tonminter’s last night, and I thought we had a real spark. I’m off to a conference in Geneva for the weekend. Do you fancy coming along? X
Dai hadn’t been at Lord Tonminter’s last night. He was at Screwfix, then he went to the Dog and Butcher for a swifty.
He looked up the name: Jack Portmant, MP (Minister of State for something with Resilience in it). The press photo shows him in front of a hedge with his wife, two daughters and a golden retriever.
He typed, Wrong number, butt.
Then he erased it.
And then he typed, Hi… I wondered if you’d felt it too?
The reply came before he’d even got the key in the van.
Still feeling it. You were absolutely brilliant on Schubert.
Dai thought Schubert was the little one in Scooby-Doo.
Between a dead combi boiler in Pontarddulais and a stiff stopcock in Gowerton, Dai embroidered Helena.
Divorced.
A cellist, but not a very good one.
I find Geneva rather smug.
Does resilience mean you’re going to stop helping us?
Jack wrote God, yes to that and then at lunchtime: What are you wearing?
Dai looked down. Overalls. I’m mending something.
Jack: Three exclamation marks.
By Wednesday, Jack was telling Helena things.
I haven’t written a novel since 2009.
My wife calls me Jacko in front of civil servants.
Sometimes, I’ll sit in the ministerial car outside my house for twenty minutes with the engine off, practising my face.
Dai read that one in the cab outside a bungalow in Loughor. He’d been thinking vaguely of selling the lot to a newspaper, or at the very least showing it to the boys at the plumbers’ merchants.
In the end he did neither.
The thing is, no one had asked his opinion on anything since the incident at Carol’s sister’s wedding. Yet here he was, posing as Helena and being asked what she thought on every subject.
Helena had lots of opinions: on fathers, on ambition…
I sometimes wonder if a man can be forgiven for pretending to be someone he isn’t.
Dai had no idea where she got them from.
Friday night the booking was confirmed.
Then: I need your surname for the ticket.
Dai was sitting on the edge of the bath. Down in the living room, Carol was watching Corrie. Again.
He typed it straight, the way you’d tell a customer their boiler’s fucked.
My name’s David Probert. I’m 56. I’m a heating engineer from Ammanford. I was never at that party. You got the number wrong, and I’ve let you get on with it all week. Apologies.
The dots appeared. Stopped. Appeared.
Do you actually know anything about Schubert?
No.
A long minute.
Neither do I. I just nodded along.
Then:
Is it still Probert on the ticket?
