Page 91 of The One Plus One
‘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.’
‘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 stabbed out his PIN, 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 back onto the back seat, 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. He 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 towards 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 leant right over the desk, thrusting the bag towards 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 hotplate. ‘You know something?’ he said, turning around, slowly. ‘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 that little girl in there cares about is maths. And if she doesn’t get a pair of glasses that 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 every single maths paper and I will rip it 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 leant close to him. ‘It has to. And because right now, at this exact minute, I really, really don’t feel like I have anything left to lose.’
Something had happened to Ed’s face. He could feel it, in the way it seemed to have twisted itself into shapes he had never felt before. He could see it in the way the man was staring at him. And he could feel it in the way Jess stepped forward and gently put her hand on his arm and handed 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 towards 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 towards 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?’
