I've Got Your Number

35 I finally winkled this out of him on the phone at lunchtime.

36 Magnus says Wanda has never sunbathed in her life, and she thinks people who go on holiday in order to lie on beds must be mentally deficient. That’ll be me, then.

37 “Study of Continuous Passive Motion Following Total Knee Arthroplasty.” I’ve still got it, in its plastic folder.

38 She didn’t say exactly where it was questing to.

39 Although I am rather good at footnotes. They could put me in charge of those.

40 No idea what most of these words mean.

41 Which apparently is a word. Silly me.

42 Stephen Fry of QI, I mean. Not Jeeves and Wooster. Although Jeeves probably knew a fair bit about Burns’s poetry too.

5

I won! I won the Scrabble game!

Everyone was gobsmacked. They pretended not to be—but they were. The raised eyebrows and astonished glances became more frequent and less guarded as the game went on. When I got that triple word score with saxatile, Felix actually broke out into applause and said, “Bravo!” And as we were tidying the kitchen afterward, Wanda asked me if I’d ever thought of studying linguistics.

My name was entered in the family Scrabble book, Antony offered me the “winner’s glass of port,” and everyone clapped. It was such a sweet moment.

OK. I know it was cheating. I know it was a bad thing to do. To be honest, I kept expecting someone to catch me out. But I put the ring tone on silent and no one realized I was texting Sam all the way through.43

And, yes, of course I feel guilty. Halfway through, I felt even worse when I texted Sam in admiration:, How do you know all these words?, and he replied, I don’t. The internet does.

The internet ?

For a moment I felt too shocked to reply. I thought he was thinking of the words, not finding them on Scrabblewords.com or whatever.

That’s CHEATING!!!! I typed.

You already crossed that line, he texted back. What’s the difference? And then he added, Flattered you thought I was a genius.

Then, of course, I felt really stupid.

And he had a point. Once you’ve started cheating, does it matter what your methods are?

I know I’m storing up problems for the future. I know Sam Roxton won’t always be on the end of my phone to feed me words. I know I couldn’t possibly repeat the feat. Which is why I’m planning to retire from family Scrabble, as of tomorrow. It was a short, brilliant career. And now it’s over.

The only person who wasn’t entirely fulsome in his praise was Magnus, which was a bit surprising. I mean, he said, “Well done,” along with everyone else—but he didn’t give me a special hug or even ask me how come I knew all those words. And when Wanda said, “Magnus, you didn’t tell us Poppy was so talented!” he flashed her this quick smile and said, “I told you, Poppy’s brilliant at everything.” Which was nice—but kind of meaningless too.

The thing is … he came in second.

He can’t be jealous of me, surely?

It’s about eleven now, and we’re back in my flat. I’m half-tempted to go and talk to Magnus about it, but he’s disappeared off to do some preparation for a lecture on Symbols and Symbolic Thought in Dante44 which he’s giving tomorrow. So instead I curl up on the sofa and forward some emails which came in earlier for Sam.

After a few I can’t help clicking my tongue with frustration. Half of these emails are reminders and chasers. He still hasn’t replied about the conference accommodation at Chiddingford Hotel, or the Fun Run, or the dentist. Or the new James & James bespoke suit waiting for him to pick up at his convenience. How can you ignore new clothes?

There are only a few people he ever seems to reply to immediately. One is a girl called Vicks, who runs the PR department. She’s very businesslike and curt, just like him, and has been consulting him about some press launch they’re doing together. She often cc’s Violet’s address, but by the time I forward the email, Sam’s already replied to her. Another is a guy called Malcolm, who asks Sam’s opinion about something nearly every hour. And, of course, Sir Nicholas Murray, who’s clearly very senior and important and is doing some work for the government at the moment.45 He and Sam get on incredibly well, if their emails are anything to go by. They zing back and forth like conversation between old friends. I can’t really understand half of what they’re saying—especially all the in-jokes—but the tone is obvious, and so is the fact that Sam has more emails to and from Sir Nicholas than anybody else.

Sam’s company is evidently some kind of consultancy. They tell companies how to run their businesses and they do a lot of facilitating, whatever that is. I guess they’re like negotiators or mediators or something. They must be pretty successful at it, because Sam seems very popular. He’s been invited to three drinks parties this week alone and to a shooting event with a private bank next weekend. And a girl called Blue has emailed for the third time, asking if he’d like to attend a special reception to celebrate the merger of Johnson Ellison with Greene Retail. It’s at the Savoy, with a jazz band and canapés and goody bags.