Should I dash upstairs and find a match? Or some boiling water? To be honest, I think I’d take the agonizing pain over having to admit the truth—
“Damn! He’s not in.” She replaces the receiver.
“What a shame,” I manage, as Magnus appears through the kitchen door, followed by Felix, who says, “Hi, Poppy,” and then immerses himself back in the textbook he was reading.
“So!” Magnus looks from me to his parents, as though trying to assess the mood of the room. “How are you all doing? Isn’t Poppy looking even more beautiful than usual? Isn’t she just lovely?” He bunches up my hair and then lets it fall down again.
I wish he wouldn’t. I know he’s trying to be nice, but it makes me cringe. Wanda looks baffled, as though she has no idea how to reply to this.
“Charming.” Antony smiles politely, as though he’s admiring someone’s garden.
“Did you get through to Dr. Wheeler?” Wanda queries.
“Yes.” Magnus nods. “He says the focus is cultural genesis.”
“Well, I must have read that wrong,” she says tetchily. Wanda turns to me. “We’re trying to see if we can’t get papers published in the same journal. All six of us, including Conrad and Margot. Family effort, you see. Felix on indexing. Everyone involved!”
Everyone except me, flashes through my mind.
Which is ridiculous. Because do I want to write an academic paper in some obscure journal which no one ever reads? No. Could I? No. Do I even know what cultural genesis is? No.39
“You know, Poppy has published in her field,” Magnus suddenly announces, as though hearing my thoughts and leaping to my defense. “Haven’t you, darling?” He smiles proudly at me. “Don’t be modest.”
“You’ve published?” Antony wakes up and peers at me with more attention than he ever has before. “Ah. Now, that’s interesting. Which journal?”
I stare helplessly at Magnus. What’s he talking about?
“You remember!” he prompts me. “Didn’t you say you’d had something in the physiotherapy periodical?”
Oh God. No.
I will kill Magnus. How could he bring that up?
Antony and Wanda are both waiting for me to reply. Even Felix has looked up with interest. They’re obviously expecting me to announce a breakthrough in the cultural influence of physiotherapy on nomadic tribes or something.
“It was Physiotherapists’ Weekly Roundup, ” I mumble at last, staring at my feet. “It’s not really a periodical. More of a … a magazine. They published a letter of mine once.”
“Was it a piece of research?” says Wanda.
“No.” I swallow hard. “It was about when patients have BO. I said maybe we should wear gas masks. It was … you know. Supposed to be funny.”
There’s silence.
I’m so mortified I can’t even raise my head.
“You did write a thesis for your degree, though,” ventures Felix. “Didn’t you tell me once?” I turn in surprise and he’s looking at me with an earnest, encouraging gaze.
“Yes. I mean … it wasn’t published or anything.” I shrug awkwardly.
“I’d like to read it one day.”
“OK.” I smile—but, honestly, this is pitiful. Of course he doesn’t want to read it; he’s just trying to be nice. Which is sweet of him but makes me feel even more tragic, since I’m twenty-nine and he’s seventeen. Plus, if he’s trying to boost my confidence in front of his parents, it hasn’t worked, because they’re not even listening.
“Of course, humor is a form of expression which one should factor into one’s cultural narrative,” says Wanda doubtfully. “I think Jacob C. Goodson has done some interesting work on ‘Why Humans Joke.’ ”
“I believe it was ‘ Do Humans Joke,’ ” corrects Antony. “Surely his thesis was that …”
They’re off again. I breathe out, my cheeks still burning. I cannot cope. I want someone to ask about holidays, or EastEnders, or anything but this.
I mean, I love Magnus and everything. But I’ve been here five minutes and I’m a nervous wreck. How am I going to survive Christmas every year? What if our children are all superbright and I can’t understand what they’re saying and they look down on me because I haven’t got a PhD?
There’s an acrid smell in the air, and suddenly I realize the Bolognese is burning. Wanda is standing there by the stove, wittering away about Aristotle, not even noticing. Gently, I take the spoon out of her grasp and start to stir. Thank God you don’t need a Nobel Prize to do this.