‘Don’t get that one,’ she said, wrinkling her nose.
‘You have to think about it…he was having a dig at Richard calling Richard old, sugar daddy…but what about when he got stuck in Scotland because of the snow? I put on my Facebook that I was at a loss for words. And within minutes of him logging on, he put that Anthony forgot how much he loves libraries. In other words, he’d pointed me in the direction of an entire building stuffed full of words.’
‘But it—’
‘Let me finish…there was the time recently when I’d picked up that his girlfriend is still at college. I put that German Status that said: ha ha hatte es wissen sollen schulferien viel verngungen knutshe dich!!! That meant I should have known…school holidays…have fun, hugs and kisses. He went and added a Lego rave. Get it? A Lego rave. Surely you get his humour behind that?
‘Yes, but it’s just so mad. Anyway, what is his girlfriend studying?’ she asked.
I think it was her attempt to bring normality into the conversation as the elderly waitress placed cutlery and bread on our table. I grabbed one of the rolls and leaned back to give her space.
‘I don’t know…something to do with travel and tourism.’
‘I just don’t get why he doesn’t speak to you properly,’ she said, while shaking her head.
‘I don’t know either.’
‘Yeah…so…these could still be nothing more than coincidences.’
‘Christ…how many do you need? Okay, what about the hamsters then? Remember the other week when you thought you’d lost Bella and I was taking the piss on my Facebook that your hamster was only minutes from being declared a goner.’
‘Yeah…I still can’t believe I found her,’
‘That was bloody lucky, but two days later Anthony posted a video clip for the new film G-Force.’
‘So what?’
‘I now realise, the film isn’t even about hamsters at all. G-Force is about Guinea-pigs. The only reason I thought it was about hamsters was because he said it was about hamsters. He’d manufactured another coincidence, but fucked it up without realising it.’
The waitress placed the food on the table and I let it all drop for a bit. I listened to Maddy talk – there was never a dull moment in their house.
Back out on the street, we decided to take a browse round the boutiques. Maddy spotted a black padded jacket she liked in one of the windows, it was a bit of a twist on a Barbour – it would look great with jeans.
‘Lets go in…try it on,’ I offered.
‘Okay – but I told myself that I wouldn’t spend any money today,’ she laughed.
Luckily the jacket was way too big for her but we continued talking as we browsed the rails.
‘If Anthony does email Nell Gwyn, then you and Lorna could come with me…I bought three tickets and it will give me a reason to go to Surrey,’ I said, holding a black dress against my body. I liked the sheer sleeves and the way it was tucked in at the waist.
‘Steve really will kill me…you know his take on infidelity, ever since his first wife left him…would you seriously go?’
‘I don’t know…I really want to. Do you like this dress?’ I said still holding it.
‘Yeah, I do actually,’ she took it from me for a closer inspection.
‘But that’s why I’ve bought myself time with an alias. This way, if he really does want me there he will email those tickets to Nell Gwyn…if he doesn’t want me, then Nell Gwyn will never get an email with the tickets…the ball is back in his court so to speak.’
Maddy was standing in front of the mirror now holding the dress against her.
‘It would suit you,’ I said, while standing behind her, seeing it from the reflection.
‘Hmm…’
‘Do you fancy going fifty-fifty on this dress?’
‘Okay – that’s cool – we’ll share it. So…when is this charity day again?’
‘Late August.’
‘This could be as interesting as Steve’s trial day. Just the thought of it makes me wince.’
I considered this quite a good response to my actions. I was half expecting her to rip my head off, like she normally did, and start ramming the virtues of moral behaviour down my throat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Something had been bugging me all morning, ever since I’d double-checked the official entry form for my two big tax exams in June. It was still five weeks away, but there was something I was missing about the dates.
I sat at the table, grabbed the newspaper, and just as I was about to take a bite out of a sandwich, the phone rang. I debated whether to pick up.
‘I only half-expected you to answer,’ Richard said. ‘Only ringing to see if you’ve heard about the MPs?’
‘No…what about them?’
‘They’ve been fiddling their expenses; ripping off the taxpayer with the looks of it. False accounting basically,’ he said and I heard myself laugh with him.
Clearly the news hadn’t hit the newspapers yet, or at least not the one that I was looking at.
‘Fiddling the taxpayer…false accounting…it’s a dangerous fine line between that and some of the stuff that Steve’s been arrested for,’ I said. ‘When is Steve’s trial again?’ I snapped at Richard.
‘I’m not sure…why? It’s in my diary.’
‘I need to know now.’
‘Why is it so important?’
‘Please…just get it for me,’
I could hear pages being flipped over. Then the sound stopped.
‘It’s on the 18th of June.’
‘Oh noooo.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘It is the same day as one of my exams! I promised I’d be there for them,’ I wanted to scream with sheer frustration.
‘You don’t have to miss the exam. Stop getting yourself in a flap over it. We both promised Maddy, and I will still be there for her. Her dad will be there, Lorna and Bruce will be there. I’m sure she’ll understand. You’re being too hard on yourself.’
‘I did promise and now I’m going to let her down because of these stupid exams.’
‘That’s life sometimes,’ Richard said calmly. ‘Anyway, changing the subject, have you spoken to your mum yet about them looking after William and Elyse so we can have a weekend away? I was thinking of Paris via the Euro Tunnel.’
A flash bulb went off in my head…we’d have to go from London and that’s where Anthony has his rehearsal studios!
I’d now completely lost my motivation. Thinking about letting people down I cared about made me think of the betrayal involved in spending a sneaky day with Anthony Hope. Would getting him out of my system be better for my relationship with Richard in the long term? I pondered this for what must have been the thousandth time. I wanted to know if my fate was to spend that day with him – how many times in your life do you get the chance to go up in a hot air balloon with the man of your dreams and get to wear a beautiful dress at the same time?
I found myself reaching out to the angel. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t try the automatic writing thing again, but then I wasn’t very good at keeping promises of late.
But it would either give me that answer I needed, or for my own sanity, prove everything else it had thrown up as nothing more than a coincidence – just like Steve’s trial date landing on the same day as my exam.
I breathed calmly for a few minutes, until I felt light-headed, almost like I was floating. I let the pen in my left hand take over. It was only when it was no longer compelled to move that I re-opened my eyes to look at the squiggle before me.
I placed the paper down and leaned back, then leaned forward towards my laptop, minimised my study notes, and clicked on Google.
I typed into my search bar: Greek symbols.
I simply thought about the Greek Gematria which had cropped up before – at least it was a starting point.
There was a poster with a range of Greek symbols, I enlarged it, but none of the symbols looked remotely lik
e the squiggle on the paper next to my laptop. I clicked back a page and clicked on a document showing the Greek alphabet. I scrolled down the letters but could see nothing which exactly fitted my drawing. But I looked long and hard at the sixth letter of the alphabet – Zeta.
I held up my paper again.
I flipped it over and used the light shining through the shutters to show the image in reverse through the paper. I looked back at the Zeta symbol on my screen, then back to my paper again. My drawing was like the Zeta symbol in reverse.
Why is everything I draw always in reverse?
Before dismissing it as rubbish, I needed to know if there was a link between Zeta and Lewis Carroll.
This seemed a pretty logical link in light of everything else that had happened in recent months. I quickly typed this into the search bar.
The word Zeta threw up tons of articles, most of which were on the actress, Catherine Zeta Jones, but there was one cached result that caught my eye.
42 (number) – WIKIPEDIA, the free encyclopaedia
Lewis Carroll made repeated use of this number in his writings…..A conjecture for the sixth power moment of the Riemann Zeta-Function……
En.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number)-cached-similar
I wasn’t sure which line of text to deal with first but opted for the Riemann Zeta-Function because I’d never heard of it.
I typed in Riemann Zeta-Function + Lewis Carroll this time.
My eyes were drawn to an article in THE SEED magazine. I opened up the document.
It was an article stating that mathematicians had found a link between prime numbers and quantum physics, and it had been written three years earlier. The mere mention of quantum physics meant I already knew this article was likely to be as clear as mud, but I forced myself to continue.
I was confused because when I was at school 42 wasn’t a prime number. The article seemed serious enough, not some kind of intellectual joke flying over the top of my head – or maybe it was and I was just too thick to get it. I scribbled down the writer’s name: Marcus du Sautoy and planned to check him out.
My eyes scanned the article searching for more references to 42.
I found a paragraph which basically said that the first two numbers in the Riemann Zeta-Function are one and two. But mathematicians now think that the third number is 42.
I scrolled up to the top of the article, trying to read it more closely, but getting no nearer to understanding it.
I scrolled back down to the bottom of the article, to see if the final paragraph summed it up in layman’s terms. It wasn’t layman enough for me. But still curious I typed in Zeta + unsolved mathematical puzzle
This popped up:
A million dollar prize for the unsolved Zeta Riemann hypothesis
If my ghostly, spirit visitor was Lewis Carroll, then he certainly had a very wicked sense of humour.
I’d been led from a simple little quadratic equation, straight on to the hardest unsolved mathematical problem in the world; which could just so happen unlock the mathematical key to the universe – the so called Holy Grail of maths.
But it also had a much needed cash prize attached to it – considering I only had a GCSE in maths I had no chance of solving it.
I decided to read a little about Marcus du Sautoy. He is a professor based at Oxford University, just like Lewis Carroll had once been.
Realising that I was sending myself on another crazy trail, I folded my laptop screen down, and attempted to turn my attention back to my study. I pulled over my textbook and sat staring, glazed-eyed at the next exercise, but my head was still involuntarily ticking away at Zeta and the link with quantum physics.
I blinked hard, and then re-opened the laptop. This time I typed in Zeta + planet.
I amused myself with all sorts of cranky articles about Planet X, Nibiru and aliens called Sumerians and Anunnaki who were supposedly living a clandestine life among us. There was even stuff on the Net claiming that Jesus was an alien. Suddenly, what I was doing didn’t feel quite so crazy in comparison to some of stuff posted online.
But then I found myself drawn to several references to the Mayan calendar and the end of the world in 2012.
There were literally thousands of different articles discussing things like polar shifts, black holes, solar storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis.
I sat back.
Mayans. DOTD is celebrated by the Mexicans at Halloween. I’d printed loads of stuff about it a few months back; there were two other symbols I’d drawn in there too: a spiral and delta. But still hadn’t really sussed them because they were too vague like pieces from a bigger jigsaw I hadn’t got.
I sat and re-read through some of the pages to double-check I was right and I was.
Next, I looked back at my laptop and typed in: Mayan calendar 2012.
The Mayan calendar ends on the 21st December 2012 at 11:11 after 5125 years.
5125, I whispered.
If that was rounded down it would be 5120 - the same three digits in the quadratic equation.
My head absorbed, then it computed - in 2012 I’ll be 42.
I remembered something else I’d read on the Internet, on some site about biblical numbers.
I picked up my calculator and typed in 37 x 42, looked at the answer, that wasn’t it, so I tried again, this time I keyed in 37 x 24, as in Zeta reversed, like my drawing was reversed.
888 sat in the window on the calculator. I stared at it. I couldn’t believe it. Why is this number repeatedly cropping up?
Was the world going to end at 11:11 on the 21/12/2012?
Was this why the resurrection of the novel Anthony Hope had the seven moved to eight, and why the zero or nought, should move to one respectively?
I recalled previous articles I’d read on number 1 or multiples of 1 being master numbers.
But If I am going to die in 2012, along with everyone else, does that mean I might as well jump at the chance with Anthony now, while I still can?
Before I got myself ready to do the school run, I checked the email account I’d set up for Nell Gwyn – but other than a welcome to my new account there had been nothing else sent to it.
‘Did you know William, that if you fall down a hole at any point, it takes precisely 42 minutes to fall through it,’ I glanced at him in the rear mirror.
‘What?’
‘Whether you fall from England to New Zealand, or England to New York, or Canada to England, or England to Spain and so on…it’s always 42 minutes, regardless.’
‘Cool…did you bring us any chocolate?’
‘Yes. You know the man who wrote Alice in Wonderland? His favourite number was 42. And guess what? He wrote about it taking 42 minutes to fall down a hole in another one of his books. That was way before anyone on the entire planet knew that 42 minutes was really how long it would take to fall through the earth. Lewis Carroll did it without any calculation. Isn’t that amazing?’
‘Yeah…can I play football before I do my homework?’
‘My friend at school is called Alice,’ Elyse chirped.
‘Your grandma wanted me to call you Alice, but William and Daddy liked the name Ellie – so that’s why you are called Elyse. It made us all happy.’
‘Can I have a hamster…that would make me very happy,’ said William.
‘No…for the billionth time.’
‘But Henry’s got one.’
‘So you keep telling me.’
‘I want a hamsteeeeer,’ Elyse wailed.
‘Want, don’t get Elyse,’ I reminded.
I turned to Richard over dinner…
‘Did you know that a rainbow always appears at an angle of 42 degrees?’
‘No…did you ask your mum about the weekend break? And did you speak to Maddy?’
‘Not yet…did you know that in Kabalistic tradition 42 means ein sof as in infinite or endless,’ I said, while wrapping spaghetti round my fork.
‘I don’t really care. When are you going
to speak to your mum?’ he said, then took a sip of red wine.
‘Well – did you know that I’ll be 42 in 2012 when the world might end…?’
‘No…I didn’t, but if the world is about to end, can you get on with phoning your mother. Are you sure you want to us to get away together? And can you please get round to changing the light bulbs in the study – I would do it myself if you hadn’t bought such ridiculous lights - they are too fiddly for my fingers.’
‘I’ll get everything sorted…I promise…and besides there are other views that say that 2012 is the end of the Mayan calendar and it will be the official start of a new improved world of transparency where our psychic abilities will increasingly develop. I found bits and pieces on the Net about angels and spirits supposedly working among us to help us through this transitional phase – that could be why I was tapped on the shoulder on Halloween…it’s all part of some spiritual awakening and ascension or something…what do you think?’
‘Just phone your mother.’
Those more than a mile high must leave the court – rule 42.
I decided to stay quiet about a discussion on Exodus 26, where the linen curtains made from goat hair covering the tabernacle have a length of 42 feet. The Holy of the Holies where the Ten Commandments were scribbled down on stone tablets…one of which I was contemplating breaking with Anthony Hope.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Steve’s trial and my tax exam were soon upon us.
Guilt was still sitting heavily on my shoulders about not being there for them, even though Maddy had been really understanding about it. It must have been hard for her, considering her view on my studies.
I’d spent most of the afternoon floating round the house like the spare part in a play, waiting for news to come in from the court. I took a quick call from mum, who wanted to know how my exam had gone. I reminded her about Steve, her least favourite person.
‘If he has done wrong…he should pay…had your dad done more work for Steve, he could have cost us our livelihood…’ she said.
‘I know that, but they’re my friends and I don’t like to see them suffer either. There’s far more good in Steve than bad. And if people hadn’t screwed him over he probably wouldn’t have done it to others…’
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