The Seed Collectors (15 page)

‘You do know that the chair of the committee is literally insane?’

More big eyes. A tiny giggle.

‘And that the last student rep ended up on tranquillisers after having to attend a FIVE-HOUR faculty USC meeting with him and then explain to him afterwards what had happened because he: a) doesn’t understand any kind of data at all, whether it’s presented numerically, graphically or in some other format; b) can’t read without at least four pairs of glasses; c) can’t hear anything; and d) is always drunk.’

Another minuscule giggle, like a doll hiccupping. ‘I really don’t . . .’

‘I’m probably exaggerating a bit, but only a little bit. Save yourself!’

The hiccupping stops and now the huge eyes drop to the floor. ‘OK, look. I’ll be honest. There is something else.’

‘Yes?’

She reaches in her bag for a tissue. ‘It’s just . . . well . . . I’m supposed to get involved in more things because I don’t have any friends.’

‘How is that possible?’

If she was his daughter he would KILL, yes, KILL anyone who did not want to be her friend.

A fragile smile. ‘Well, no
real
friends. I mean, not any more.’

‘Because?’

‘And my doctor says I’m suffering mild depression.’

‘But why?’

‘It was like a drug thing. It doesn’t matter. MDMA.’

‘Right.’

‘And I . . .’

‘What?’

‘Well, I sort of tried to kill myself.’

Ollie is surprised by how he finds himself feeling about this. Does he laugh? No, you can’t laugh at someone who has just said they tried to commit suicide. As a conversational moment, though, it is unexpected, and moments like that do make one laugh, or scream, or gasp, or something. If this conversation were a walk along some cliffs then it is as if Ollie has gone too close to the edge and . . . Or is it that she, Charlotte May Miller, has gone too close to the edge, and he is watching and he . . . ? But of course if he was watching he would be the one to save her, or shout something to her or, let’s be honest, not let her go anywhere near clifftops at all. A series of images go through Ollie’s mind: her seminar group without her; her funeral; finding someone to blame (the doctor? Could the antidepressants have caused this?) and then KILLING them; talking to the press; crying at
night because you can do all sorts of things to students but you can’t actually LOSE them; they cannot DIE. Then it all clears and Ollie has something like a pure orgasm of sadness. It moves through him in a rush of hot authenticity that is unlike anything he has ever felt before. He wants to cry. He still, stupidly, wants to laugh. He also wants to hit Charlotte May Miller, really to beat her quite violently, for making him feel this way.

‘What made you contemplate something so stupid?’ he says.

‘Just, like, a bad combination of drugs. MDMA comedown plus antidepressants plus some pill that someone gave me to try to help but actually made it worse.’

‘Who gave you this pill?’

‘I don’t know. I was pretty out of it.’

The sadness orgasm starts again, somewhere in Ollie’s toes. He literally can’t bear to have this conversation any more. He imagines this girl, this pure, beautiful, shiny girl, being so ‘out of it’ that ‘someone’ could give her ‘a pill’ and she could know hardly anything about it. What else did this ‘someone’ do to her? You’d be able to do anything to anyone who was in that state, rag-dolled and pathetic on some nightclub toilet floor, or on someone’s horrible sticky sofa.

‘What did your parents say about this?’

Her eyes crawl somewhere off under Ollie’s desk. ‘They don’t know.’

‘But how . . .’

‘And you can’t tell them. I’m over eighteen.’

Ollie can’t take much more of this. There’s only one thing for it.

He smiles. ‘And you really think USC is the answer? USC has made plenty of people . . .’ suicidal. Boom, boom! But you can’t really joke about suicide, can you? You can’t joke about suicide to someone who has recently given it quite a good try. ‘Uh, depressed. USC is a very, very depressing committee.’

‘You’ll be there.’

‘That is true. And look, I mean, do you have anyone grown up and sensible you can go to when things like this happen?’

‘It won’t happen again.’

‘But if it does.’

‘I’ve got an older sister, but she’s about to give birth, like, any minute.’

‘And you really can’t tell your parents?’

‘I could, but they said if they ever found out I did drugs they’d take away my car.’

‘Right.’

‘Well . . .’

‘Look, can I give you my number? In case you do need someone.’

‘No, honestly.’

‘Please. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you and I could have helped.’

‘Are you sure? I mean I won’t need it, but . . .’

Ollie gives her his mobile number. She immediately missed-calls him so he has hers too. In his mind Ollie goes back to Charlotte May’s funeral scene, with someone asking him if he suspected anything. ‘Yes, I knew all about it,’ he is saying. ‘I even gave her my mobile number just in case, and I told her she could call it day or night, but she never did. She never fucking did.’

Izzy is not in her office. Izzy is not in the tea room. Charlie eventually finds her in the Herbarium, looking through old broomrape specimens.

‘Oh, come
on
,’ he says, when she glares at him. Why are women always glaring at him? ‘
What
?’ More glaring. But she agrees to accompany him to the Palm House, which even people who work at Kew have to agree is romantic. Charlie’s favourite glasshouse is the Princess
of Wales Conservatory, because of the orchids. But he does not want to be distracted by orchids today. He finds it bizarrely exciting that Izzy is so cross with him. She is cross with him in such a way that she is making a thing of it. If she really hated him she would surely just ignore him. She would certainly not make a thing of it.

‘Nicola is very vulnerable,’ she is saying now.

‘So am I!’

‘You are not vulnerable. I cannot think of anyone less vulnerable.’

Above them, one of the palms is in the final stages of hapaxanthy. It’s very beautiful but also a little sad, like a young princess who has decided to wear all her dead mother’s jewels at the same time. In a couple of weeks it will be dead too.

‘Well, there are things you don’t know about me.’

‘What things?’

‘Just things.’

Izzy sighs. ‘You’re going to have to phone her.’

‘I’ll drop her a text later.’

‘If you don’t phone her, I will never speak to you again.’

Somewhere in the world there is a magical book. What does this book do? It simply changes itself to become the book you most need at this point in your life. If you are poor, perhaps it transforms into a very expensive book. But this is unlikely, because your soul knows of all the things you really need, and it is unlikely that wealth will be the most pressing thing. Does such a book really exist? Of course, it is impossible to tell for sure. And even if you had it, it would be so easy to lose and more or less impossible to find again. What would you search for on eBay? To you it is one particularly essential book; to me, something else. If I gave it to you as a gift I would not even know what I was giving you. Not that anyone in their right mind
would give such a valuable book away. Or maybe they would. Maybe, once enlightened, which of course does not just mean seeing the light but also becoming lighter and less weighed down, they would leave it on a bus. How long would it stay there? It would not look like a magic book. It would look . . . off-putting religious? Dull? Perhaps even too light? Maybe it would be
The Seagull
by Chekhov. Perhaps it would be a book of spells. Perhaps it would be
A Course in Miracles
. The
Upanishads
. If you have ever not picked up a book left behind on a bus, it is almost certain that you ignored The Book. You ignored your destiny. You ignored your chance to get out of this bloody universe once and for all. But that’s what most of us spend every lifetime doing, so it’s no big deal. But just imagine if you found the book. What would it look like? Would you even know you were reading it?

Bryony really needs a potato.

Don’t think about it; just eat the potato. Don’t beat yourself up about it; just eat the potato. Don’t tell yourself ‘I’m a worthless, gigantic sack of lard’; just eat the potato
. That’s what the book said, pretty much. It was very comforting, and also solved a lot of the mysteries about Bryony’s life. Does Bryony, when faced with a plate of freshly cooked chocolate chip biscuits (the book said ‘cookies’, but whatever) that are still warm: a) act cool; b) not eat any if she is not hungry; or c) bruise her mouth by stuffing them in so fast that she can hardly breathe? We all know the answer, but the
reason
, according to the potato book, is that Bryony is addicted to sugar. It’s not her fault if she’s a fat, nervous wreck: she, like all Americans (the book only covers Americans, but Bryony assumes it’s the same for people from Kent) is addicted to sugar, the silent white killer, which . . . Hang on.
Is
she a nervous wreck? Not exactly, but she is fat and she would eat the chocolate chip cookies, which is two out of three, and that
means she has to have a potato now. There is a very long process that Bryony should have gone through before getting to the potato stage: roughly a month of small lifestyle and dietary changes until she is more or less carb-free during the day. She should also have stopped drinking for several weeks, and certainly not had a bottle of Côtes du Rhône while reading the book.

The book only arrived today, but Bryony read it the way she would eat the fictional cookies, and so can’t remember a lot of it. She does remember though, she was supposed to eat breakfast (
tick!
she always eats breakfast) and have lots of snacks (
tick!
Bryony always manages to snack). Anyway, it’s bedtime, which means potato time, because a potato before bed gets your serotonin going or something Bryony can’t remember but basically WHO WOULDN’T WANT A POTATO BEFORE BED? Bryony is prepared to cook a potato (well, let’s say
some
potatoes, because no one normal cooks just one potato) from scratch, but it turns out that there are still some roast potatoes in the fridge from last weekend. Because of Bryony’s diet, she hasn’t eaten any of them. But that was before she found out that they will actually help her lose weight. Bryony knows that each of these potatoes is at least 100 calories, and with the goose fat James cooked them in probably more like 200. But who gives a fuck about silly numbers when what you want is more (or is it less?) serotonin. She puts four – no, five – in a bowl. While they heat up in the microwave, she cuts some cheese (which she doesn’t weigh, but is around 150g, which is another 500 calories).

James comes in.

‘You still hungry?’ he says. ‘Didn’t you like your dinner?’

‘Of course I liked it. It was lovely.’

Because Bryony is on a diet, James has started using more organic chicken breasts and other lean cuts from the butcher. Tonight they had Moroccan chicken stew with apricots and pomegranate seeds, served with giant couscous from a women’s cooperative somewhere
in the Middle East. Holly only ate the apricots and the pomegranate seeds. But the others did seem to like it. James doesn’t say anything. The remains of the stew are still in the pan on the stove, but now cool enough to clingfilm and put in the fridge along with all the other leftovers that James is always trying to persuade the rest of his family to take to work or school in lunchboxes.