Going Loco by Lynne Truss Page A

science book of 1995, a million copies sold to babes in arms”,’ he snarled. ‘Pah! Look. “I couldn’t put it down – Sooty”.’
    Viv wondered whether he was going to confide his theory about Stefan, but it looked as if he wasn’t. Since she could hardly explain how she happened to know already, she would just have to wait until he told her, and then act surprised.
    ‘Why don’t you phone Stefan if you want to know about genetics?’ she said, therefore. ‘He knows all about it.’
    ‘Oh yeah, very funny,’ snapped Jago.
    ‘Why?’
    Caught out, Jago bit his lip and thought fast. ‘Someone from the letters desk said Richard Branson is the Antichrist today. Can you believe that? The things people will say.’
    ‘Mm,’ said Viv. As they made their way to the kitchen, she hoped she was better at lying than her husband was. Jago was not only sweaty and jumpy but an obituary of Stefan was sticking out of his pocket, and he’d brought home a copy of a sensational American weekly paper, opened at the page ‘Ten Ways to Tell if Your Grandparent is a Clone’.
    ‘I think Linda’s defected,’ said Viv.
    ‘Shame,’ said Jago, who didn’t care. He had poured himself a drink. ‘Listen to this,’ he said. ‘“Ten ways to tell if yourgrandparent is a clone. One. Sleeps fewer hours than you do. Two. Sometimes gets confused about things that happened relatively recently, yet claims to have personal memories of the Second World War. Three—” Do you think this is on the level?’
    ‘I was talking about Linda,’ insisted Viv. ‘She said she’d still come on Thursday, but I feel she’s gone. So you need to know the consequences.’
    Jago nodded. He wasn’t listening.
    ‘Ten ways to tell that your wife is inconsolably upset,’ Viv persisted. ‘One. She doesn’t speak to her oldest friend Belinda ever again. Two. She resigns her job at the hospital.’
    ‘Three?’ he said automatically, then looked up. ‘What?’ he said. ‘You resigned your job?’
    ‘I rang them today. I’ve resigned. I’m not going back.’
    ‘Don’t you think that’s a little extreme? We could replace Linda, for heaven’s sake.’
    Viv laughed. ‘I doubt it.’
    Jago put down his weekly paper and coughed. ‘Viv, I’ve got something to tell you,’ he said. ‘I came home one day when Linda was supposed to be here, and I saw you putting the washing out when you should have been at work.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So, I never thought Linda really did much, and I’m glad she’s gone. I think she had some kind of a hold over you.’
    Viv was stricken. It was true. Life had been much simpler before Linda came along and streamlined it. But she felt no duty to tell Jago the full story, because Jago had cheerfully never absorbed a full story in his life. Even at undergraduate level, he was only really interested in headlines. ‘Blind Puritan Pens Mega Poem’ was his level, mostly. ‘Queen Is Faerie Shock.’ When she’d first needed to tell him she was pregnant, she’d left him a note with ‘Wife Up Duff Blunder’ on it. And when Stefan announced his engagement to Belinda, she’d wrestledfor hours with variants of ‘Norwegian Wooed’ before admitting to herself it would never quite come right.
    ‘“Char In Mystery Job Whammy”,’ she said, for his benefit, now. ‘“‘I Never Knew,’ Says Husband.”’
    At ten thirty, as Belinda and Stefan snuggled on the sofa, the phone rang. It was Virginia. Stefan answered it and came back.
    ‘Your mother wanted to let us know she’d had a rattling good time at the opera with Linda,’ he reported, pouring his wife the last of the wine. ‘She said Linda was very appreciative and attentive and didn’t keep telling her what to think of it, like some people she could mention.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Belinda. ‘Well, that’s good.’
    ‘She also said it was nice to go out with someone who didn’t keep squirming in their seat.’
    ‘That’s my mother.’
    Stefan looked at her.