The Transition

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‘We’ll keep this quick,’ said Stu. He held the envelopes out to Karl.

Karl found it hard to move his arms from his sides; it was as if an important pulley system had snapped.

‘What are these?’

‘We want you both to read a newspaper,’ said Stu. He sat on the end of the bed and Janna sat down against the wall.

‘We’ve got you subscriptions,’ said Janna. ‘To The Guardian and The Telegraph. Every day.’

‘Every day?’

‘You get up an hour early and you read them both, quickly, cover to cover, then swap. Get into the habit. It’s like keeping an allotment.’

‘I’ve tried to read newspapers,’ said Karl, rubbing his left eye. ‘It doesn’t feel like they’re for me.’

‘And that’s the problem,’ said Stu. ‘You need to be an active participant in society. We got the paper editions because the symbolism is important – you could just read it all on your tablets, but I want you to think about your parents, and how serious they seemed when they were behind newspapers.’

‘It’s not that we’re not interested in what happens in the world,’ said Genevieve. ‘Really it’s just that I’m busy or I would read one. At least once a week.’

‘But you’re apolitical.’

‘I’m disillusioned.’

‘No,’ said Stu. ‘The problem you’ve got is that you don’t feel worthy of newspapers. Be honest. A part of you still feels that newspapers are for grown-ups and that you’re not grown-ups.’

‘Look at this,’ said Karl. He had been rifling through The Guardian to the property section and had now folded it on Bargain of the Week, a two-bedroom flat for £1.2 million. ‘This is supposed to be the newspaper for intelligent poor people,’ he said, ‘but we’re completely unrepresented. Newspapers are written for the wealthiest fraction of a fraction of society.’

‘We spend most of our lives living in a fantasy of the future we think we deserve,’ said Janna.

‘This is part of the programme,’ said Stu. ‘This is something you have to trust us on. Try it for the next couple of weeks. You read the papers first thing. We discuss home and international news over breakfast. Deal?’

‘If we can talk about X-Men comic books over dinner,’ said Karl.

‘Okay, second nag,’ said Janna. ‘Teeth. Has either one of you ever been to a dental hygienist?’

‘How does that differ from a dentist?’ said Karl.

‘It’s like the difference between a doctor and a coroner,’ said Stu. ‘Not even joking.’

‘We are incredibly backward about teeth in this country,’ said Janna. ‘It’s seen as separate from health. Most of the population, they might as well be walking around with radioactive waste in their mouths. Name any disease: your teeth and your gums can give it to you. Do you floss?’

‘No.’

‘Genevieve?’

‘Once.’

‘Why did you stop?’

‘I meant once in my life. It was horrible.’

‘Okay. We’ll start with flossing. There’s a complete guide on your tablets with films.’

‘I can’t believe this is part of The Transition,’ said Karl.

‘There’s very little point in any of this if you’re not even taking care of your own mouth,’ said Janna.

12 (#ulink_b23b3326-94f4-5259-99dc-42a134e9e24c)

6 A.M. KARL’S tablet played the theme from Super Mario Bros. 3 and Genevieve’s played Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2, very loud. A fresh copy of The Guardian and of The Telegraph lay at the top of the ladder.

‘You know the servants used to iron the newspaper for the master of the house?’ said Karl, rubbing his eyes and dropping The Telegraph on top of Genevieve.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Because it was crinkly, I guess. Which do you want to start with?’

‘Ugh,’ said Genevieve. ‘I don’t even care about myself in the morning, let alone the bloody world.’

Soon, though, they were talking about a fire in a National Trust property which had destroyed a gargantuan cache of Pre-Raphaelite paintings; the unusually high temperatures on the Continent; and the cultural tensions between the French- and German-speaking citizens of Switzerland, and were able to continue the conversation over breakfast with Janna and Stu.

‘You really need to start with the decline of the Roman Empire to understand the situation,’ said Stu, taking a bite of croissant. ‘The original population were Helvetic Celts.’

‘I’m pretty sure that’s a font,’ said Janna.

Once he was alone in the house, Karl took to reviewing a retro-look anti-SAD desk lamp with unusual enthusiasm. It was fun having opinions about things. Also, he had been keeping up the press-ups, trying to do ten every hour so that he could hit the ground running in Stu’s next workout. The tension in his chest muscles was a novelty, and when he dropped the paperclip he was fiddling with and leaned out of his chair to pick it up, his stomach didn’t feel like a balloon he was trying to fold in half. It hurt, certainly, but it was a new kind of pain, an earned pain. ‘This lamp is the Switzerland of desk apparatus,’ he wrote.

He checked Study Sherpas© and found that someone called Cynthia Palmer needed an A-level coursework essay on contemporary British fiction. ‘Really need an A*’ was her only communiqué. A-level essays were a cinch – he could ace them in an hour while talking to someone on the phone. Karl spun the fruit machine in his head, tapped out a title – ‘A Comparison of Representations of Masculinity in the work of Martin Amis and Ian McEwan’ – and brought up three novels apiece on eBeW.

After three hours he had finished the essay and four reviews and thirty press-ups, in spite of thinking about his Polaroid of Genevieve. He started to consider his position. It meant that Janna and Stu were snooping and, well, so was he. It meant that either Stu or Janna was looking for some kind of an edge. Or fancied his wife. Or had designs on his wife of some kind. Or it was part of The Transition which would later be revealed to him. Or Stu was a bigger perv than he was, and Genevieve was his wife, dammit, and that was his photo of her awesome body. Karl stood up and started pacing from his study to the bedroom and back again. That’s the problem with self-respect, he thought. You start to feel offended when someone insults you.

He completed eight circuits of the room and the study. He was an inveterate pacer. Genevieve said it was the only reason he wasn’t fat. He stopped in the bedroom, looked out of the window and decided to channel his irritation into some more press-ups. He hit the floor, staring straight ahead at the foot of the bed. One … Two … The familiar pulsing in his temples. Three … Four …

Something caught his eye. The word NOT was carved in tiny letters into the foot of the bed, next to a rough downward pointing arrow.

‘Not?’ said Karl, out loud.

He started patting the floor under the bed, feeling under the bed frame. He stuck his head under the bed. He turned on the tablet for light and slid it under with him. not_all_transition.com was carved into one of the wooden slats under the mattress.

Karl put www.not_all_transition.com into his tablet, and the screen went white. He hit refresh and the same thing happened. Then it told him that the connection had timed out. The second time it told him that the site was unavailable, and then the screen froze. He made a mental note to check in an internet cafe. There were still internet cafes, presumably.

He restarted the tablet. When it came back on, the screen was prompting him to complete his 500-word journal from last night or lose a merit point. He texted Keston.

– Favour to ask you.

The reply felt almost implausibly instant:

– Anything for my favourite screw-up.

– That was quick. Bored much?

– I’m at work. This is one of eight conversations I’m having, mother. <PICTURE OF OWN JUNK>