Jonathan Coe - Number 11

— Handsworth — Winson Green — Bearwood —

And this, essentially, was why Val was now being careful never to turn her radiators up higher than 2 and was choosing to ride round and round the outer circle on the Number 11 bus rather than go home to her chilly living room. But at the same time, she couldn’t help thinking about the traders and fund managers whose activities had brought the banks to the brink of collapse: were many of them, she wondered, being careful to keep their radiators turned down to 2? It didn’t seem very likely.

— Bearwood — Harborne — Selly Oak —

The thought made her angry and depressed. The fact that she was angry and depressed made her feel guilty. It couldn’t be much fun for Alison, living with a mother who was angry and depressed all the time. What could she do to stop herself from feeling angry and depressed?

— Selly Oak — Cotteridge — Kings Heath —

Last night she had watched a TV panel show where a popular comedian, Mickey Parr, had gone off on a satirical riff about bankers still getting bonuses even after the banks had had to be bailed out by the government, and the studio audience had been in stitches. They all seemed to think the situation was hilarious. Val had sat on the sofa with her glass of Pinot Grigio and watched the routine through a puzzled frown. Why did people think it was funny? Why did it not make them angry and depressed?

— Kings Heath — Hall Green — Acocks Green — Yardley

She was still pondering that one as the bus reached her stop at last, after a longer than usual journey of two hours and forty minutes. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Before getting off she hesitated very briefly, wondering if she should stay on for another circuit, but even Val realized that would be a step too far. So she disembarked and went straight to the supermarket, to try and find something different (but cheap) that she and Alison could have for dinner. It was on the short walk home from there that her mobile rang, heralding the call from Cheryl that would transform her life.

*

Alison had been to the pub with Selena again, and was late home. It was after 9.30 when she let herself in. She went into the kitchen and found that her mother’s shopping was still sitting unpacked on the kitchen table. From the living room she could hear the sound of the television.

She picked out the first thing she could find in the shopping bag. It was a small plastic packet, on the front of which were the words ‘HAPPEE CHICKEN BITES’, accompanied by a cartoon picture of a purple chicken with a cheeky smile on its face, biting its own leg off. Alison turned the packet over and read the small print at the bottom. ‘Manufactured by Sunbeam Foods’, it said. ‘Part of the Brunwin Group’.

She took the packet into the living room. ‘What is this, Mum? Are you taking the piss or something?’

Val jumped to her feet. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to contact you for hours.’

‘Sorry, my phone battery ran out.’ She was almost having to shout over the sound of the television, it was turned up so loud. ‘Can you mute that? Why are you watching that shit anyway?’

Val was watching a famous reality show, in which a dozen celebrities were flown off to the Australian jungle and had to survive there for two weeks, while the viewing public voted them off the programme one by one. It wasn’t the kind of show she would have bothered with in the past, but nowadays it seemed she would watch almost anything.

‘Why am I watching it?’ Val turned and pointed at the screen. Her face was flushed, her pointing finger was shaking. ‘You want to know why I’m watching it? I’m watching it because I’m going to be on it .’

Her eyes were wide with an excitement she was waiting for Alison to reciprocate. But the words she had just spoken made no sense to her daughter. Alison recognized them all, individually, but her brain could not put them together into a meaningful sentence.

‘What are you talking about?’ was all she could say.

‘Cheryl rang up this afternoon. I thought it might be about the song, but … anyway, this is nearly as good. They want me to go on the show. This show .’

After opening and closing her mouth ineffectually a few more times, Alison managed to ask: ‘When?’

‘The day after tomorrow,’ said Val, and laughed wildly. ‘I know. It’s amazing, isn’t it? They want to bring someone new in halfway through the series and the person they’d booked has dropped out. So they called Cheryl and said they were desperate to find someone and she suggested me.’

‘Desperate?’

‘Well … no, that wasn’t the word. Anxious, or something. It might have been desperate. I don’t know. Anyway, that’s not the point. In three days’ time, I’m going to be in that camp. With those people.’

Alison stared at her mother, utterly nonplussed. In fact neither of them could speak, now: but the moment of release, when it finally came, was euphoric. It wasn’t long before they found themselves shrieking with excitement, and dancing together around the room until Val lost her balance, fell heavily against her daughter’s artificial leg and they collapsed on to the sofa in a heap, tears of joy running down their faces.

Val sat in the middle of her hammock, trying to get used to its wobble, trying to keep her balance. She looked around her at the camp. She didn’t know what time it was: mid-afternoon, maybe. It was difficult to keep track, since none of them were allowed to wear watches. Most of her campmates were asleep, or trying to sleep at least. There was nothing much else to do in this heat. Edith, the elderly soap star, was flat on her back, one arm dangling over the edge of her hammock, snoring gently. Roger, the celebrity TV historian, was curled into a foetal position with his back to her, a river of sweat visible through his shorts at the cleft of his buttocks. Pete, the genial reality TV star from Manchester, had one hand on his crotch and the other behind his head. Only Danielle, the endlessly lovely, the beautiful Danielle, seemed to be keeping her composure and her dignity. She lay on her back, perfectly still, her hands folded on her belly, breathing evenly, the only traces of sweat being a few beads on the upper slopes of her breasts which did nothing but add to her carefully tousled allure. Her tan was smooth and even and she seemed to have applied concealer to the two or three mosquito bites on her face and neck, despite the nominal ban on make-up in the camp. She had a way of getting around these things.

For her own part, Val felt like shit, and knew that she probably looked it as well. Before arriving here she had resolved always to look her best for the cameras, but had already given up on that idea. Really, would anyone care what she looked like? The important thing — as Alison had said — was to ‘be yourself, because then everyone will like you’. That, and to make sure that she got to sing ‘Sink and Swim’ to the show’s ten million viewers at some point. Although the last thing she felt like doing, at this moment, was bursting into song.

It wasn’t that she was jetlagged, exactly. The worst of the jetlag, she was told, would kick in after the journey back to England. This was simply a profound sense of disorientation. Five days ago she had been at home in Yardley, a place she had not left — apart from a few days’ holiday here and there, always with Alison, always within the British Isles — for several years. But an incredible amount had happened in those last five days. So much so that now, already, she could hardly remember the events in sequence. There had been …