Ying Yue is pinching her tiny, hardly chin and listening intently while nodding, thoughtfully.

‘Beautiful!’ she eventually pronounces.

Wang Shu suddenly stops laughing. Avigail (relieved) tries to pass her the phone again but Wang Shu flinches at Avigail’s approach. Ying Yue (fighting the instinct to mirror) puts out her hand for the phone.

‘Mother is afraid of the broom,’ she gently explains. ‘Being hit by a broom is very bad luck to a Chinese person and you were hit by the broom.’

Avigail is perplexed. ‘So the broom is bad luck? Or am I now bad luck because I was hit by the broom which …?’

She is going to say ‘which you knocked over’, but resists the urge.

This is crazy.

She hands Ying Yue the phone.

Rather than answering Avigail’s question, Ying Yue says something, brightly, to Wang Shu, in Chinese, while pointing to the wall tiles.

Wang Shu (like a toddler who has been momentarily distracted from its tantrum by a small bag of Cadbury’s Chocolate Buttons) gazes at the tiles for a brief instant and then lets forth a loud stream of invective. Wang Shu plainly hates the tiles. The tiles have now come to represent everything about the falling broom that cannot be fully articulated in a European context. Ying Yue knocked the broom so is in disgrace. But the broom hit the Agent (Avigail). Yes! The broom hit the Agent! The Agent is jinxed! The viewing is jinxed. Then the Agent – with a complete lack of consideration and due care – allowed the broom to hit her toe! Wang Shu’s toe! So Wang Shu’s toe is jinxed! Which is horrifying! And disgusting! And the tiles are vile! Damn the tiles! They are jinxed. They are malodorous. They are despicable! The tiles are among the most revolting things Wang Shu has ever beheld in a life where much that is revolting has been beheld.

Wang Shu loathes the tiles.

Wang Shu continues this terrifying tirade, her lips flecked with spittle, her fists clenched (sometimes a fist briefly unclenches so a finger may point at her toe, then clenches again), for approximately a minute and a half.

When Wang Shu finishes speaking she promptly bursts into angry tears.

Yes. That’s how deeply, deeply offended Wang Shu’s very essence – her very core – is by the Alan Wallwork tiles.

Ying Yue bites her lip. Avigail looks at Charles.

Her eyes say: What the fuck?!

Charles shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

Wang Shu’s phone rings. Ying Yue immediately hands a sobbing Wang Shu the phone. Wang Shu takes the phone. Wang Shu instantly stops sobbing. Wang Shu answers the phone.

‘Ni hao?’

Priorities.

Ying Yue promptly turns to Charles, her eyes dancing.

‘Mother loves the tiles,’ she beams.

Richard Grannon’s sister once shared a piece of hippy-dippy shit with him – years ago – which he instantly discounted (having a residual suspicion of all things New Age) but later (against all his better instincts) felt compelled to re-evaluate, and then, eventually, to integrate it into his groundbreaking Inner Critic work. For no other reason than that it made a stupid kind of sense. Grannon’s sister had learned this piece of wisdom from someone selling crystals at a festival (or a yoga teacher). It was presented in the form of a question. The question ran as follows: