The two-year-old Charles sits happily on Michelle Obama’s warm lap as she gently plaits his hair (although anyone who plaits knows that this process is never gentle) into fastidiously neat lines of corn-rows.

Hmm. That’s a slightly odd and unsettling fantasy.

For a 40 y/o man.

Barack …

Ah, Barack.

Barack takes Charles to the Oval Office and lets Charles sit on the President’s chair. And answer the President’s phone.

Yes.

And he pats Charles supportively on the shoulder.

And he says things like: ‘You don’t need to buy that second-hand juicer because you are already good enough, Son.’

Barack thinks that Charles is perfect just as he is.

Barack and Michelle wouldn’t change so much as a single hair on Charles’s head.

Charles thinks Ying Yue’s singing voice is utterly bizarre. Haunting.

Like windscreen wipers being operated at full pelt when there hasn’t been any rain and the windscreen is still bone dry.

Squeaky.

Very odd.

Ying Yue gazes up at the ceiling when she sings (so she can remember the words).

Isn’t that what angels do? When they sing? Charles thinks. Don’t angels look upwards – heavenwards – angelically – while they sing – just like she does?

Ooh. Alien thought.

Stop it.

Fucking angels.

Next it’ll be fucking unicorns.

Fuck off.

Fuck off.

Fucking angels.

Wang Shu is talking on the phone in Chinese.

Avigail is frowning and staring off into the middle distance.

(Probably silently plotting what – or who – she can arbitrarily re-gender next, Charles muses.)

How am I feeling? Charles wonders.

Panicked.

Confused.

Breathless.

Slightly constipated.

Is constipation an emotion, though? Strictly speaking?

‘Slightly constipated’ could be a metaphor, Charles supposes, a metaphor for something like … uh … general unease. For a blocked-ness. A resistance. To THE NEW.

Yeah.

Must embrace THE NEW.

Must stop being such a grouchy, closed-down, pent-up old duffer.

Glass half empty.

Perpetually defensive.

Suspicious.

Did you know that the most valuable human quality/virtue (of all human qualities/virtues) is …

FLEXIBILITY?

!

Not bravery.

Not loyalty.

Not kindness.

Not generosity.

No.

Flexibility.

Did you know that?

Jesus was incredibly flexible. Always innovating Jewish traditions.

Buddha promoted the middle way.

Sri Ramakrishna was like a kid in a sweetshop.

Eckhart Tolle giggles a lot.

I am receptive.

I am flexible.

I am open to change.

After bellowing at Ying Yue to stop her dreadful singing, Wang Shu has once again retreated into the familiar space – the gap – between the refrigerator and the kitchen door so that she might give her full attention to the VERY IMPORTANT conversation she is having (in Chinese) on her mobile phone.

Ying Yue is gazing intently at Charles as if awaiting a cue.

Ying Yue is awaiting a cue from Charles. Ying Yue likes this tall, ancient man with his many locks on the front door and the sometimes bits of holes in his underpants and his great facility to open and close bins and his pointless affection for dreadful tilework. What will Charles do next? Ying Yue wonders. She is in complete awe of his spontaneity. Charles appears infinitely surprising to her.