‘Stray ball.’ I pulled my head out of her hands, turning away from her inspection. ‘It’s fine.’

‘It’s going to bruise,’ she replied. ‘We need to put some ice on that.’

‘We usually have ice packs but I just defrosted the freezer,’ rugby shirt said. ‘Ice cream van should be around in a minute, we could stick a Mister Whippy on it?’

‘Let’s get you home,’ Mum said, tenderly brushing my hair back from my forehead. ‘I’ve got some arnica gel, that’ll help.’

‘Thanks for the tour,’ Dad said to our host. ‘Apologies, can’t take this one anywhere.’

Rugby shirt looked me up and down and scoffed. ‘I thought she was supposed to be some sort of genius?’ he guffawed.

‘That’s the other one,’ Dad explained, clapping me hard on the back before giving his friend a sharp salute. It hurt almost as much as my eye.

‘Home, James,’ Dad said, striding off towards the car. ‘And don’t spare the horses.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

By the time Friday evening rolled around, I was prepared to call the working week, tennis-ball assaults aside, a success. I had Snazz’s first podcast guests confirmed, the art department was working on the logo and the marketing team was shouting about our live recording at WESC (which I now knew stood for the World E-Sports Championships) reaching even the deepest, darkest little corners of the internet. Basement-dwellers would be risking the outside world from far and wide to get a glimpse at Snazzlechuff, live and in person. Even I had found myself wondering if he’d get a new mask made. There was a minor bump in the road when I tried to get Veronica to schedule in some rehearsal time but she insisted that he didn’t need it, that too much prep would ‘fucking ruin the magic’. When I raised it with Ted, he advised me that the magician works in mysterious ways and so, I had left it alone. It had been such a long time since I’d felt good about myself at work, knowing I was killing it was such a high.