Clear: A Transparent Novel. Nicola Barker

chiffon-style scarf at her throat, some round, pearly-grey Jackie O earrings…and her shoes? Platforms. Like the kind which almost did for Baby in Spiceworld. Grey suede. Square toed. With an obscene burgundy flower covering the buckle.

      She has nice ankles, actually. But a thick midriff (too thick, if you ask me, for that pinched-in kind of frock). Skin slightly too pale for a brunette, but her arms are pretty. Plump but shapely. Hair looks good – short and shiny (smooth, in general, but enlivened by a good bit of modern chop at her nape).

      A plain girl (no getting around it – eyes the shade of a city pigeon, haughty nose – sensitive nostrils – and a full lower lip, but a too-tiny upper one). Past her prime (must be thirty-two, at least – thirty-four?), but with an interesting kind of solidity, a creaminess, a half-absent quality (a washed-out, much-lived-in well-fedness that’s strangely hard to resist…I mean, for a boy-whore, anyway).

      So what do I do? Avoid? Approach? Mollify? Threaten? Be cute? Make a joke? Get sarcastic?

      She’s boredly reading an article from a broadsheet paper (just a page – and the article is folded over, as if it’s been stored in somebody’s pocket). I glance to her right. A man is sitting next to her, also in his thirties; square-set, ruddy-cheeked, chaotic-looking, with slightly-thinning, coarse-seeming, strawberry blond hair, wearing old combat trousers and an extremely ancient, well-ripped ‘Punk’s Not Dead’ T-shirt underneath a proper shirt made out of musty-looking black moleskin.

      Are they (by any chance) ‘together’?

      I walk straight over.

      ‘Headache gone?’ I ask.

      Her eyes don’t even flip up.

      ‘Migraine,’ she hisses.

      ‘Migraine gone?’ I ask.

      ‘Uh-huh,’ she says.

      I begin to say something else (something very witty, in actual fact) and she raises a curt hand to silence me.

      ‘Reading,’ she barks.

      The hand is held high, and then retained aloft, to stop me (I presume) from moving angrily off.

      Punk’s Not Dead sneers, superciliously.

      ‘Punk is Dead,’ I say, ‘and that’s exactly the reason why they designed that T-shirt.’

      His superciliousness transmogrifies into pity, as he quietly surveys my immaculately well-thought-out look (60 per cent Marc Jacobs, 40 per cent Issey Miyake).

      ‘Nice,’ he eventually murmurs. Oooh. Cutting.

      Aphra finishes reading and glances up. She stares at me, blankly. ‘So who the hell are you?’ she asks.

      ‘Adair MacKenny,’ I stutter (falling – but only momentarily – a little off my stride). ‘I kindly took you home when you were ill the other day,’ I continue, in tones of determined affability, ‘was extremely late back to work as a result, and subsequently received a rather nasty formal reprimand for my crimes.’

      (So I exaggerate for effect sometimes.)

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she says.

      She passes the article back to Punk’s Not.

      ‘Vicious,’ she murmurs.

      ‘What is?’ I ask.

      ‘Article in the Guardian,’ Punk’s Not says, ‘about Blaine.’

      He proffers me the article. I take it and give it the once-over. ‘Oh yes,’ I say, recalling having read it a few days earlier (Wednesday? Thursday?), ‘I remember this…’

      In the article, a slightly sour pussy called Catherine Bennett holds scathingly forth about what a ridiculous ass the magician is, and how unspeakably proud she’s been rendered by our unstoppable British urge to ridicule and debunk him – our cocky, cockney lawlessness, our innate willingness to lampoon and pillory.

      Yip yip!

      I mean, that’s our Great fookin’ British Democratic right, to rip the damn piss, innit?

      Maybe Blaine (to paraphrase) might’ve got away with his pretentious pseudo-art rubbish in the US of A, but not here. Oh no. Not in good old Blighty, where we stands up proud and tall and we speaks our minds and we calls a spade a spade (then breaks it, in half, across our workmanlike knees).

      ‘Jew-hater,’ Punk’s Not opines, taking the article back off me and folding it up, carefully.

      ‘You think so?’ I ask (neatly maintained brows trimming my beautiful fringe in a fetching display of polite middle class alarm).

      ‘But of course,’ Punk’s Not scoffs, ‘what else?’

      I glance over briefly towards the Illusionist. He’s got the little window in his box open (did I mention the window before? A tiny, hinged square, cut into the plastic, which he can easily unlatch if he feels the sudden, overwhelming urge to shout something down to his disciples below). He’s currently up on his knees (looking unusually vital), gazing down and out of it at a small huddle of people in brightly coloured, semi-transparent costumes who suddenly strike up (gypsy-style) on five violins and play something cheerfully mundane, which would – by any kind of standard – render ‘lift music’ scintillating.

      ‘Catherine Bennett…,’ Punk’s Not quips, ‘if I’m not very much mistaken, being the famous heroine of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”.’

      (Note the dramatic emphasis.)

      Man. This kid’s good.

      ‘But it’s not Catherine, it’s Elizabeth.’

      Aphra – coincidentally – is paying no heed to our literary jousting. She is standing up and staring – in sheer wonderment – at the musical Didakais. The magician (meanwhile) has collapsed back down (at the start of their second number) and is looking a little wan again (maybe the music’s reminding him of all those lousy meals he’s had in poor quality Spanish restaurants over the years).