know,’ said Simon. There was a pause. ‘Oh no,’ he said.
‘Please.’ Bella looked at him imploringly.
Simon shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Bella, but no way.’
‘Go on. Just this once.’
‘But you know I don’t. Ever. No exceptions.’
‘But it would make her day. She definitely wants a magician at the party, and it would be so much better if it were you. She adores you. She’ll never forget it.’
‘Look, I’d love to, really I would.’
Bella sat back in her chair. ‘Then do it.’
Simon’s shoulders slumped. ‘I can’t.’
Simon loved performing magic tricks. He relished the look of bewilderment on the watcher’s face as the miracle was revealed. Unfortunately, however, he turned into a petrified zombie if he had to perform in front of more than three people. Audiences terrified him.
Audience-phobic magicians were, for obvious reasons, unlikely to make much of an impact professionally. Magicians are performers, after all. They cannot operate in a vacuum. Taking the audience out of the equation was rather like being a doctor who hated being around sick people. You became somewhat redundant. This was why Simon worked in a magic shop: it gave him the opportunity to be paid for doing tricks all day without having to undergo the gruesome ordeal of standing up in front of a crowd of strangers.
Bella was asking him to perform in front of perhaps the most demanding audience of all – a crowd of over-excited children at a birthday party. Simon shuddered. He had customers who made a living out of it. They were embittered, ferocious men, whose cheery professional personae hid the fact that the last vestiges of sympathetic character had long ago been eradicated by over-exposure to squealing, fractious children. It was, without question, the hardest job in show business.
‘I’m sorry, Bella,’ said Simon. ‘I can’t. You know it’s not that I don’t want to. I just – can’t.’
‘What if I told you that I’d already told Sophy that you’ll do it?’
‘You’d never do that,’ said Simon sharply.
Bella shrugged. ‘Oops. Sorry.’
Simon sighed. ‘For Christ’s sake, Bella. That is so unworthy of you.’
‘I know,’ agreed Bella, without any apparent remorse.
‘God.’ Just when the weekend couldn’t get any worse, it suddenly did.
There was a pause.
‘So you’ll do it?’ asked Bella.
‘I’ll do it,’ sighed Simon. ‘I don’t see that I have very much choice, do I?’
‘Good boy,’ said Bella, stretching over the kitchen table and planting a kiss on the side of his head.
The oven pinged. Bella got up and went to the kitchen door. She shouted up the stairs, ‘Sophy! Come down, please, once you’ve washed your hands.’ There was an immediate rush of small footsteps, and a few moments later Sophy tore breathlessly into the kitchen.
‘How did the practice go?’ asked Simon, trying to forget about the weaselly trick Bella had just played.
‘Really well,’ said Sophy. ‘I can’t wait to show you.’
‘Well, I can’t wait to see it,’ replied Simon.
Sophy grinned at him. She turned to her mother. ‘Where’s Daddy?’
Arabella was pulling the moussaka out of the oven. ‘He said he was going to be a bit late tonight, darling,’ she said as she carried the dish to the table. ‘He’s very busy at work at the moment.’
‘He’s always busy at work,’ complained Sophy.
‘Well, you’ve got Simon instead,’ said her mother, as she began spooning the food on to plates.
Sophy looked at Simon. ‘Well Simon’s very nice, so that’s good,’ she said kindly. ‘You’re more interested in magic than Daddy, anyway,’ she added.
‘Well, not everyone understands the importance of magic,’ said Simon. ‘It’s a craft.’ As he said this he realized that with his hand in plaster eating was not going to be easy. He picked up his fork in his left hand, and carefully speared a slice of aubergine.
Arabella noticed the problem. ‘Are you going to be all right with that?’ she asked. ‘Do you want me to cut it up for you?’
Sophy giggled. ‘Like a baby,’ she observed.
‘Thank you, Sophy,’ said Arabella.
‘Or a very old person,’ said Sophy.
‘Sophy.’
‘Er, yes please,’ said Simon. ‘That would be great.’
‘Right.’ Arabella briskly took Simon’s plate away and began chopping the food into manageable, bite-sized pieces, ignoring Sophy’s sniggers.
Arabella’s chopping made it easier to execute the short journey from plate to mouth, but still a certain amount of moussaka flew off Simon’s fork. By the end of the meal a small pile of mince, cheese, and assorted vegetables had amassed in his lap.
While they ate the conversation centred around Sophy and what she had been doing at school, who her best friends were this week, and what she wanted to do during the forthcoming holidays, at the mention of which Arabella went slightly pale. She seemed distracted, half an ear turned to listen for the twist of Michael’s key in the lock. By the time they cleared away the dishes, Michael had still not appeared.
As Bella came back to the table with two coffee mugs and a cafetiere, Sophy looked at her expectantly.
‘Can I do it now?’ she whispered.
Bella sighed. ‘Go on, then.’
Sophy slithered off her chair and was gone in a lightning movement. Daniel the Spaniel lazily got up and padded off to see where she had gone. Simon and his sister were alone again.
‘Thanks for doing this,’ said Arabella. ‘You’re very patient with her.’
‘Not at all,’ shrugged Simon. ‘I enjoy it. She helps me sometimes, when my enthusiasm for the wonderful art of prestidigitation wanes a little.’
Bella poured the coffee. ‘Well, I still say you’re very kind.’
‘I would have said the same about you until you pulled that stunt about her party,’ said Simon.
Sophy ran back into the kitchen. She carried with her a glass and a pack of cards. She looked at her mother. ‘Can I use milk this time?’ she asked.
Bella nodded. ‘You can this time, as it’s Simon, as long as you promise to drink it afterwards.’
Sophy nodded.
‘All right, then. In the fridge.’
Sophy turned and went to the fridge, pulled a carton of milk from inside the door, and returned to the table.
‘This trick,’ she announced, ‘is magic.’
‘OK,’ said Simon. ‘Good start.’
Sophy picked up the pack of cards and tried to spread them into a fan as best as her tiny hands would allow. ‘First of all,’ she said, oddly formal, ‘please choose a completely ordinary playing card from this completely ordinary pack.’
Simon took a card.
‘Thank you,’ said Sophy. There was a pause.
‘Shall I look at it?’ prompted Simon.
‘If