1 Yazz sits on the seat chosen by Mum in the middle of the stalls, one of the best in the house, although she'd rather be hidden away at the back in case the play is another embarrassment she's tied her amazingly wild, energetic, strong and voluminous afro back because people sitting behind her in venues complain they can't see the stage when her afro'd compatriots accuse people of racism or microaggressions for this very reason, Yazz asks them how they'd feel if an unruly topiary hedge blocked their view of the stage at a concert? two members of her uni squad, the Unfuckwithables, are seated either side of her, Waris and Courtney, hard workers like her because they're all determined to get good degrees because without it they're stuffed they're all stuffed anyway, they agree when they leave uni it's gonna be with a huge debt and crazy competition for jobs and the outrageous rental prices out there mean her generation will have to move back home forever, which will lead to even more of them despairing at the future and what with the planet about to go to shit with the
United Kingdom soon to be disunited from Europe which itself is hurtling down the reactionary road and making fascism fashionable again and it's so crazy that the disgusting perma-tanned billionaire has set a new intellectual and moral low by being president of America and basically it all means that the older generation has RUINED EVERYTHING and her generation is doooooomed unless they wrest intellectual control from their elders sooner rather than later Yazz is reading English Literature and plans to be a journalist with her own controversial column in a globally-read newspaper because she has a lot to say and it's about time the whole world heard her Waris from Wolverhampton, seated to her right, is reading Politics and wants to become a Member of Parliament, to re-pre-sent, and will go down the community activism route first, à la Barack 'Major Role Model' Obama Come Back Barack! Courtney from Suffolk, seated to her left, is reading American Studies because she's really into African-American men, and she chose her course because of the option to study in the States for her third year where she hopes to pick up a husband the theatre is predominated by the usual greyheads (average age one hundred) Mum's friends and diehard fans are dotted all over, they should be grey but are more likely to shave it off, dye it or cover it up with head-wraps she looks over at Sylvester, slumped in his seat, scruffy as hell in his tatty blue 'Communist China' overalls, his beard makes him look more like an Amish farmer than an urban hipster way too old for it, Sylvie his arms are crossed and he's scowling like he really wants to not enjoy the play before it's even begun, when he notices her ogling him, puts on a smiley face and waves, probably embarrassed that she's read his mind she waves too, putting her nice-to-see-you-face back on he's one of her godfathers, but was demoted to the C List when he sent her the same birthday card three years in a row – a cheap recycled charity one at that, as for birthday presents, he stopped them when she turned sixteen, as if she had no need for financial support once she could legally have sex
the A List goddies part with money, lots of it, every year on her birthday, they're the best as they really want to keep in with her as their conduit to the younger generation a couple of goddies have disappeared altogether on account of falling out with Mum over some pointless melodrama Mum says Sylvester should stop sniping at other people's success (hers) and that as he won't change with the times, he's been left behind you mean the way you felt not so long ago, Mum? ever since she landed the National gig she's got very snooty about struggling theatre mates, as if she alone has discovered the secret to being successful as if she hasn't spent way too many years of her life watching crap television while waiting for the phone to ring this is the problem with having a daughter with X-ray vision she can see through the parental bullshit Uncle Curwen isn't with Sylvester tonight because he believes politics is way more dramatic than anything on stage at a theatre: 'Brexit & Trumpquake! – behold the comedy of errors of our time' being his latest mantra as a Lambeth Labour councillor, he's usually at meetings firefighting, or as Sylvester counteracts, causing them, because he likes to drag the carpet from underneath Curwen's political self-importance who needs enemies when your life partner undermines you on a regular basis? Curwen uses antiquated expressions like 'right on' and likes to keep it real by frequenting the dingiest pub in Brixton where the old timers sit around still moaning about Maggie Thatcher and the Miners' strike, one of the few pubs that haven't been turned into a wine bar, gastro-pub or champagne bar, as Mum whinges as if she herself wasn't part of the gentrification of Brixton years ago as if she herself isn't a frequenter of the artsy hotspots like the Ritzy as if she herself didn't take Yazz to one of the very champagne bars she supposedly scorns to celebrate passing her 'A' levels a year early just this once, Mum whispered as they entered the part of the indoor market that's now frequented by posh banker types who looked at them as
they walked down the lane between bars as if they were looking at natives on their cultural safari yet who was it who was spotted at the Cereal Lovers Café in Stockwell by one of Yazz's mates not so long ago? a café that specializes in selling over a hundred types of breakfast cereal at extortionate prices a café that only those who've truly sold their souls to Hipster Hell would even think of venturing into a café that's so outraged the locals they keep smashing the windows in as for Dad (you can call me Roland, no, you're my dad, Dad) he's sitting a couple of rows in front of her, wearing one of his Ozwald Boateng suits – brilliant blue on the outside, purple satin on the inside his head is shiny, thanks to cocoa butter first thing in the morning, last thing at night he's straight-backed, thanks to monthly Alexander Technique sessions to counteract what he calls academic hunchback syndrome every so often he casually glances around to see who's recognized him off the telly Dad's budget in clothes could pay her university fees for a year, the very fees he says he can't afford it's his thing, prioritizing fashion over the self-sacrifice of proper fatherhood hers is rummaging through his stuff in search of the large denomination banknotes he leaves in his jacket pockets in his walk-in wardrobe in the (four-storey) house on Clapham Common with its white wooden flooring, yellow walls and the original Cartier-Bresson photographs he chanced upon in a car boot sale in Wembley when he was a teenager and bought for a pound each as he boasts to all first-time visitors when they walk past them in the entrance hallway it's also probably fair to say she was probably too young at thirteen to innocently open the drawer under his bed and come across a leather gas mask type thing with a leather dick attached where she presumed a nose
should be, along with associated whips, gels, handcuffs and other unexplainable objects unfortunately, once seen, never unseen and it was a lesson for her at a young age that you never know people until you've been through their drawers and computer history Dad the author of the New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling trilogy: How We Lived Then (2000), How We Live Now (2008), and How We Will Live in the Future (2014) Dr Roland Quartey, the country's first Professor of Modern Life at the University of London really? all of it, Dad? she asked him when he told her proudly on the phone about his latest professorial number isn't that, like, a bit of a tall order? don't you have to be an expert on everything in a world that encompasses over seven billion people and like about two hundred countries and thousands of languages and cultures isn't that more like God's purview? tell me, are you God now, Dad? I mean officially? he mumbled stuff about the Internet of Things and Pokémon, terrorism and global politics, Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones and then threw in quotes he attributed to Derrida and Heidegger for good measure, which he always does when he can't handle a tricky situation what about bell hooks? she shot back, quickly scrolling down the reading list for her 'Gender, Race and Class' module on her phone what about Kwame Anthony Appiah, Judith Butler, Aimé Césaire, Angela Davis, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Julia Kristeva, Audre Lorde, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Gloria Steinem, V. Y. Mudimbe, Cornel West and the rest? Dad didn't reply he wasn't expecting this, the student outwitting the master (grasshopper rocks!) I mean, how on earth can you be a Professor of Modern Life when your terms of reference are all male, and actually all-white (even when you're not, she refrained from adding)
when he eventually spoke, his voice was choked, his car had arrived (not cab), he had to dash off if true, the car (car = limo and cab = taxi) would be to chauffeur him to a television studio because he regularly pops up on the telly to have arguments with people even more arrogant than himself he's become a media-whore, Mum opines disapprovingly, he was such a great guy before he became famous and was corrupted by celebrity, he used to believe in something, now he only believes in himself, your father is very establishment, Yazz, that's why they lionize him, he's not an outsider like me, trying to get a foot in the door and being given crumbs, Yazz, crumbs funnily enough, when Mum watches him on the telly, she begrudgingly agrees with pretty much everything he says, and she can't say she's an outsider now she's on at the National Dad did an epic sulk after Yazz's epic take-down he couldn't have her to stay for that weekend or the next or the next deadlines-deadlines-deadlines, you know how it is? the thing is, if she and her father are going to have a healthy relationship into the future, it's up to her to keep him in check because no one else is going to do it, he surrounds himself with what Mum calls his 'court sycophants', the people Yazz meets at his parties, mainly famous white people off the telly who see him as an honorary one of them she's almost got there with Mum, although it was a hard slog, especially when she was fourteen or fifteen and Mum was prone to hysteria when she didn't get her own way now she knows better than to try to control or contradict her daughter all Yazz needs to say these days is, don't sass me, Mumsy! and she shuts up Dad's on that learning curve too he'll thank her in the end Kenny (Godfather Number Two, who wisely gives her birthday cheques starring two zeros) is sitting loyally next to Dad Kenny's also bald and mustachioed in a 1970s way (not good), he's a landscape gardener and she and him get along mainly because he has no delusions about his own greatness, they'll watch X Factor together just for
the sake of it, whereas Dad will pretend it's because he's going to write about its cultural significance they go out riding their bikes very early on a Sunday morning before the city wakes up, across the common to Battersea, down the backstreets to Richmond and the river, for the pure enjoyment of it, not because it's enforced exercise to stay slim which is the only reason Dad runs marathons Kenny did ask her to be a bit less negative towards Dad the other day after he'd gone upstairs in a huff over a harmless comment she'd made Yazz replied she was going through her cynical late teenage years, I just can't help it, Kenny, once I come out all lovable again on the other side, I'll let you know Kenny cracked up at that, he likes to remind her he's known her since she was a sperm among millions in Dad's test tube and when Mum used to complain she was giving her a good kicking inside her womb to which she quipped back that it was because she had an embryonic premonition she was going to be born into poverty once she's graduated and working, she's going to persuade Mum to sell her house, correction, their house, which is now worth a fortune thanks to Mum's gentrification of Brixton Mum can downsize to a bungalow, which will be very practical for a woman her age, probably in one of the unfashionable seaside towns where they'll be cheaper with the money left over from the sale of the house, Yazz can buy a small flat a one-bedroom will do for now helping me on to the property ladder will be the defining act of your life, Mumsy she didn't reply Yazz wishes the play had already opened to five-star universal acclaim so that she can watch it stamped with pre-approval, it matters because she'll have to deal with the aftermath if it's slagged off by the critics and Mum'll go on an emotional rampage that might last weeks – about the critics sabotaging her career with their complete lack of insight into black women's lives and how this had been her big break after over forty years of
hard graft blah di blah and how they didn't get the play because it's not about aid workers in Africa or troubled teenaged boys or drug dealers or African warlords or African-American blues singers or white people rescuing black slaves guess who'll have to be on the end of the phone to pick up the pieces? she's Mum's emotional caretaker, always has been, always will be it's the burden of being an only child, especially a girl who will naturally be more caring.