Free The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas

all the stories to surface again now that she’s dead.’
    Fleur almost says, ‘Yes, Daddy.’ But she’s never called him that.
    ‘Anyway, how’s everything in Bath? How’s the malaria?’
    Augustus frowns. ‘Painful. Unpredictable. The same. My mother sent me to an acupuncturist last week. It didn’t help. It just hurt.’
    ‘I don’t think it’s supposed to hurt. Did you say something?’
    ‘No. That kind of thing never works on me anyway. There’s no point.’
    ‘So why did you go?’
    ‘You know my mother . . .’ Actually, Fleur did not. But she knew all about her.
    ‘How’s Cecily? And the girls?’
    ‘Cecily’s the same. On a new medication, but can’t get up before midday and still won’t speak to my mother. Beatrix has made quite an effort lately, but it hasn’t made any difference. And the girls, well, Plum’s delightful. Reminds me a lot of Clem when she was that age. Lavender’s dreadful. I don’t know what to do any more. She wants things all the time and sulks if she doesn’t get them. Sometimes I wish we’d stopped with Plum. I mean, in terms of Cecily’s health, we
should
have stopped at Plum, or even before.’
    ‘It must be a phase,’ Fleur says. ‘I’m sure Holly went through something similar. Didn’t Plum? I mean, marketing to children is such a huge industry now.’
    ‘It’s the way Lavender asks for things, though. That’s what gets me. She sits on my lap and looks into my eyes like some sort of prostitute – I’m sorry, but that’s exactly what it reminds me of. “Darling daddy,
please
,” she says, all fluttering eyelashes as if she was Marilyn Monroe or something. Where on earth did she learn to do that? It’s just embarrassing.’
    Maybe it’s the effect of the atoms. Or maybe she was Marilyn in a previous life.
    ‘Does she have friends?’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    ‘Do they have sleepovers?’
    ‘Sometimes. I think they’re too young, but Cecily says it’s normal.’
    ‘So she saw another girl do it to her father. Or she saw it on Nickelodeon or a Hollywood film. She’s probably trying to impress you. Show you how grown up she is. Show you how much she knows about the world.’
    ‘Yes, but then there’s this awful wailing when I say no.’
    Fleur shrugs. ‘I guess that’s just what it’s like having kids.’
    ‘You were no bother,’ Augustus says.
    No. No, Fleur wasn’t any bother to Augustus. He quietly paid her school fees and kept his distance and may never even have admitted he was her father if he hadn’t thought she was about to have sex with Charlie – her actual brother. He never changed her nappies, and he never bought her a birthday present and she never sat on his lap. Not once.

    The third-floor seminar room is windowless and hot. If there were windows you would definitely be able to see Canterbury Cathedral from up here. Seeing the cathedral is one of the top three reasons people come to this university, but once here students usually find themselves in these poky windowless rooms looking not at the cathedral and the pretty town around it but instead at the incomprehensible notes that the seminar leader before theirs has left on the whiteboard. The large dining room downstairs has a perfect view of the cathedral but this view is usually screened off. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to screen it off, except perhaps because students sitting there eating their £3.40 meals are deemed unworthy of something so aesthetically pleasing and must have it removed in case it ruins them in some way. Or before they ruin it. Before class Bryony went there for a snack, and she walked around the screens and sat there looking at the cathedral and waited for someone to come and stop her. They did not.
    The group is arguing about a piece of dialogue from
Northanger Abbey
. Ollie lets them go on for far too long, as usual, and is not even definitely listening. At this moment the group isn’t even supposed to be discussing this passage, but