Free Grey Area by Will Self

introspection as slight as a woodchip. That’s what I’m here for: to consider that question in its widest and narrowest senses. But am I? Wouldn’t it be an achingly reductive proposition for one who was truly un-free even to bother to consider the grounds of that un-freedom? Giselle hunched further upright on the lumpy softness of the mattress.
    Her features were pretty enough. She had a fine-bridged nose, long and flaring into retroussé. Her eyes were large and dark violet. The smallness of her brow was well disguised by her long pelt of hair, which, falling inwards to her collarbone, served also to flatter the fullness of her figure.
    The irony was that, seated there on her round haunches, although Giselle may not have possessed the sort of freedom that implies full moral responsibility, she nonetheless had plenty of that very prosaic power: the power of fey sexual self-awareness.
    Pixie came scuttling under the low lintel and into the Rood Room. She was free. Entirely free of the painful shyness Giselle remembered blustering her way through at that age.
    ‘Ooh, what a clever little thing.’ Pixie was fiddling with the copper kettle on its spirit lamp, tipping it this way and that so splashes of still steaming water fell on to the windowsill.
    ‘Careful – ’ said Giselle.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ snapped back Pixie. ‘I won’t break it.’ She took a turn around the Rood Room, looking closely at the panels and the plaster reliefs. ‘Don’t mind me,’ she threw out after a while, ‘I always like to come up and check on the Rood Room after I’ve been away for a while – you don’t mind, do you?’
    ‘No, no, of course – ‘
    ‘So you’re a philosopher like Daddy, are you?’
    ‘Hardly,’ Giselle demurred, ‘your father is extremely eminent. He’s very likely to get the Pelagian Professorship next year, especially if this book is a success.’
    ‘And that’s what you’re here for?’
    ‘To help him with the book, yes. Dr Geddes is my postgraduate supervisor. He very kindly offered me a couple of months’ work, both helping him out and helping your mother around the house – ‘
    ‘So you’re not here to screw him then?’
    ‘Phsss No!’ Giselle sprayed the quilt with Lapsang Souchong.
    ‘Well, that’s just as well’ – Pixie was halfway out of the door – ‘because Mum says that he’s got so fat he’s hardly capable of it anymore.’ While Giselle was still too stunned to frame a rejoinder Pixie poked her blonde head back under the lintel. ‘The guests are here, by the way. You’d better dress and come down.’
    As she hurriedly dressed, Giselle put Pixie’s behaviour down to precocity rather than conscious rudeness. The other possibility – that the girl had somehow sensed Giselle’s desire – was too awful to contemplate.
    In the drawing room she found Peter Geddes and another man drinking whisky.
    ‘Giselle Dawson,’ said Peter, gesturing at her, ‘this is Henry Beckwood.’ He indicated the man, who was twitchily thin, sporting bifocals and wire-wool hair. ‘Henry, Giselle is my new research assistant. Giselle, Henry is big in plastics.’
    ‘And not much else besides,’ said the man called Henry, offering Giselle his hand. Seeing that she looked perplexed he added, ‘What Peter means is that I’m a polymer scientist.’
    ‘D’you want a drop of coloured water then, Giselle?’ Peter was holding the bottle around its shoulders and thrusting it at her, as if it were a club with which he was going to beat her into sedation.
    ‘Err . . . no thank you.’
    ‘If you want something else, some wine, say, you’ll find it in the kitchen, on the truth table.’
    As she left the room Giselle could hear Peter explaining to Henry why he called it the truth table. She found Peter’s manner disconcerting. The bottle of whisky had been half-empty, but she couldn’t believe that the two of them had already drunk that much, it was only eight o’clock.
    ‘Pissed already, are