The Seed Collectors (45 page)

‘Level 2 is where you can see the order book for a share,’ says Beatrix.

‘The
order book
?’

‘Yes.’

‘There is something called an order book for shares?’ Skye Turner sees something huge and leather-bound on the desk of a serious-looking God somewhere beyond the clouds. And a scribe is writing in it with the most exquisite . . .

‘Yes, dear. Of course. Otherwise how would they know who to give them to? If you can see the order book, then instead of simply seeing the spread you can see all the orders in the market. I went to a very informative seminar about it. It is rather complex. But if you put it on histogram mode you can see all the orders standing up straight in rows, almost marching towards each other, rather like soldiers on a battlefield, and I find it useful to imagine each order bringing down soldiers on one side or the other. Bang, bang, and then . . .’

Skye knows what the ‘spread’ is. It is the difference between the highest buying price and the lowest selling price on a share. But she thought men in pinstriped suits made up these spreads in their heads. She didn’t realise . . .

‘Look,’ says Beatrix. She opens a new window on the screen of her vast iMac. A box appears. Beatrix types ‘LSE:ITV’ into it, and suddenly there is a new kind of cascade of numbers. At first it is completely incomprehensible. But you can sort of work it out. There on the left-hand side of the box are all the orders to buy. ITV is cheap at the moment. It has fallen to just under 53p a share. Skye can see seller after seller on the left-hand side of the screen, wanting to offload their shares for 52.9p or 53p each. But the much shorter list of buyers will only pay a maximum of 51.9p for the share so the screen freezes
until something changes, and then a cascade of orders are suddenly tumbling over themselves to be filled, and in histogram mode it does kind of look as if the soldiers are flipping over and dying, and the spread drops a halfpence and then a penny and then Sky Turner buys her first shares. Five thousand shares for £2,582.50. At the end of 2013 they will be worth four times that much, but of course by then everything will be different, and anyway, who needs money when they can . . .

‘What do I do now?’ asks Skye.

‘Just wait, dear. Or buy another share. You can watch the Level 2 screen for a bit longer, or look at another share on it. I find it quite soothing to watch shares I don’t own, and to watch all the colours change and, well . . .’

Beatrix doesn’t have to finish. She and Skye have both sensed that they feel exactly the same way about monitors. Skye looks for LSE: EZY. She has had a soft spot for easyJet since her very first holiday with them. The share price is 307.7p. She watches the flickering of the Level 2 screen for several minutes, imagining planes taking off and landing, and people sitting there in their silly holiday hats and big sunglasses, before she notices something strange is happening.

Skye realises that she is seeing – really seeing – Paul, a retired airline pilot in Manchester, with his copy of
The Naked Trader
and his slice of toast, having set himself up with a DMA account, which means he can put orders directly into the book without going through a broker. She sees him quite clearly sitting there, on a bright red knee chair to help with his sciatica. And then, as soon as his order is met, he is gone. And then she senses a man at a desk in a big open-plan office with empty food cartons everywhere and a strange smell of goats. He stays a little while, sitting on a lowish stop loss, using most of the space on his two screens to trade bonds, which is his actual job. And then she sees beyond into his life, all laid out like a spreadsheet before her. She sees a bathroom with a bright red
cactus that flowers every winter, and a brother who never phones. And . . .

It is raining on the morning of the triathlon.

‘Well, I suppose you’re going to get wet anyway,’ Bryony says to James.

He remains under the covers. ‘I can’t believe I’m actually doing this.’

‘You’ll be all right.’

‘I feel sick.’

‘Imagine if you win.’

‘Beetle, I promise you I am not going to win. Just staying alive is my goal.’

‘Well, OK, what if everyone else dies? Then you’ll win by default.’

‘It doesn’t have to be competitive. I’m only really competing against myself. And like I say, just finishing is my goal.’

‘I thought you said staying alive was your goal?’

‘I suppose I would quite like to finish.’

‘You will.’

‘I might not.’

‘You will.’

‘It doesn’t matter anyway. I’d like to finish, but it really doesn’t matter.’

‘Right. Well, I’ve been thinking, and I’m going to do the 5k,’ says Bryony.

‘What?’ James sits up.

‘You can enter just the 5k on the day as a kind of fun run. I’ll do it with Holly. She does so much want to do it, and she’s promised to eat a big dinner afterwards . . . And she’s so missing her tennis, and, well . . .’

Bryony expected James to be impressed with the idea that his
fat, somewhat unhealthy wife is planning to run five kilometres, but instead he sounds annoyed. He’s annoyed about everything to do with Holly lately.

‘What about Ash?’

‘Fleur’ll watch him, I’m sure.’

Here’s the other thing. What if Bryony wins? OK, not the whole 5k race, because one of the triathletes will certainly win it, but what if, in her age group, and of the people just doing the 5k, what if she wins? She’s looked up the times posted in other local 5ks, and found that people actually do it quite slowly, compared with the times she has been doing recently. It’s sort of inconceivable, but rather delightful . . . For some reason Bryony is much slower on the treadmill. But when she goes out with her Nike+ wristband on she can knock off a 5k in twenty-seven minutes. Maybe it’s the joy of being outside? Maybe the treadmills are a bit old. In any case, winning the 5k would certainly prove to everyone that . . .

‘So you won’t be waiting for me at the end, then?’

‘Yes, of course I will. The run ends at Fowlmead, doesn’t it? And that’s where the cycling is.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Oh, I see. You’re worried I’ll take all the glory.’ Bryony laughs and pinches James. ‘Don’t be so silly.’

He sighs, but says nothing.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘No, really. What have I done?’

‘Nothing. I just . . .’

‘What?’

‘I suppose I was just thinking it was nice that something was going to be about me for a change.’

‘Well, isn’t it nicer that it’s going to be about all of us?’

‘Not poor Ash.’

‘Ash hates sport. I’m not making him do a bloody fun run.’

‘I thought you hated sport too.’

‘I do! But you know I’m trying to lose weight and . . .’

‘Can’t you just be happy with things as they are? Why do you always have to try and change everything?’

‘Um. Right. I’m losing the thread of this conversation. I think I’m going to get up now.’

‘I just wanted someone there to watch me swim.’

‘Right.’

‘For God’s sake. In case I
drown
.’

‘Whatever.’

Skye sees. She sees much more than she should be able to. Like when she puts on a CD, her CD, the first and best one when she wore that flesh-coloured dress, and does that third-eye meditation thing, suddenly she can see all the people who are listening to the same CD in the world right now. When she was a kid listening to Abba or whatever and she wondered how many other people were listening to ‘Take A Chance On Me’ RIGHT NOW AT THIS MOMENT she thought it might be billions or millions but definitely thousands because the world was so big, but if you think about it, even now there are search terms that no one has ever used on Google. The world is actually small. So small that in fact at this moment there are only 125 people listening to Skye’s first album, which is actually kind of awesome if you think about it and better than nothing. It turns out that she can flick through them, flick through these people like a Rolodex, and choose one, yes,
choose one
, not the naked one, and sort of put in the co-ordinates and . . .

All the advice on racing says not to begin too quickly. But running at a comfortable pace, one where she can breathe through her nose and still hold a conversation (who with?), has meant that Bryony is in last place in the fun run. What is fun about that? She can’t be last! She can’t
lose
. Holly has already broken away and is running towards the front of the pack. An oldish lady, perhaps around seventy and wearing a pink tracksuit, totters past Bryony. OK. She was not in fact last, but she is now. This is ridiculous; this is humiliating. Bryony summons some effort and passes the old lady, who then passes her again. They are vying for second-to-last place. FFS. It is still raining, and a bitter north-easterly is coming in off the sea. Bryony wasn’t sure of the etiquette with her iPod but there is no one to even see her if she puts it on now. Her gym playlist begins. And everything is different, suddenly, and more alive. She can do this. She passes the old lady. Keeps going. Spies three fat women ahead with
Mums for Justice
T-shirts. Passes them. She is really doing this!

She is nowhere near Fowlmead when her Nike+ device tells her that she has run 5k. Well, that’s just outrageous, to advertise a 5k run that turns out to be way more than that. WTF? Bryony is absolutely fucking knackered. She has run 5k and has not even finished the race! She is wet. She is cold. She needs a drink. If she stops now she might freeze to death. And there’d be no one to rescue her. She has to keep going. OK. Start the playlist again. Except . . . Bugger.
The battery is low
. Stumble. Get up. Put one foot in front of the other. Do Not Cry. No one else is crying.

It’s the panting she hears first, the hot breath of wet men coming up behind her. Right. Great. To cap it all, the triathletes are now beginning to overtake her. In first place is some tall thin guy she has seen at the gym from time to time. Then – OMG – it’s Charlie! Closely followed by Ollie. Charlie doesn’t acknowledge her as he runs past, his face rigid with concentration. But Ollie slows, slaps her on the shoulder and says, ‘Come on, babe. Race you to the end? Last one in buys the drinks.’ And that is in fact what it takes to get her
going again. Of course, she loses sight of Charlie and Ollie quite quickly, and by the time she makes it to Fowlmead they are already on their bikes. But she has done it! She has finished a 5k that actually turned out to be . . .

When she gets her breath back she confronts one of the organisers.

‘Not very accurate, is it?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Your course. More like 7.5k than 5k.’

‘And what did you measure it with? That?’ he asks, nodding at her Nike+.

‘Yes, and I’m sure it’s a damn sight more accurate than . . .’

‘Did you calibrate it at all?’

‘What?’

‘Did you calibrate it?’

Oh God. Bryony doesn’t know what this means, but she does remember some word like that appearing in all the blah blah of the instructions she threw away, because really, who needs instructions to operate a bit of plastic you stick on your wrist and . . . Actually, she did have to get the instructions back out of the bin to work out how to connect the little thing you put on your shoe to the thing you put on your wrist, but that was surely all you needed to do, and . . .