The Accidental by Ali Smith Page A

and ate as if a day’s work had been done and everybody’s summer wasn’t being wasted in a Norfolk hell-hole. Today Astrid had come over the grass rather than up the gravel so Eve hadn’t heard her, had only just seen the shadow cross the window and only just managed to get up off the floor and on to the old chair at the desk to make a noise at the keyboards of the off laptop. After Astrid had gone Eve had stared at the blank screen. Calm. Measured.
    Was Eve Smart a fraud?
She had lain back down on the dirty floor after Astrid had gone.
    Was Eve, for instance, tired of making up afterlives for people who were in reality dead and gone?
Eve chose not to answer this question.
Was she fazed by the popularity of the last volume, which really she should have known to expect given the distasteful rise in public interest in all things Nazi and WWII generally over the past few years and especially now that the UK was back at war again?
Eve chose not to answer this question.
Was it anything to do with that ‘mendacious glorified peddled’ review just quoted?
Eve chose not to answer this question.
Did Eve really remember the whole of that review off by heart, verbatim?
Eve chose not
was it anything to do with the fact that thirty-eight thousand wasn’t actually all that many after all, not in bestselling terms, and now that the big time had arrived, it was disappointingly not that big a time?
No! of course not! Absolutely not.
Did Eve have a subject for her new unbegun book yet?
No.
Why was the very thought of starting a new book, which would bring in relative money and fame, enough to make her spend all day lying on her back on the floor of the mock summerhouse unable to do anything?
Good question. See if you can answer it from the answers already given. She had watched a woodlouse climb out of a crack in the floor and then back down into it again. She had wanted with all her heart at that moment to be a woodlouse with a woodlouse’s responsibilities, a woodlouse’s talents.
    Call that working?
Eve took a deep breath. It is very very hard work indeed, she answered, to be a woman and alive in this hemisphere in this day and age. It asks a lot, to be able to do all the things we’re supposed to do the way we’re expected to do them. Talent. Sex. Money. Family. The correct modest intelligence. The correct thinness. The correct presence.
    Isn’t that a bit feeble?
Any more questions like this and Eve would terminate the interview.
    Well, what kinds of question are acceptable?
Good questions. Conceptual questions. Not the personal kind. What did it matter what colour Eve’s eyes were? Or what gender she happened to be? Or what was happening in her private life or her family?
    What was happening in her family?
Well, Astrid, for one, was acting very adolescently.
    And Magnus?
Eve didn’t know what to do about Magnus. The way he was acting was very worrying.
    And her husband?
Michael was fine. Really, he was fine. But these are personal questions. They’re the wrong kind of question. The point was: Eve was an artist, and something was blocking her.
    Okay, so, what did Eve believe in?
    It’s a straightforward enough question; what did Eve believe?
What do you mean exactly, what did Eve believe?
    What did Eve believe?
    What credo did she live by?
    Well?
    What made her think?
    What made her write?
    What kept her motivated?
Eve was motivated by Quantum.
    As in physics? Theory? Mechanics? Leap?
Quantum was the name of the make of running machine she used.
    Running machine?
Yes.
    She ‘believed in’ her Quantum running machine?
Yes.
    Like other people believe in God, or chaos theory, or reincarnation, or unicorns?
The Quantum running machine definitely existed. At home, when she couldn’t sleep, Eve used the Quantum. On the Quantum she exercised both body and mind while everyone else was asleep, asking herself questions and answering them as she walked or ran in rhythm. (It’s actually how she first came up with the Genuine