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‘No, yes, I’ve heard all about you,’ Pip said. ‘And do you know what – sticks and stones, mate. You’re worried that a dictionary is going to change the definition of a word? You know that we laugh about you, right? Your little squeaky vowels and your threats. You know Mallory goes home and thinks about you every day? And I’m not a violent person, but I ask her what is wrong and when she tells me, I imagine you sat in your little house and I imagine feeding your hair into a lawnmower. You know what other words have changed over time? Wash your mouth out. What else has changed? Words like girl. Sanguine. Spinster. No, don’t ask me how or why, I have no interest whatsoever: frankly I’ve not the slightest interest. Mallory explained it once over a delicious dinner and I was concentrating on not tripping over my own tongue – look it up yourself if you’re so invested. You clearly have the time. Who else do you ring up and bully? Weather forecasters? Tide-tablers? Whoever tables the tide. I bet you resent that we’re not still speaking Latin. No, actually, I bet you resent Latin’s influence on the language and wish we could just be speaking in good old whatever came before. Anglo-Saxon. Jute. I’ve no idea, please don’t try and correct me on this, I haven’t the foggiest. You’re just a gross little troll who likes freaking people out, like something from the Grimm brothers. They wrote a dictionary too, didn’t they, Mallory? Did you tell me that once?’

‘I—’

‘So you listen here,’ Pip said to the caller, and she stabbed the air in front of her with a finger. Colour flushed beneath her collar and across her neck. ‘You silly little man. No, don’t apologise to me. I didn’t call sick off work to have you, what, snivelling on speed-dial. I’m not sure what your deal is – homophobia? Fear of change, or language, or gays, or both, or is it you feel like you’re left out or behind and there might not be a place and time for you in a book that no one reads, that you can’t abide – got me using words like abide – the smallest thing that makes no bit of difference to you? I learned a new word for wood pigeon today – that’s so much more important than you. You know who you’re speaking to? This may as well be the dictionary, right. You want to tell me that there’s a bomb in the building because you don’t want a word’s meaning to change and get with the times? Well, I’m the dictionary today and I am telling you in the strongest possible terms to get bent.’

She slammed the receiver back down into its cradle.

‘He hung up ages ago, didn’t he,’ I said.

‘The second he realised that it wasn’t you on the phone,’ Pip said.

I came around and hugged her, burying my face in that yard of closeness between the top of her head and her shoulder. ‘Into a lawnmower—?’

‘Felt good to say,’ Pip said. She hugged me back. ‘Oh!’ she said into my hairline, ‘I think I found another one.’ She pointed at a place in the index cards, finger grazing the paper.

The phone began to ring again.

There was a noise above us, a creak or stamp or thuddery. We stared at the ceiling tile above us.

paracmasticon (adj.), one who seeks out truth through guile in a time of crisis

‘I’ll take a look,’ Pip said. ‘Don’t pick up that phone, OK?’

‘OK,’ I said.

And Pip swing-swang-swung from the room. The phone kept on insisting. I waited until I could hear her feet on the stairs and then picked up the receiver.

‘I’m a man of my word,’ the digitised voice said. The voice disguiser meant that I could not tell whether the tone or pitch of it had heightened. It might have been my imagination, but the words seemed to be tumbling out more quickly. ‘I hope you enjoy yourself.’

‘Enjoy?’ I asked.

‘Enjoy,’ the voice echoed.

‘Enjoy,’ I repeated.

‘Hello?’ said the person down the phone line. Then, ‘Oh – hold on a second—’ and then there was that obscure sound of a phone being dropped from a small height and a sad, robotic, flatted autotune string of shit-shit-shit.

There was a corresponding thump from above. Then there came the shriek of a fire alarm, blaring at such a volume you could feel it in your blood.

V is for

vilify

(v. transitive)

As the cab pulled up outside his lodgings, an exhausted Winceworth tipped the driver far too much because the idea of weighing out or counting coins suddenly seemed an impossibly intellectual and physical undertaking. He race-dragged up the stairs to his front door, fell inside and slammed the door behind him with as much energy as he could muster.