The Seed Collectors. Scarlett Thomas

Every so often the biology teacher said something about how sad it was that these three weren’t at all like their mothers. In fact, at fourteen, their mothers – frail, beautiful Grace, bold Plum and the legendary Briar Rose – had also been terrible students, interested only in the Rolling Stones, but no one remembers that, because it doesn’t fit the story of how they become famous botanists. Or famous-ish. Or famous-ish mainly for disappearing while on the trail of a miracle plant that probably never existed, or possibly killed them all.

      ‘Mummy? Am I a tree? She said that people aren’t like trees, but I am, in a way, aren’t I?’

      ‘Yes, Ash. You are, in a way.’

      ‘More than I’m a village anyway.’

      Having a son called Ash, while living in a village called Ash, hadn’t seemed anything worse than a bit cute when they named him. There aren’t that many botanical names for boys, after all, and at least Ash could be short for Ashley if he ever wanted to get away from the plant thing. Bryony’s husband James was very keen on the old Gardener family tradition, though, and in the end it came to a toss-up between Ash and Rowan. Ash himself has since pointed out that they could have chosen Alexander, William or Jack (in-the-hedge). On that occasion – Ash’s eighth birthday, or perhaps it was his seventh – James told Ash he was lucky not to be called Hairy Staggerbush, Fried Egg Tree, Thickhead or Erect Lobster Claw, all of which are apparently real plants.

      Bryony and James have no idea of the stupid conversations Ash has pretty much every day at school when someone asks him, yet again, why he’s called Ash when he lives in Ash, as if he named himself. Being named after a grandfather or a footballer or a TV character is fine. But a whole village? All kids know that no one should be named after the place they live, unless they are Saint Augustine or something, or Saint Stephen or Saint George – but in those cases you become famous first and then someone names a place after you. On his own, Ash likes being named after a tree that has magical powers. But he’s hardly ever on his own. He is dreading going to secondary school in Sandwich or Canterbury, where people will ask his name and where he comes from and both answers will be the same, which will make him sound retarded. He is already practising shrugging and saying ‘Oh, just some boring village’, but it’s not that convincing. Maybe the house will burn down, on some lucky day when there are no people or cats inside it (which is virtually impossible: there’s always life in Ash’s house), and they’ll have to move.

      ‘Clem doesn’t make cakes like Fleur,’ says Holly. ‘And she wears really weird clothes. But then I suppose that’s because she makes documentaries, and . . .’

      ‘Don’t you think Fleur wears weird clothes?’

      ‘No. Fleur’s pretty. She wears dresses. And interesting combinations of things.’

      Bryony sighs. ‘Well, yes, I suppose everyone knows that dresses make you pretty.’

      ‘What does that mean, when you say it like that?’

      ‘Like what?’

      ‘Is it irony?’

      ‘How do you know about irony?’

      ‘Er, school? Anyway, Mummy, you wear dresses.’

      It’s true. But while Fleur wears things you’d see in the thicker magazines, or on the size-zero celebrities she works for, Bryony usually wears a version of the clothes Holly wears but better cut and in darker colours: jersey dresses or big jumpers over leggings, all made by Backstage, Masai or Oska. What Bryony used to think of as fat people’s clothes. Yes, yes, of course all the styles come in S and even XS, but it remains unclear why thin people would need clothes with elasticated waists and asymmetric folds around the middle. Almost everything Bryony now wears goes in the washing machine at forty degrees and doesn’t need ironing. Bryony loves fashion, but it doesn’t love her. She’d like to be a Jane Austen heroine – or actually even one of the heroine’s shallow friends who only cares about fashion and won’t go out in the rain – but she’s way too fat for that. This season it’s all about clashing florals and colour blocking. You can clash florals if you’re a thin seventeen-year-old. If you do it at Bryony’s age you look as if you don’t own a mirror. If you colour block at Bryony’s size you look like a publicly commissioned artwork.

      ‘Mummy?’

      ‘I’m still trying to listen to this.’

      ‘Can’t you go on Listen Again later when you’re filling in your food diary?’ says Holly. ‘Anyway, Mummy?’

      ‘Hang on.’

      ‘Mummy? How many calories are there in a cake?’

      ‘What kind of cake?’

      ‘Like the cakes Fleur made.’

      ‘Did she make them? I thought she bought them. Or didn’t she say that Skye Turner sent them?’

      ‘No, Mummy, she said Skye Turner sent her cakes once. But they were like weird low-carb brownies or whatever. She made these ones. They were spicy and everything – not like stuff you can buy. Anyway, how many calories do they have?’

      ‘You shouldn’t be worrying about calories.’

      ‘I’m not worrying. I’m just interested.’

      ‘About two hundred, I think. They were quite small.’

      ‘So in a day, you could eat, like . . .’

      In the rear-view mirror, Bryony can see Ash screw up his eyes like a little potato.

      ‘Don’t say “like”, Ash. Say “around” or “roughly” or something.’

      ‘Like, seven and a half cakes,’ says Ash. ‘Wow.’

      ‘Yeah, but only if you eat basically nothing else,’ says Bryony.

      ‘Awesome,’ says Ash, in something like a loud whisper.

      ‘Cake is for babies,’ says Holly. At the party all the girls made sugar sandwiches with white bread and huge slabs of butter and honey to help the sugar stick and the grown-ups didn’t even stop them. The grown-ups were too busy smoking at the bottom of the garden and talking about whether they would rather fuck a fireman or an anaesthetist and looking at pictures of holidays on someone’s phone. Holly’s insides now feel a bit gluey. And the thought of the butter she ate – yellow shiny poo – makes her want to vomit.

      ‘How many cakes does Fleur eat, Mummy, do you think, in a typical day? Or a typical week. Would you guess at closer to ten, fifty or a hundred? Mummy?’

      ‘As if anyone would eat a hundred cakes a day, you total spaz,’ says Ash.

      ‘Mummy?’

      ‘What? Oh, who knows? I think she makes a lot more than she eats. I think she likes the way they look more than the way they taste.’

      ‘Mummy?’ says Holly. ‘Is that why Fleur’s so thin in that case, if she only looks at cakes but doesn’t eat them?’

      ‘Who knows? Maybe she’s just got lucky genes. She’s always been thin.’

      Lucky genes. Is that what it comes down to? Or maybe Fleur doesn’t eat family packs of Kettle Chips when no one is watching. Maybe she doesn’t add half a bottle of olive oil to a pot of ‘healthy’ vegetable soup like James and Bryony do, or use three tins of coconut milk (600 calories per can) in a family curry as James does. Maybe she’s still on the Hay diet, like Bryony’s grandmother Beatrix, who always talks of ‘taking’ food, never ‘eating’ it, and has given Bryony some kind of food-combining cookbook for the last three Christmases. Food combining means not eating protein and carbohydrates together. That would mean no Brie with crusty bread, no poached egg and smoked salmon on toast, no roast chicken and potatoes. Bryony feels hungry just thinking about it.

      ‘Mummy? Have I got lucky genes?’

      ‘Depends what you think is lucky.’

      They