Seven Point Eight Read Online Free Page B

lino, which covered the floor.
    You did everything in the kitchen: ate, drank, chatted, washed in a tin bath in front of the open fire, and listened to the wireless. Toilets were outside and incredibly draughty places in the winter. No one locked their front doors, children played outside in the street, babies were parked outside in their perambulators, and children were rigorously disciplined at home and school. If you got into trouble with the teacher, your parents would find out and you’d get another dose of discipline at home too. At Christmas, you found an orange, some nuts, and a small piece of chocolate in the stocking at the foot of the bed.
    These two decades had a great buzz and vibe though. My mother loved jazz music, which signalled more hopeful times after the conclusion of the First World War, and that was when the dance halls became popular. She was fascinated with the wireless, otherwise known as the radio, and often played in the kitchen, where she attempted to encourage my father to dance with her. I recall him having two left feet, much to her consternation. She loved the movies too and sometimes my big sister, Patricia, looked after my brother and I while my parents caught the latest talkie.
    As a child, I had an aptitude for science and mathematics, not jazz music or dance. My father quickly seized upon this, so I was never short of books and scientific toys, however, my mother remained at odds with science. I recall one of my discussions with her, aged seven. I was sitting at the kitchen table with a book while she cooked.
    “How did the Earth, planets and stars get made?”
    “Well, God made everything, my darling.”
    I remember seriously considering her statement.
    “But six days is not very long to create the heavens and Earth, with all its animals and people.”
    I recall the confusion on her face.
    “He’s God, and is all powerful in heaven,” she replied.
    It always came back to God, like a cosmic boomerang.
    “But, if God is a man, how can he be all powerful in heaven?”
    She smiled, but it was forced.
    “Your science makes you ask too many questions, sweetheart, sometimes you just need to believe.”
    And thus began the conflict. Consequently, I always found it difficult to reconcile my scientific and mathematical knowledge with the concept of God. However, I remained inherently curious about the concept; it was a personal paradox.
    At university, I met the love of my life, a classic English rose with long blonde hair and porcelain skin. Madeleine was smart, funny, sensitive, compassionate, and caring. I knew on our first date that we’d marry and only shortly after, we got engaged. However, our plans didn’t come to pass, as she became a casualty of the war.
    Air raids began on ‘Black Saturday’, which was the 7 th of September 1940, and they continued for around two months. Madeleine died on the 10 th of October 1940 on her way to the underground to take shelter. I was already safe in my parents’ Anderson Shelter, listening to the shrieking roar of the blitz get closer and closer, the thumping of the bombs, with the possibility of being blown to bits at any moment. So far in my life, there’d been a semblance of order, absolute order with everything being so predictable, it was actually unreal. Despite the war, my destiny had been clear. Perhaps it was inevitable that chaos would rear its ugly head, ironic for a scientist who studied the very nature of uncertainty and quantum probabilities.
      I didn’t know how to grieve, and I just sat quietly with our favourite songs playing in the background. We’d enjoyed Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, and the songs of Cole Porter, and they sounded so poignant now. Contemplation became my drug. To deal with the emptiness, I immersed myself in the completion of my degree and endeavoured to undertake a PhD scholarship in quantum mechanics. At the time, this seemed heartless and disrespectful to her memory, but the truth of the matter was