Penalty

Music:

Franz Schmidt: Prelude and Fugue in D major "Hallelujah" (for organ)

Jean Langlais: Chant de Paix

Content Warning:

Strong language, mental illness theme, disturbing scenes, obesity references

Transcript

Penalty

Max moved slowly, through the stone corridors with their ugly tiling and grim lighting, and through the station barriers. He went through the barriers using the ticket the inspector had sternly printed and handed to him along with a notice of fare evasion. It was very easy to get through the barriers without a ticket. The trains were hardly ever patrolled by revenue enforcement and the station was always busy enough that one could hide among its crowds. What Max normally did, when he travelled between Wimbledon and Vauxhall, was avoid the barriers at Wimbledon by taking the tram to Merton Park and then walking north. He’d cheat the Vauxhall barriers- which were far more laxly policed than the Wimbledon barriers- by getting behind a family with a pram and following closely in their wake, while the wider set of gates, meant for families and passengers with heavy luggage, sluggishly opened and sluggishly closed again, too sluggishly to keep him out. As it was, he had been issued a ticket, and he used it at the barriers correctly, lawfully, joylessly. It wasn’t an expensive journey but the small thrill of successfully bypassing the small fare was something he enjoyed and needed in his week. Moreover, it slightly took the edge off the guilt, off the shame of losing ninety quid to the pleasure of being touched by another person.           

Max had made this particular journey frequently in the last few months since entering the second year at King’s College London because he had become enamoured of a particular twenty-four-year old escort called Daisy. He had initially visited her because he liked her pictures. And having met and been brought to completion by her his admiration only grew. She had red, permed hair and a blizzard of freckles. He really loved girls with permanents; and girls with freckles; girls with permanents and freckles in particular. She was very attractive to him but not flawless, physically. He was very forgiving of female imperfection. Of males, himself included, he was absurdly judgemental. Freckles were not to be tolerated, to him they looked ridiculous in a male face. In his mind, woman was a canvas where a certain kind of wildness was permitted, visually speaking: untamed outbursts of colour and marking and hair and flesh and mass were perfectly acceptable, germane even. But, where he and his sex were concerned, nothing could be out of place, the margins for error were precisely nil. Everything had to be precisely filed and kempt and toned. He regularly hammered his jaw with a small striking tool to enhance the jawline’s definition and angularity.                                     

Max took the escalator to street level. He stood on the right, not moving, allowing the escalator, and only the escalator, to deliver him into the sunlight. He came smoothly to the top of that long incline and left the mouth of the station behind him. An endless column of bus stops stretched before him. Double-decker buses arrived and departed with dizzying briskness. Beyond the bus-stops was the park, green trees and expanses of lawn and old railings. An open gate. A junkie couple shambled about in the dark tunnel, the tunnel just to the right of the park’s east side and over which the grey-green city transit trains regularly rumbled. There were big puddles of greasy-looking water in the tunnel; wounds of iridescence in the darkness. Splashes of water, the clatter of glass bottles, and raised, damaged voices all jostled. These were disturbing, echoing, fading sounds; sounds which were not quite real somehow.

            In the park itself, housed within that sanctuary of solemn green, Max saw people running, people jogging. He noted the physique of each runner he saw, how tight their ratios, how “sexually and visually aesthetic” their “region pronouncements”. (Admittedly he knew a lot more about the male body than the female body). Their faces were hard to see. 

Max also heard, or thought he heard over the din of the city, the calming cacophony of geese and ducks. Unseen by him, they waddled from the water, in comical squadrons, skirting picnicking families, and little children in dungarees and sunhats. A little blond boy stood at the water’s edge, tossing bread pieces to the mallards that remained.     

            Max passed Sainsbury’s. He saw Janice, an obese cotenant, leaving the shop. The doors slid open. She virtually filled the aperture, she walked with such a pitiful, heavy walk, and from her shoulder hung a strong, hessian bag full of her favourite foods. Max didn’t want to cross paths with her. It wasn’t pleasant to small-talk and it wasn’t pleasant to walk without small-talking. Total avoidance was best, for sure. He slowed, he tried to disappear into the populous anonymity of the busy, impersonal city. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her veer into Pret a Manger. She stopped and went inside as though she hadn’t planned to enter but had been suddenly drawn in by the smell of coffee. Two flags fluttered over the façade: the rainbow-hued LGBTQ+ flag on the left, the sombre Palestinian on the right. Max passed the Polish deli and Di Yee and the post-office and the travel-lodge and The Swan and soon found himself standing in front of York House, the tower block where he lived. His residence was located on the seventh floor.        

            He continued to move slowly, through reception. The security guard at reception didn’t acknowledge him. Max summoned the lift but then thought, briefly, that he might take the stairs. In the end, he stuck with the lift, because he’d already pressed the button and, in a building of so many storeys, it was wrong to summon the lift and then not use it. The lift took a long time to descend. When it finally reached the ground floor, its doors took a long time to open. They sluggishly diverged, revealing Max’s reflection.- (there was a mirror on the elevator-wall opposite. The glass was spotless, truth-telling). He turned around, turning away from himself. He entered the lift backwards. Mirrors were a temptation, a bane, an addiction, a frustration. He could spend three straight hours looking at himself in a mirror, pondering himself, gazing at himself, preening himself. For some reason, at that moment, he thought of Basil Fawlty barking at Cybil: I wish you’d help a bit more, you’re always refurbishing yourself! He laughed, finding Basil’s use of the participle “refurbishing” unexpectedly hilarious. He filled the lonely elevator shuttle with brief, unhinged laughter. Then he thought of his family, of their laughter, and he missed them and he stopped laughing.   

            From the right side-pocket of his denim jacket, an orange slip of paper triangularly protruded. This was the notice of train fare evasion demanding payment of a penalty fare to avoid further action. The penalty: the cost of an anytime day single plus £50- £100 if paid after 21 days. Appeals must be made through the indicated channel within seven days. 

            It was a horrible, weighted feeling. This penalty notice weighed Max down like stones and marked him with fault. The feelings he felt were grimly intense; he felt morose and slighted. Contrition and remorse stuck like tumours, like chancres in his throat. But his rage, his hatred for the spectacled inspector, was a far more articulate and unstifled intensity. What an odd man, what a cross man, what a shit man, he recalled from How Are You? It’s Alan Partridge.     

            He reached his floor, his room. He sat at his desk. He tapped the space bar of his slumbering laptop and the screen came abruptly to life. His fluent fingers typed the laptop passcode in a blurred spasm of speed. The desktop took three or four seconds to load. It loaded: its background image, behind no icons except the recycle bin, was a digitally altered version of Max’s face. The image showed Max’s face ameliorated to its ideal or “maximum” aesthetic potential. The jaws were more chiselled, the cheeks were smooth and slender, the septum was diminished, the philtrum slightly lengthened, the brown hair had been completely restyled into a style Max had never sported or asked for at the barber’s. Perfect facial harmony; perfect scores across all the indexes: the perfect ratio of masculine and feminine facial attributes, the perfect ratio of female-identified attractiveness and male-identified aggressiveness. Max’s desktop image showed the projection of what he could look like with the right interventions, the most perfect face that he was capable of possessing, the most perfect face that could be fashioned out of the face he actually possessed- “perfect” according, at least, to American (and sometimes Canadian) studies of female psycho-biology, of female mate suitability assessment processes, and of female responses to male visual stimuli (both bodily and facial). Looking at this digitally enhanced self-portrait provided Max with temporary, perfunctory, but seemingly genuine and deep satisfaction, consolation, relief, pleasure, remedy, arousal, excitement… 

            He searched up the Appeals website and mentally plotted his defence. He had been deliberately attempting to evade the train fare, it wasn’t a mistake. So he would have to lie, and lie expertly enough that his lie felt, smelt, and seemed like the truth. Did he have any kind of case, at all? 

            He typed in the notice reference number and the form was auto-filled with the details he had supplied the inspector. A big blank text box awaited his written plea. Please provide an explanation as to why you believe the penalty fare has been unfairly issued?

            Max enjoyed the challenge. His faculties began to whirr and quake with life. The cylinders of his imagination were turning and they produced, audible only within his own much measured and studied cranium, a churning hum. He was like some kind of motor, a motorboat or a lawnmower or a computer or a fan-oven just, at that moment, brought to life. The inspector had encouraged him to appeal. Just go to this website, he had said, circling it in blue biro, and “layer it on thick.” Layer it on thick…a strange, gross expression. It made Max think of that scene in The Whale when the obese protagonist goes on a food binge, double slices of pizza topped with mayonnaise and crisps. Layer it on thick. He would “layer it on thick”, in the least disgusting, least disgraceful kind of way.    

            He looked to his left, out at the grey city. The sky was blue and the sunlight radiant but the city was still grey, or mostly grey. The oldest buildings, with their columns and cornices and facades, were white. The huge vertical leap of Westminster Cathedral looked a dull red- even though Max knew it to be red-and-cream-striped. The tall tall bell tower emanated a dark, stern magic, it mumbled unsayable spells, emitted them like the severe, muffled airs of organ music. But, in general, the towers of vacuous glass and steel, the glass skyscrapers and the great faceless obelisks and the concrete high-rising residences, were all gunmetal grey and devoid of meaningful purpose. 

            He went into his pocket for the two pill jars, the smaller one orange, the larger aquamarine. Oral steroids- for cortisol boost- and amphetamines- “diet pills” for minimisation of appetite. (And extra pep). Daisy provided both of these for a good price. Max jubilantly swallowed two uppers- or “liveners” as he called them. He began to write, stammeringly and ponderously at first and then with fluency. At first he wrote only one sentence at a time, sitting back after the completion of each one and thinking hard. The computer kept locking, blacking out. Whatever happened to those aquatic screensavers? he wondered. So he went to Settings and from there to Screen Security Settings. He was presented with a column of multiple choice boxes: Lock after 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, or Never. He selected Never. 

And once he had made this change, he fell, after a while, into a momentum, into a rhythm as natural as a river, and the prose began to emanate effortlessly from the tips of his fingers, with the inevitability of toppling dominos. It hardly felt like work at all. This is what Max wrote:

I am appealing on the advice of the inspector who issued me this penalty fare. He found my demeanour to be trustworthy and honest and, indeed, it was the furthest thing from my intentions to avoid revenue enforcement. I was using this particular SWR train following a very poor night’s sleep on the floor of a friend’s house and was, the day following, on my way to a job interview. It wasn’t obvious to me where tickets for mainline trains are meant to be purchased since there are no barriers separating the tramlink network from the train network. It was my intention to purchase a ticket from a conductor on the train. I have seen passengers do this many times before and have done it myself on a number of occasions. The officer explained to me that he was not a conductor but a revenue inspector to which I say the difference between a conductor and an inspector is not self-evident, nor are ticket staff transparent about the distinction. Please accept my apologies for this unintentional and wholly innocent violation of your code. You have my sincerest assurance that it will never happen again. I boarded that 12.33 train in the hope of benefitting from a relaxed and benevolent system of ticket collection but I will endeavour going forward to support and contribute to that system rather than simply benefit from it. I will further add that since my destination makes use of ticket barriers, this proves that my mistake could only have been inadvertent as, even if the inspector had not shown up, there would have been no way of avoiding some kind of fare. Many thanks.

He felt very satisfied with his appeal and sent it off.

Exactly forty-eight hours later, he received an email with two documents attached. He opened the one entitled OUTCOME and was saddened and surprised to discover that his appeal had been rejected. 

He reappealed, completing and submitting the following statement within half an hour of receiving the rejection:

I am reappealing because I do not think that the content of my first appeal has been properly considered. In addition, having had a few more days to reflect, I have come up with a few further points, the raising of which I think will assist in my defence. I wish to remind you that I stepped onto the train with the intention of purchasing a ticket, I did not realise that the opportunity to do so had already been offered and that in so doing I was guilty of fare evasion. There is no doubt that the inspector was right to issue the penalty fare, he is clearly a competent individual with a comprehensive awareness of the guidelines which govern him. My argument is that I shouldn’t be legally required to pay the penalty fare, NOT that the inspector was wrong to issue it. My reason for arguing this and for taking advantage of my right to appeal this penalty notice is that, as it a discretionary procedure, I believe that I can provide ample evidence and assurance that it was not my intention to deliberately avoid payment of the fare. I expected to experience a replication of what I have observed countless times on these trains, namely the on-board sale of tickets, proffered in the absence of any blatantly evasive, wily, or dishonest (and therefore criminal) behaviours. I realise that information about penalty fares is displayed throughout the train but I must ask you to understand that it is observed/remembered behaviours and experiences that influence people’s decision-making, not signs and notices. I can even provide a specific example. (I took a time-stamped photograph on my phone shortly before the journey I am about to describe and so I can thereby be sure of the relevant date, time, and train-service). The man boarded at Stratford without a ticket, his destination was Great Bentley. This would have been the Clacton-on-Sea train on Sunday, 2nd, November, which would have departed London Liverpool St at 20:38. It departed Stratford just before 20.45. This passenger was drinking heavily. He was surrounded by cans of cider and was conducting, throughout the journey, a profanity-laden phone call. The conductor appeared and the man asked to buy a ticket. He was treated with nothing but courtesy and accomodation. There is no discriminate moral argument that explains why he was treated like that and why I have been made to pay a penalty fare. I am sorry to say that I do, in fact, see myself as the victim of an inconsistent culture which sends mixed messages to those who engage with it. Why, for example, do inspectors/conductors/officers never ask to see my 16-25 railcard? On many previous journeys, I have had to insist that I show it. This inconsistent approach leads to, at best, complacency and, at worst, leaves the system vulnerable to exploitation. Now, onto a further matter which I was too reluctant to bring up before. It is not my disposition, in this current climate of identity politics, to play such a card. But I do feel that it has been necessitated by the decline of my first appeal. In September 2024 I was diagnosed with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder- N.B. the term and idea of “disorder” does contain unhelpful historical baggage and is well on the way to becoming outmoded). But, regardless, it is true that my autism makes sudden changes and unpredictability in general quite frightening. On further mental rehearsal, it has become clear to me that I have been made to feel unsafe and upset by what occurred. I am NOT claiming for a moment that this is a case of deliberate discrimination but it is true that neurodivergent individuals are frequently misinterpreted in such situations as these. Honestly, it is harder for me than it is for my neurotypical counterparts to conceive of scenarios that differ from those my experience has taught me. I would ask that you allow me to learn from this experience and amend my ways accordingly, I would ask that you afford me an extra opportunity to learn on account of my neurodivergence. May I also remind you that I was tired from a sleepless overnight stay on the floor of a friend’s house and my ability to weigh up consequences and make apt judgements was impaired by my disturbed night’s sleep. Many thanks for taking the time to read this re-appeal.

The next communication arrived within the hour.

PLEASE PROVIDE DOCCUMENTARY EVIDENCE OF THE CLAIMS MADE IN YOUR LAST STATEMENT

Max wasted no time in uploading the relevant document. The PDF was entitled “Max B. confirmation of autism diagnosis for employers and educators”.

            Max felt optimistic that this would work. His eyes went skittishly and speedily over the calibri-font document and took in many fragments, many of them of dubious relevance. From the bullet-pointed list that spanned the second page of the document, this list of his struggles, shortcomings, anxiety-sources, and pet peeves, most of which he didn’t recognise in himself, certain phrases did leap out: “Max may find it helpful to break down goals into smaller “chunks” for which he is required to sustain attention for shorter periods of time”, “Max may struggle with understanding the subtleties of social interaction such as reading between the lines or understanding sarcasm”, “Max may require additional time to complete certain tasks and time in a distraction-free environment”. 

Max found reacquainting himself with this document, this unwanted, burdensome, significant document, an unexpectedly profound experience. Profound and meaningful and irksome as well. It baffled Max. The report painted a deceptive picture, it painted a self-portrait which he did not recognise as himself. As he scanned the document cursorily and then read it more carefully, he found himself thinking: who on earth is this insufferably demanding, fragile, inept, pedantic bore? Who is this timid, flappable, unappealing, injured person? And it hurt a little that it was him, that he felt such antipathy towards this person and that that person was, indeed, himself. For a very brief moment, he felt the urge to desist in his current course of action, withhold this document, allow his autism to remain fey and unsubstantiated, write something concisely contrite in the text box, and pay up before the fare was doubled. But £50.00. £50.00. The heft of that sum won over every other consideration without much difficulty. He uploaded and submitted the official evidence of his 2024 diagnosis.   

A response came back, just over an hour later.

He’d won his reappeal. The supporting documentation had been received, reviewed, and his appeal approved. The case was now closed.

He felt fantastic. He rewarded himself with 100 milligrams of amphetamine. He got up from his desk. He was emaciated, and so so pale. So ugly. So ugly, though he thought he was on the way to beauty. He stretched out for a while and then he sat back down and entered the community chatroom. As soon as his icon appeared in the chatroom participant list- Max314 “Just Joined”- he was bombarded with messages of welcome and friendliness: Hey, Max. Max the max. Maxibillius! where u been, dude? Some new photographs were in, males aged sixteen to twenty-five who wanted their attractiveness and mate-value determined. Max was keen to offer his assessments, his scores of how facially attractive he judged each candidate to be. He scrolled through them slowly. He was elated at how ugly they were, each one uglier than the next. Ugly, ugly, ugly, fucking ugly. Is there anything so widespread, he thought, anything so ineluctable, so ineradicable, as human ugliness? As he gazed at their faces, the damning and know-it-all labels churned about in his mind. They pinged like raindrops, like arbitrary notes forming a really satisfying melody: poor facial harmony, epidermal incongruence, delayed mandible development, dental asymmetry, nasal asymmetry, cranial asymmetry…the community piled in with their scores and their insults. Max probably wouldn’t sleep for fifteen hours.           

On the same floor as Max in York House, there lived a young woman called Janice. She was very overweight but not without sexual appeal. After all, obesity had blessed her with huge breasts and vast, rolling thighs, and a great big backside- (Max had a secret interest in her, one he found too shameful and mortifying to fully admit to himself). Max was secretive, shy, generally asocial. She saw him sometimes, caught fleeting glimpses of him; they would offer one another only a minimum of acknowledgment: a half-smile which quickly vanished, a mouthed Hi or Hello, a po-faced nod. Max pitied Janice and Janice pitied Max. She found him grotesque, frankly, this strange, stiff, spindle-limbed figure, surreptitiously departing, sneakily arriving. But she was a warm-hearted, giving, understanding person and she wished to know him better nonetheless.   

Janice had an idolatrous love for Neapolitan ice-cream and always kept her freezer stocked with several very large tubs of the stuff. She loved Neapolitan ice-cream, she loved to look at it, its creamy, changeable geometries, its airy, whimsical, marshmallow colours. She loved to watch it thaw, soften, liquify, to feel this transformation in her mouth, to shovel mouthful upon melting mouthful into her gob, to press her great, chubby hands into the flesh of the ice-cream, into that erogenous chill. In the tub, the three flavours lay in parallel bars, like a three-toned flag, like the flag of Germany or Iraq but less hostile-looking, less severe. She loved the strawberry, the vanilla, the chocolate. And she loved the places where the flavours met, where they bled either side of the meltable boundary that separated one from the other, where they combined in her mouth.

At any rate, after the penalty-fare incident, things started to go wrong. Max couldn’t make much sense of this. He had been successful in his appeal but the high from this success very quickly dissipated, leaving him morose and clueless. 

            And then he started melting. It began with his lips, the expression on his face: his usual tight-lipped deadpan thawed and sagged downwards into a permanent look of consternation and misery. The line of his lips curved downwards into a frightful upside-down U. Hangdog. He looked like Geoffery Tambor’s resting face, he was reminded of Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw’s comments about Leonardo DiCaprio in his 2023 review of Martin Scorsee’s most recent film Killers of the Flower Moon: “Weirdly, DiCaprio starts to look like DeNiro, like a dog resembling its master: a younger, victim-villain version with the same gimlet-eyed fear and hostility and the same rat-trap mouth with the corners turned down”.                

            And from there, Max’s skinny symmetry degenerated steadily, it depreciated, gradually but quickly. At an alarming rate, his cheeks, his jowls, and all the flesh around his head and neck began to melt, to collect in creamy excesses and spill outwards, downwards. His gaunt, goblin fingers slackened and trailed like noodles. His non-existent belly slithered forward and downward and became an apron,. The flesh of his back slipped down and became distended, like a tail. He couldn’t see or touch his own genitals.  

            He tried to text Daisy, the escort. No matter how insincere, the idea of her sympathies quickened him. Poor baby! this, Oh, sweetie! that. But his pooling, ultra-flaccid fingers did not register on the screen of his touchscreen phone. He could no longer use his phone at all, not in his current condition. He looked up Daisy online in the hope of a profile page with an email address. He would probably just about be able to write and send her an email by grasping a pair of pens or chopsticks or rulers in his soggy hands and typing on the keyboard this way. He found no email address. (Escorts are not contactable nor bookable by email, for legal reasons). He was too embarrassed to face his internet community and, anyway, he doubted that they would be any help, or consolation. But before it was too late he, logged into the site. Members noticed his arrival but he didn’t type in anything. The site remained displayed on the screen of his computer and he could not hide it, he could not delete it, he could not make it go away, nor make it seem as though he had never been an integral part of it.        

            His feet looked like cheese toasties, his once-angular jaw- which had been on a journey to even greater angularity- flopped down in a flesh-coloured bib: a pale amphibian throat, a turkey wattle. No clothes could contain him.

            With the deterioration of his body, his voice also degraded. His oesophagus folded in on itself and gave his voice the sound of two, even three, voices. 

            He collapsed into a thick mammalian pudding. His innards began to prolapse through the many torn crevices of his unsupported body. He was formless, like he had no skeleton.

            After nearly twenty hours of this, he began to wail. An unbroken, unhuman howl issued from him. From the only just discernible disc of a flat face, the O of a mouth yawned, barely decipherable, beneath a single eye. The eye was bulging, cyclopean, randomly placed. 

            Janice left her room just after one o’clock in the morning. She went to Max’s door. She was so nervous, so apprehensive that he would hate her for intruding. But his cries were constant, disturbing, and unignorable. She had a right, a duty, to investigate. She rapped on the door but her knocks did not alter that terrible sea-creature wail. She knocked again. When there was still no response she tried the handle and was both surprised and relieved when the door swung open.

            Upon discovering what was inside, what lay like a sanguinary trifle on the floor of Max’s room, Janice’s face lit up. She grinned from ear to ear. She got down onto her great knees, the descent ungainly, and fell forward into the red and yellow and brown mess, dirtying her elastic pyjama bottoms. She scooped up great handfuls and dollops of Max in her fists and shovelled them into her mouth. Her mouth filled with him, with his liquid composition, with his creaming substance- hardly any mastication was required. Hard bits- a rib, a molar, anything bony- she plucked from her mouth and cast aside like olive pips. She swallowed his squishy majority down. She gagged. She took big, audible, effortful gulps, much panting, plenty of drool and spittle. He was unlike anything she had ever tasted. His screams persisted, even intensified for a time. Then they ceased altogether.      

            She noticed his laptop. The community page was still up on the screen, the screen that would “never” lock. The laptop was plugged in, there was no chance of its battery life running out. The chat continued to grow and scroll with new comments, new abbreviated, slang-worded, emoji-laden contributions, a new comment every few seconds, each one studded with lurid symbols like sequins or gumdrops. There were also little noises, little beeps and bloops and cash-register sounds. She took a break from her ravening- there was plenty for later- and investigated. This was a window into Max’s life, who and what he had been. She got up, laboriously, and went to investigate. 

She sat down in his seat, her buttocks huge in the tiny chair. The chair buckled a little under her weight. Without much trepidation, she pretended to be him. The keyboard and mousepad were dirtied in fleshy Max deposits. Licking her fingers as she went, Janice entered the chat and said Hi to the members. The members replied immediately: Whatup Max! etc… She wasn’t sure what this subculture devoted itself to. It was hard, from the chat-page, to glean any of its aims. She noticed the digitised pictures of young men, of virtual, artificially generated male faces, eerie, impassive, like robots, like aliens wearing masks of flesh. She couldn’t think of anything to type.

            There were other internet tabs open and she visited these. The GWR Appeals Service, Max’s various entries, the latest official response closing the case. She read his assured, verbose appeals with interest; she couldn’t help feeling a little impressed by the sentences he was able to construct. There was also the autism diagnosis document, official confirmation for prospective employers and educators. She read this with even greater interest, devouring its paragraphs of well- if drily-worded explanation, its bullet points with solutions and coping strategies entailed. People really are fascinating; they hide what is most fascinating about them and declare what is least. Janice burped. Her throat felt sore, weary with its recent efforts.       

            She accidentally minimalised the page. The page shrank into its icon, revealing the desktop. The digitally-altered photograph which Max had made his desktop background gazed with freakish beauty into her eyes. It took her nearly a minute to recognise who it was.