“we’ll see what we can swing. How big a discount were you hoping for?” “Fifteenhundredquid,” I say very fast in the hope that it’ll bamboozle him into not noticing how unreasonable that is. “That’s”—I see him going for a calculator app and I cut him off. “Twenty-three-point-four percent,” I tell him. “I’m very good at mental arithmetic.” He gives me a sceptical look. “What’s eight times seven?” “Okay, I worked it out in advance.
