Poppy said, ‘He’s a baby. A rude, mind-blowingly awesome-looking baby.’

Brianne said, ‘We’re both seventeen. We took our A levels early.’

‘I would have taken mine early but I had a personal tragedy…’ Poppy paused, waiting for Brianne to ask about the nature of the tragedy. When Brianne remained silent, she said, ‘I can’t talk about it. I still managed to get four A*s. Oxbridge wanted me. I went for an interview but quite honestly I couldn’t live and study somewhere so old-fashioned.’

Brianne asked, Where was your interview – Oxford or Cambridge?’

Poppy said, ‘Do you have auditory defects? I told you, I was interviewed in Oxbridge.’

‘And you were offered a place to study at Oxbridge University?’ Brianne checked, ‘Remind me, where is Oxbridge?’

Poppy mumbled, ‘It’s in the middle of the country, ‘and went out.

Brianne and Brian Junior had been interviewed at Cambridge University, and both of them had been offered a place. The Beaver twins’ small fame had gone before them. At Trinity College they were given what looked like an impossibly difficult maths problem to solve. Brian Junior went to a separate room with an invigilator. When they each put down their pencil after fifty-five minutes of frenzied workings-out on the A4 paper supplied, the chair of the interviewing panel read their workings as if they were a chapter of a racy novel. Brianne had meticulously, if unimaginatively, worked her way straight to the solution. Brian Junior had reached it by a more mysterious path. The panel declined to ask the twins about hobbies or pastimes. It was easy to tell that they did nothing outside of their chosen field.

After the twins had turned the offer down, Brianne explained that she and her brother would follow the famous professor of mathematics Lenya Nikitanova to Leeds.

‘Ah, Leeds,’ said the chairperson. ‘It has a remarkable mathematical faculty, world class. We tried to tempt the lovely Nikitanova here by offering her disgracefully extravagant inducements, but she emailed that she preferred to teach the children of the workers – an expression I have not heard since Brezhnev was in office – and was taking up the post of lecturer at Leeds University! Typically quixotic of her!’