'Hello, Mother,' I said, somewhat breathlessly.
'Hello, daughter.'
'Going inside?'
'That's what I usually do when I get home.'
'Not thinking of going shopping?' I suggested.
'What are you hiding?'
'Nothing.'
'Good.'
She pushed the key into the lock and opened the door, giving me a funny look. I ran past her into the living room, where Melanie was asleep on the sofa, feet up on the coffee table with Friday snoring happily on her chest. I quickly shut the door.
'He's sleeping!' I hissed to my mother.
'The little lamb! Let's have a look.'
'No, better let him be. He's a very light sleeper.'
'I can look very quietly.'
'Maybe not quietly enough.'
'I'll look through the serving hatch, then.'
'No—!'
Why not?'
'It's jammed. Stuck fast. Meant to tell you this morning but it slipped my mind. Remember how Anton and I used to climb through it? Got any oil?'
'The serving hatch has never been stuck—'
'How about tea?' I asked brightly, attempting a form of misdirection that I knew my mother would find irresistible. 'I want to talk to you about an emotional problem — that you might be able to help me with!'
Sadly she knew me only too well.
'Now I know you're hiding something. Let me in—!'
She attempted to push past, but I had a brainwave.
'No, Mother, you'll embarrass them — and yourself.'
She stopped.
'What do you mean?'
'It's Emma.'
'Emma? What about her?'
'Emma . . . and Hamlet.'
She looked shocked and covered her mouth with her hand.
'In there? On my sofa?'
I nodded.
'Doing . . . you know? Both of them — together?'
'And very naked — but they folded the antimacassars first,' I added, so as not to shock her too much.
She shook her head sadly.
'It's not good, you know, Thursday.'
'I know.'
'Highly immoral.'
'Very.'
'Well, let's have that cup of tea and you can tell me about that emotional problem of yours — is it about Daisy Mutlar?'
'No — I don't have any emotional problems.'
'But you said—?'
'Yes, Mother, that was an excuse to stop you barging in on Emma and Hamlet.'
'Oh,' she said, realisation dawning. 'Well, let's have a cup of tea anyway.'
I breathed a sigh of relief and Mother walked into the kitchen — to find Hamlet and Emma talking as they did the washing up. Mother stopped dead and stared at them.
'It's disgusting!' she said at last.
'Excuse me?' enquired Hamlet.
'What you're doing in the living room — on my sofa.'
'What are we doing, Mrs Next?' asked Emma.
'What are you doing?' flustered my mother, her voice rising. 'I'll tell you what you're doing. Well, I won't because it's too . . . here, have a look for yourself
And before I could stop her she opened the door to the living room to reveal . . . Friday, alone, asleep on the sofa. My mother looked confused and stared at me.
'Thursday, just what is going on?'
'I can't even begin to explain it,' I replied, wondering where Melanie had gone. It was a big room but not nearly large enough to hide a gorilla. I leaned in and saw that the French windows were ajar. 'Must have been a trick of the light.'
'Trick of the light?'
'Yes. May I?'
I closed the door and froze as I noticed Melanie tiptoeing across the lawn, fully visible through the kitchen windows.
'How can it be a trick of the light?'
'I'm not really sure,' I stammered. 'Have you changed the curtains in here? They look kind of different.'
'No. Why didn't you want me to look in the living room?'
'Because . . . because ... I asked Mrs Beatty to look after Friday and I knew you didn't approve but now she's gone and everything is okay.'
'Ah!' said my mother, satisfied at last. I breathed a sigh of relief. I'd got away with it.
'Goodness!' said Hamlet, pointing. 'Isn't that a gorilla in the garden?'
All eyes swivelled outside, where Melanie had stopped in mid-stride over the sweet Williams. She paused for a moment, gave an embarrassed smile and waved her hand in greeting.
'Where?' said my mother. 'All I can see is an unusually hairy woman tiptoeing through my sweet Williams.'
'That's Mrs Bradshaw,' I murmured, casting an angry glance at Hamlet. 'She's been doing some childcare for me.'
'Well, don't let her wander around the garden, Thursday — ask her in!'
Mum put down her shopping and filled the kettle. 'Poor Mrs Bradshaw must think us dreadfully inhospitable — do you suppose she'd fancy a slice of Battenberg?'
Hamlet and Emma stared at me and I shrugged. I beckoned Melanie into the house and introduced her to my mother.
'Pleased to meet you,' said Melanie, 'you have a very lovely grandchild.'
'Thank you,' my mother replied, as though the effort had been entirely hers. 'I do my best.'
'I've just come back from Trafalgar,' I said, turning to Lady Hamilton. 'Dad's restored your husband and he said he'd pick you up at eight thirty tomorrow.'
'Oh!' she said, with not quite as much enthusiasm as I had hoped. 'That's . . . that's wonderful news.'
'Yes,' added Hamlet more sullenly, 'wonderful news.'
They looked at one another.
'I'd better go and pack,' said Emma.
'Yes,' replied Hamlet, 'I'll help you.'
And they both left the kitchen.
'What's wrong with them?' asked Melanie, helping herself to a slice of the proffered cake and sitting down on one of the chairs, which creaked ominously.
'Lovesick,' I replied. And I think they genuinely were.
'So, Mrs Bradshaw,' began my mother, settling into business mode, 'I have recently become an agent for some beauty products, many of which are completely unsuitable for people who are bald — if you get my meaning.'
'Ooooh!' exclaimed Melame, leaning closer. She did have a problem with facial hair — hard not to, being a gorilla — and had never had the benefit of talking to a cosmetics consultant. Mum would probably end up trying to sell her some Tupperware, too.
I went upstairs, where Hamlet and Emma were arguing. She seemed to be saying that her 'dear Admiral' needed her more than anything, and Hamlet said that she should come and live with him at Elsinore and 'to hell with Ophelia'. Emma replied that this really wasn't practical and then Hamlet made an extremely long and intractable speech which I think meant that nothing in the real world was simple or slick and he lamented the day he ever left his play, and that he was sure Ophelia had discussed country matters with Horatio when his back was turned. Then Emma got confused and thought he was impugning her Horatio, and when he explained that it was his friend Horatio she changed her mind and said she would come with him to Elsinore, but then Hamlet thought perhaps this wasn't such a good idea after all and he made another long speech until even Emma got bored and she crept downstairs for a beer and returned before he'd even noticed she had gone. After a while he just talked himself to a standstill without having made any decision — which was just as well as there wasn't a play for him to return to.
I was just pondering whether finding a cloned Shakespeare was actually going to be possible when I heard a tiny wail. I went back downstairs to find Friday blinking at me from the door to the living room, looking tousled and a little sleepy.
'Sleep well, little man?'
'Sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit,' he replied, which I took to mean: 'I have slept very well and now require a snack to see me through the next two hours.'
I walked back into the kitchen, something niggling away at my mind. Something that Mum had said. Something that Stiggins had said. Or maybe Emma? I made Friday a chocolate-spread sandwich, which he proceeded to smear about his face.
'I think you'll find I have just the colour for you,' said my mother, finding a shade of grey varnish that suited Melanie's black fur. 'Goodness — what strong nails!'
'I don't dig as much as I used to,' replied Melanie with an air of nostalgia. Trafford doesn't like it. He thinks it makes the neighbours talk.'
My heart missed a beat and I shouted out, quite spontaneously:
'AHHHHHHHHH!'
My mother jumped, painted a line of nail varnish up Melanie's hand and upset the bottle on to her polka-dot dress.
'Look what you've made me do!' she scolded. Melanie didn't look very happy either.
'Posh, Murray Posh, Daisy Posh, Daisy Mutlar — why did you . . . mention Daisy Mutlar a few minutes ago?'
'Well, because I thought you'd be annoyed she was still around.'
Daisy Mutlar, it must be understood, was someone whom Landen nearly married during our ten-year enforced separation. But that wasn't important. What was important was that without Landen there had never been any Daisy. And if Daisy was around, then Landen must be too—
I looked down at my hand. On my ring finger was ... a ring. A wedding ring. I pulled it forward to the knuckle to reveal a white ridge. It looked as though it had always been there. And if it had—
'Where's Landen now?'
'At his house, I should imagine,' said my mother. 'Are you staying here for supper?'
'Then . . . he's not eradicated?'
She looked confused.
'Good Lord no!'
I narrowed my eyes.
'Then I didn't ever go to Eradications Anonymous?'
'Of course not, darling. You know that myself and Mrs Beatty are the only people who ever attend — and Mrs Beatty is only there to comfort me. What on earth are you talking about? And come back! Where do you—'
I opened the door and was two paces down the garden path when I remembered I had left Friday behind, so went back to get him, found he had got chocolate down his front despite the bib, put his sweatshirt on over his T-shirt, found he had gllbbed down the front of it, got a clean one, changed his nappy and ... no socks.
'What are you doing, darling?' asked my mother as 1 rummaged in the laundry basket.
'It's Landen,' I babbled excitedly, 'he was eradicated and now he's back and it's as though he'd never gone and I want him to meet Friday but Friday is way, way too sticky right now to meet his father.'
'Eradicated? Landen? When?' asked my mother incredulously. 'Are you sure?'
'Isn't that the point about eradication?' I replied, having found six socks, none of them matching. 'No one ever knows. It might surprise you to know that Eradications Anonymous once had forty or more attendees. When I came there were less than ten. You did a wonderful job, Mother. They'd all be really grateful — if only they could remember.'
'Oh!' said my mother in a rare moment of complete clarity. 'Then . . . when eradicatees are brought back it is as if they had never gone. Ergo: the past automatically rewrites itself to take into account the non-eradication.'
'Well, yes — more or less.'
I slipped some odd socks on Friday's feet — he didn't help matters by splaying his toes — then found his shoes, one of which was under the sofa and the other right on top of the bookcase — Melanie had been climbing on the furniture, after all. I found a brush and tidied his hair, trying desperately to get an annoying crusty bit that smelt suspiciously of baked beans to lie flat. It didn't and I gave up, then washed his face, which he didn't like one bit. I was eventually on my way out of the door when I saw myself in the mirror and dashed back upstairs. I plonked Friday on the bed, put on a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt and tried to do something — anything — with my short hair.
'What do you think?' I asked Friday, who was now sitting on the dressing table staring at me.
'Aliquippa ex consequat.'
'I hope that means: "you look adorable, Mum".'
'Mollit anim est laborum.'
I pulled on my jacket, walked out of my room, came back to brush my teeth and fetch Friday's polar bear, then was out the door again, telling Mum that I might not be back that night.
My heart was still racing as I walked outside, ignoring the journalists, and popped Friday in the passenger seat of the Speedster, put down the hood — might as well arrive in style — and strapped him in. I inserted the key in the ignition and then—
'Don't drive, Mum.'
Friday spoke. I was speechless for a second, hand poised on the ignition.
'Friday?' I said. 'You're talking—?'
And then my heart grew cold. He was looking at me with the most serious look I had ever seen on a two-year-old before or since. And I knew the reason why. Cindy. It was the day of the second assassination attempt. In all the excitement I had completely forgotten. I slowly and very carefully took my hands off the key and left it where it was, trafficators blinking, oil and battery warning lights burning. I carefully unstrapped Friday, then, not wanting to open any of the doors, I climbed carefully out of the open top and took him with me. It was a close call.
'Thanks, baby, I owe you — but why did you wait until now to say anything?'
He didn't answer —just put his fingers in his mouth and sucked them innocently.
'Strong silent type, eh? Come on, wonder-boy, let's call SO-14.'
The police closed the road and the bomb squad arrived twenty minutes later, much to the excitement of the journalists and TV crews. They went live to the networks almost immediately, linking the bomb squad with my new job as the Mallets' manager, filling up any gaps in the story with speculation or, in one case, colourful invention.
The four pounds of explosives had been connected to the starter motor relay. One more second and Friday and I would have been knocking on the pearly gates. I was jumping up and down with impatience by the time I had given a statement. I didn't tell them this was the second of three assassination attempts, nor did I tell them there would be another attempt at the end of the week. But I wrote it on my hand so I wouldn't forget.
'Windowmaker,' I told them, 'yes, with an "N" — I don't know why. Well, yes — but sixty-eight if you count Samuel Pring. Reason? Who knows. I was the Thursday Next who changed the ending of Jane Eyre. Never read it? Preferred The Professor? Never mind. It'll be in my files. No, I'm with SO-27. Victor Analogy. His name's Friday. Two years old. Yes, he's very cute, isn't he? You do? Congratulations. No, I'd love to see the pictures. His aunt? Really? Can I go now?'
After an hour they said I could leave so I plonked Friday in his buggy and pushed him rapidly up to Landen's place. I arrived a bit puffed and had to stop and regain my breath and my thoughts. The house was back to how I remembered it. The tub of Tickia orologica on the porch had vanished along with the pogo stick. Beyond the more tasteful curtains I could see movement within. I straightened my shirt, attempted to smooth Friday's hair, walked up the garden path and rang the doorbell. My palms felt hot and sweaty and I couldn't control a stupid grin that had spread all over my face. I was carrying Friday for greater dramatic effect and moved him to the other hip as he was a bit of a lump. After what seemed like several hours but was, I suspect, less than ten seconds, the door opened to reveal. . . Landen, every bit as tall and handsome and as large as life as I had wished to see him all these past years. He wasn't as I remembered him — he was way better than that. My love, my life, the father of my son — made human. I felt the tears start to well up in my eyes and tried to say something but all that came out was a stupid snorty cough. He stared at me and I stared at him, then he stared at me some more, and I stared at him some more, then I thought perhaps he didn't recognise me with the short hair, so I tried to think of something really funny and pithy and clever to say but couldn't, so I shifted Friday to the other hip as he was becoming even more of a lump with every passing second and said, rather stupidly:
'It's Thursday.'
'I know who it is,' he said unkindly. 'You've got a bloody nerve, haven't you?'
And he shut the door in my face.
I was stunned for a moment and had to recover my thoughts before I rang the doorbell again. There was another pause that seemed to last an hour but I suspect was only fractionally longer — thirteen seconds, tops — and the door opened again.
'Well,' said Landen, 'if it isn't Thursday Next.'
'And Friday,' I replied, 'your son.'
'My son,' replied Landen, deliberately not looking at him, 'right.'
'What's the matter?' I asked, tears starting to well up again in my eyes, 'I thought you'd be pleased to see me!'
He let out a long breath and rubbed his forehead.
'It's difficult—'
'What's difficult? How can anything be difficult?'
'Well,' he began, 'you disappear from my life two and a half years ago, I haven't seen hide nor hair of you. Not a postcard, not a letter, not a phone call, nothing. And then you just turn up on my doorstep as though nothing has happened and I should be pleased to see you!'
I sort of breathed a sigh of relief. Sort of. Somehow I always imagined Landen being uneradicated as just a simple sort of meeting each other after a long absence. I hadn't ever thought that Landen wouldn't know he had been eradicated. When he was gone no one had known he had ever existed, and now he was back no one knew he had gone. Not even him.
'Ever heard of an eradication?' I asked.
He shook his head.
I took a deep breath.
'Well, two and a half years ago a chronupt member of SO-12 had you killed at the age of two in an accident. It was a blackmail attempt by a Goliath Corporation member called Brik Schitt-Hawse.'
'I remember him.'
'Right. And he wanted me to get his half-brother out of The Raven where Bowden and I had trapped him.'
'I remember that, too.'
'O-kay. So all of a sudden you didn't exist. Everything we had done together hadn't happened. I tried to get you back by going with my father to your accident in 1947, was thwarted and chose to live inside fiction while little Friday was born and return when I was ready. Which is now. End of story.'
We stared at each other for another long moment that might also have been an hour but was probably only twenty seconds, I moved Friday to the other hip again and then finally he said:
'The trouble is, Thursday, that things are different now. You vanished from my life. Gone. I've had to carry on.'
'What do you mean?' I asked, suddenly feeling very uneasy.
'Well, the thing is,' he went on slowly, 'I didn't think you were coming back. So I married Daisy Mutlar.'
25
'You did what?'
'Well, you did vanish without a trace — what was I meant to do?' I couldn't believe it. The little scumbag had sought solace in the arms of a miserable cow who wasn't good enough to carry his bag, let alone be his wife. I stared at him, speechless. I think my mouth might even have dropped open at that point, and I was just wondering whether I should burst into tears, kill him with my bare hands, slam the door, scream, swear or all of the above at the same time when I noticed that Landen was doing that thing he does when he's trying not to laugh.
'You one-legged piece of crap,' I said at last, smiling with the relief, 'you did no such thing!'
'Had you going, though, didn't I?' He grinned.
Now I was angry.
'What did you want to go and make that stupid joke for? You know I'm armed and unstable!'
'It's no more stupid than your dopey yarn about me being eradicated!'
'It's not a dopey yarn.'
'It is. If I had been eradicated, then there wouldn't be any little boy . . .'
His voice trailed off and suddenly all our remonstrations dissipated as Friday became the centre of attention. Landen looked at Friday and Friday looked at Landen. I looked at both of them in turn, then, taking his fingers out of his mouth, Friday said:
'Bum.'
'What did he say?'
'I'm not sure. Sounds like a word he picked up from St Zvlkx.'
Landen pressed Friday's nose.
'Beep,' said Landen.
'Bubbies,' said Friday.
'Eradicated, eh?'
'Yes.'
'That must be the most preposterous story I have ever heard in my life.'
'I have no argument with that.'
He paused.
'Which I guess makes it too weird not to be true.'
We moved towards each other at the same time and I bumped into his chin with my head. There was a crack as his teeth snapped together and he yelped in pain — I think he had bitten his tongue. It was as Hamlet said. Nothing is ever slick and simple in the real world. He hated it for that reason — and I loved it.
'What's so funny?' he demanded.
'Nothing,' I replied, 'it's just something Hamlet said.'
'Hamlet? Here?'
'No — at Mum's. He was having an affair with Emma Hamilton, whose boyfriend Admiral Nelson attempted to commit suicide.'
'By what means?'
'The French navy.'
'No . . . no,' said Landen, shaking his head. 'Let's just stick with one ludicrously preposterous story at a time. Listen, I'm an author and I can't think up the sort of cr— I mean nonsense you get yourself into.'
Friday managed to squeeze off one shoe despite the best efforts of my double knots and was now tugging at his sock.
'Handsome fellow, isn't he?' said Landen after a pause.
'He takes after his father.'
'Nah — his mother. Is his finger stuck permanently up his nose?'
'Most of the time. It's called "The Search". An amusing little pastime that has kept small children entertained since the dawn of time. Enough, Friday.'
He took his finger out with an almost audible 'pop' and handed Landen his polar bear.
'Ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip.'
'What did he say?'
'I don't know,' I replied, 'it's something called Lorem Ipsum — a sort of quasi-Latin that typesetters use to make up blocks of realistic-looking type.'
Landen raised an eyebrow.
'You're not joking, are you?'
'They use it a lot in the Well of Lost Plots.'
'The what?'
'It's a place where all fiction is—'
'Enough!' said Landen, clapping his hands together. 'We can't have you telling ridiculous stories here on the front step. Come on in and tell me them inside.'
I shook my head and stared at him.
'What?'
'My mother said Daisy Mutlar was back in town.'
'She has a job here, apparently.'
Really?' I asked suspiciously. 'How do you know?'
'She works for my publisher.'
'And you haven't been seeing her''
'Definitely not!'
'Cross your heart, hope to die?'
He held up his hand.
'Scout's honour.'
'Okay,' I said slowly, 'I believe you.'
I tapped my lips.
'I don't come inside until I get one right here.'
He smiled and took me in his arms. We kissed very tenderly and I shivered.
'Consequat est laborum,' said Friday, joining in with the hug.
We walked into the house and I put Friday on the floor. His sharp eyes scanned the house for anything he could pull on top of himself.
'Thursday?'
'Yes?'
'Let's just say for reasons of convenience that I was eradicated.'
'Yuh?'
'Then everything that happened since the last time we parted outside the SpecOps building didn't really happen?'
I hugged him tightly.
'It did happen, Land. It shouldn't have, but it did.'
'Then the pain I felt was real?'
'Yes. I felt it too.'
'Then I missed you getting bulgy — got any pictures, by the way?'
'I don't think so. But play your cards right and I may show you the stretch marks.'
'I can hardly wait.'
He kissed me again and stared at Friday while an inane grin spread across his face.
'Thursday?'
'What?'
'I have a son!'
I decided to correct him.
'No — we have a son!'
'Right. Well,' he said, rubbing his hands together, 'I suppose you'd better have some supper. Do you still like fish pie?'
There was a crash as Friday found a vase in the living room to knock over. So I mopped it up while apologising, and Landen said it was okay but shut the doors of his office anyway. He made us both supper and I caught up with what he was doing while he wasn't eradicated — if that makes any sense at all — and I told him about Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, wordstorms, Melanie and all the rest of it.
'So a grammasite is a parasitic life form that lives inside books?'
'Pretty much.'
'And if you don't find a cloned Shakespeare then we lose Hamlet?'
'Yup.'
'And the Superhoop is inextricably linked to the avoidance of a thermonuclear war?'
'It is. Can I move back in?'
'I kept the sock drawer just how you liked it.'
I smiled.
'Alphabetically, left to right?'
'No, rainbow, violet to the right — or was that how Daisy liked— Ah! Just kidding! You have no sense of— Ah! Stop it! Get off! No! Ow!'
But it was too late. I had pinned him to the floor and was attempting to tickle him. Friday sucked his fingers and looked on, disgusted, while Landen managed to get out of my hands, roll round and tickle me, which I didn't like at all. After a while we just collapsed into a silly giggling mess.
'So, Thursday,' he said as he helped me off the floor, 'are you going to spend the night?'
'No.'
'No?'
'No. I'm moving in and staying for ever.'
We put Friday to bed in the spare room and made up a sort of cot for him. He was quite happy sleeping almost anywhere as long as he had his polar bear with him. He'd stayed over at Melanie's house and once at Mrs Tiggy-Winkle's, which was warm and snug and smelt of moss, sticks and washing powder. He had even slept on Treasure Island during a visit there I made last year to sort out the Ben Gunn goat problem — Long John had talked him to sleep, something he was very good at.
'Now then,' said Landen as we went to our room, 'a man's needs are many—'
'Let me guess! You want me to rub your back?'
'Please. Right there in the small where you used to do it so well. I've really missed that.'
'Nothing else?'
'No, nothing. Why, did you have something in mind?'
I giggled as he pulled me closer. I breathed in his scent. I could remember pretty well what he looked like and how he sounded, but not his smell. That was something that was instantly recognisable as soon I pressed my face into the folds of his shirt, and it brought back memories of courting, and picnics, and passion.
'I like your short hair,' said Landen.
'Well, I don't,' I replied, 'and if you ruffle it once more like that I may feel inclined to poke you in the eye.'
We lay back on the bed and he pulled my sweatshirt very slowly over the top of my head. It caught on my watch and there was an awkward moment as he tugged gently, trying to keep the romance of the moment. I couldn't help it and started giggling.
'Oh, do please be serious, Thursday!' he said, still pulling at the sweatshirt. I giggled some more and he joined in, then asked whether I had any scissors and finally removed the offending garment. I started to undo the buttons of his shirt and he nuzzled my neck, something that gave me a pleasant tingly sensation. I tried to flip off my shoes but they were lace-ups and when one finally came off it shot across the room and hit the mirror on the far wall, which fell off and smashed.
'Bollocks!' I said. 'Seven years' bad luck.'
'That was a only a two-year mirror,' explained Landen. 'You don't get the full seven-year jobs from the pound shop.'
I tried to get the other shoe off and slipped, sinking Landen's shin — which wasn't a problem as he had lost a leg in the Crimea and I'd done it several times before. But there wasn't a hollow 'bong' sound as usual.
'New leg?'
'Yeah! Do you want to see?'
He removed his trousers to reveal an elegant prosthesis that looked as though it had come from an Italian design studio — all curves, shiny metal and rubber absorption joints. A thing of beauty. A leg among legs.
'Wow!'
'Your uncle Mycroft made it for me. Impressed?'
'You bet. Did you keep the old one?'
'In the garden. It has a hibiscus in it.'
'What colour?'
'Blue.'
'Light blue or dark blue?'
'Light.'
'Have you redecorated this room?'
'Yes. I got one of those wallpaper books and couldn't make up my mind which one to use, so I just took the samples out of the book and used them instead. Interesting effect, don't you think?'
'I'm not sure that the Regency flock matches Bonzo, the Wonder Hound.'
'Perhaps,' he conceded, 'but it was very economic.'
I was nervous as hell, and so was he. We were talking about everything but what we really wanted to talk about.
'Shh!'
'What?'
'Was that Friday?'
'I didn't hear anything.'
'A mother's hearing is finely attuned. I can hear a half-second wail across ten shopping aisles.'
I got up and went to have a look but he was fast asleep, of course. The window was open and a cooling breeze moved the muslin curtains ever so slightly, causing shadows of the street lamps to move across his face. How I loved him, and how small and vulnerable he was. I relaxed and once more regained control of myself. Apart from a stupid drunken escapade that luckily went nowhere, my romantic involvement with anyone had been the sum total of zip over the past two and a half years. I had been waiting for this moment for ages. And now I was acting like a lovesick sixteen-year-old. I took a deep breath and turned to go back to our bedroom, taking off my T-shirt, trousers, remaining shoe and socks as I walked, half hobbled and hopped down the corridor. I stopped just outside the bedroom door. The light was off and there was silence. This made things easier. I stepped naked into the bedroom, padded silently across the carpet, slipped into bed and snuggled up to Landen. He was wearing pyjamas and smelled different. The light came on and there was a startled scream from the man lying next to me. It wasn't Landen but Landen's father — and next to him, his wife, Houson. They looked at me, I looked back, stammered, 'Sorry, wrong bedroom,' and ran out of the room, grabbing my clothes from the heap outside the bedroom door. But I wasn't in the wrong room and the lack of a wedding ring confirmed what I feared. Landen had been returned to me — only to be taken away again. Something had gone wrong. The uneradication hadn't held.
'Don't I recognise you?' said Houson, who had come out of the bedroom and was staring at me as I retrieved Friday from the spare bedroom, where he was tucked up next to Landen's Aunt Ethel.
'No,' I replied, 'I've just walked into the wrong house. Happens all the time.'
I left my shoes and trotted downstairs with Friday tucked under my arm, picked up my jacket from where it was hanging on the back of a different chair in a differently furnished front room and ran into the night, tears streaming down my face.
26
It was the following morning. I was sitting at the kitchen table staring at my ring finger and the complete absence of a wedding band. Mum walked in wrapped in a dressing gown and with her hair in curlers, fed DH82, let Alan out of the broom cupboard where we had to keep him these days and pushed the delinquent dodo outside with a mop. He made an angry plinking noise, then attacked the boot-scraper.
'What's wrong, sweetheart?'
'It's Landen.'
'Who?'
'My husband. He was reactualised last night but only for about two hours.'
'My poor darling! That must be very awkward.'
'Awkward? Extremely. I climbed naked into bed with Mr and Mrs Parke-Laine.'
My mother went ashen and dropped a saucer.
'Did they recognise you?'
'I don't think so.'
'Thank the GSD for that!' she gasped, greatly relieved. Being embarrassed in public was something she cared to avoid more than anything else, and having a daughter climbing into bed with patrons of the Swindon Toast League was probably the biggest faux pas she could think of.
'Good morning, pet,' said Mycroft, shuffling into the kitchen and sitting down at the breakfast table. He was my extraordinarily brilliant inventor uncle, and apparently had just returned from the 1988 Mad Scientists Conference, or MadCon '88 as it was known.
'Uncle,' I said, probably with less enthusiasm than I should have mustered, 'how good to see you again!'
'And you, my dear,' he said kindly. 'Back for good?'
'I'm not sure,' I replied, thinking about Landen. 'Aunt Polly well?'
'In the very best of health. We've been to MadCon — I was given a lifetime achievement award for something but for the life of me I can't think what, or why.'
It was a typically Mycroft statement. Despite his undoubted brilliance, he never thought he was doing anything particularly clever or useful — he just liked to tinker with ideas. It was his Prose Portal invention which had got me inside books in the first place. He had set up home in the Sherlock Holmes canon to escape Goliath but had remained stuck there until I rescued him about a year ago.
'Did Goliath ever bother you again?' I asked. 'After you came back, I mean?'
'They tried,' he replied softly, 'but they didn't get anything from me.'
'You wouldn't tell them anything?'
'No. It was better than that. I couldn't. You see, I can't remember a single thing about any of the inventions they wanted me to talk about.'
'How is that possible?'
'Well,' replied Mycroft, taking a sip of tea, 'I'm not sure, but logically speaking I must have invented a memory erasure device or something and used it selectively on myself and Polly — what we call the Big Blank. It's the only possible explanation.'
'So you can't remember how the Prose Portal actually works?'
'The what?'
'The Prose Portal. A device for entering fiction.'
'They were asking me about something like that, now you mention it. It would be very intriguing to try and redevelop it but Polly says I shouldn't. My lab is full of devices, the purpose of which I haven't the foggiest notion about. An ovinator, for example — it's clearly something to do with eggs, but what?'
'I don't know.'
'Well, perhaps it's all for the best. These days I only work for peaceful means. Intellect is worthless if it isn't for the betterment of us all.'
'I'll agree with you on that one. What work were you presenting to MadCon '88?'
'Theoretical Nextian mathematics, mostly,' replied Mycroft, warming to the subject dearest to his heart — his work. 'I told you all about Nextian geometry, didn't I?'
I nodded.
'Well, Nextian number theory is very closely related to that, and in its simplest form allows me to work backwards to discover the original sum from which the product is derived.'
'Eh?'
'Well, say you have the numbers twelve and sixteen. You multiply them together and get 192, yes? Now, in conventional maths if you were given the number 192 you would not know how that number was derived. It might just as easily have been three times sixty-four or six times thirty-two or even 194 minus two. But you couldn't tell just from looking at the number alone, now, could you?'
'I suppose not.'
'You suppose wrong,' said Mycroft with a smile. 'Nextian number theory works in an inverse fashion from ordinary maths — it allows you to discover the precise question from a stated answer.'
'And the practical applications of this?'
'Hundreds.' He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and passed it over. I unfolded it and found a simple number written upon it: 2216091 -1, or two raised to the power of two hundred and sixteen thousand and ninety-one, minus one.
'It looks like a big number.'
'It's a medium—sized number,' he corrected.
'And?'
'Well, if I was to give you a short story of ten thousand words, instructed you to give a value for each letter and punctuation mark and then wrote them down, you'd get a number with sixty-five thousand or so digits. All you need to do then is to find a simpler way of expressing it. Using a branch of Nextian maths that I call FactorZip we can reduce any sized number to a short, notated style.'
I looked at the number in my hand again.
'So this is?'
'A FactorZipped Sleepy Hollow. I'm working on reducing all the books ever written to a number less than fifty digits long. Makes you think, eh? Instead of buying a newspaper every day you'd simply jot down today's number and pop it in your Nexpanding calculator to read it.'
'Ingenious!' I breathed.
'It's still early days but I hope one day to be able to predict a cause simply by looking at the event. And after that, trying to construct unknown questions from known answers.'
'Such as?'
'Well, the answer: "Good lord, no, quite the reverse!" I've always wanted to know the question to that.'
'Right,' I replied, still trying to figure out how you'd know by looking at the number nine that it had got there by being three squared or the square root of eighty-one.
'Isn't it just?' he said with a smile, thanking my mother for the bacon and eggs she had just put down in front of him.
Lady Hamilton's departure at 8.30 was really only sad for Hamlet. He went into a glowering mood and made up a long soliloquy about his heart that was aching fit to break and how cruel was the hand that fate had dealt him. He said that Emma was his one true love and her departure made his life bereft; a life that had little meaning and would be better ended — and so on and so forth until eventually Emma had to interrupt him and thank him but she really must go or else she'd be late for something she couldn't specify. So he then screamed abuse at her for five minutes, told her she was a whore and marched out, muttering something about being a chameleon. With him gone we could all get on with our goodbyes.
'Goodbye, Thursday,' said Emma, holding my hand, 'you've always been very kind to me. I hope you get your husband back. Would you permit me to afford you a small observation that I think might be of help?'
'Of course.'
'Don't let Smudger dominate the forward hoop positions. He works best in defence, especially if backed up by Biffo — and play offensively if you want to win.'
'Thank you,' I said slowly, 'you're very kind.'
I gave her a hug and my mother did too — a tad awkwardly as she had never fully divested herself of the suspicion that Emma had been carrying on with Dad. Then, a moment later, Emma vanished — which must be what it's like when Father arrives and stops the clock for other people.
'Well,' said my mother, wiping her hands on her pinafore, 'that's her gone. I'm glad she got her husband back.'
'Yes,' I agreed somewhat diffidently, and walked off to find Hamlet. He was outside, sitting on the bench in the rose garden, deep in thought.
'You okay?' I asked, sitting down next to him.
'Tell me truthfully, Miss Next. Do I dither?'
'Well — not really.'
'Truthfully now!'
'Perhaps ... a bit.'
Hamlet gave out a groan and buried his face in his hands.
'Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I! A slave to this play with contradictions so legion that scholars write volumes attempting to explain me. One moment I love Ophelia, the next I treat her cruelly. I am by turns a petulant adolescent and a mature man, a melancholy loner and a wit telling actors their trade. I cannot decide whether I'm a philosopher or a moping teenager, a poet or a murderer, a procrastinator or a man of action. I might be truly mad or sane pretending to be mad or even mad pretending to be sane. By all accounts my father was a war-hungry monster — was Claudius's act of assassination so bad after all? Did I really see a ghost of my father or was it Fortinbrass in disguise, trying to sow discord within Denmark? How long did I spend in England? How old am I? I've watched sixteen different film adaptations of Hamlet, two plays, read three comic books and listened to a wireless adaptation. Everything from Olivier to Gibson to Barrymore to William Shatner in Conscience of the King.'
'And?'
'Every single one of them is different.'
He looked around in quiet desperation for his skull, found it and then stared at it meditatively for a few moments before continuing:
'Do you have any idea the pressure I'm under being the world's leading dramatic enigma?'
'It must be intolerable.'
'It is. I'd feel worse if anyone else had figured me out — but they haven't. Do you know how many books there are about me?'
'Hundreds?'
'Thousands. And the slanders they write! The Oedipal thing is by far the most insulting. The goodnight kiss with Mum has got longer and longer. That Freud fellow will have a bloody nose if ever I meet him. My play is a complete and utter mess — four acts of talking and one of action. Why does anyone trouble to watch it?'
His shoulders sagged and he appeared to sob quietly to himself. I rested a hand on his shoulder.
'It is your complexity and philosophical soul-searching that we pay money to see — you are the quintessential tragic figure, questioning everything, dissecting all life's shames and betrayals. If all we wanted was action, we'd watch nothing but Chuck Norris movies. It is your journey to resolving your demons that makes the play the prevaricating tour de force that it is.'
'Hello, daughter.'
'Going inside?'
'That's what I usually do when I get home.'
'Not thinking of going shopping?' I suggested.
'What are you hiding?'
'Nothing.'
'Good.'
She pushed the key into the lock and opened the door, giving me a funny look. I ran past her into the living room, where Melanie was asleep on the sofa, feet up on the coffee table with Friday snoring happily on her chest. I quickly shut the door.
'He's sleeping!' I hissed to my mother.
'The little lamb! Let's have a look.'
'No, better let him be. He's a very light sleeper.'
'I can look very quietly.'
'Maybe not quietly enough.'
'I'll look through the serving hatch, then.'
'No—!'
Why not?'
'It's jammed. Stuck fast. Meant to tell you this morning but it slipped my mind. Remember how Anton and I used to climb through it? Got any oil?'
'The serving hatch has never been stuck—'
'How about tea?' I asked brightly, attempting a form of misdirection that I knew my mother would find irresistible. 'I want to talk to you about an emotional problem — that you might be able to help me with!'
Sadly she knew me only too well.
'Now I know you're hiding something. Let me in—!'
She attempted to push past, but I had a brainwave.
'No, Mother, you'll embarrass them — and yourself.'
She stopped.
'What do you mean?'
'It's Emma.'
'Emma? What about her?'
'Emma . . . and Hamlet.'
She looked shocked and covered her mouth with her hand.
'In there? On my sofa?'
I nodded.
'Doing . . . you know? Both of them — together?'
'And very naked — but they folded the antimacassars first,' I added, so as not to shock her too much.
She shook her head sadly.
'It's not good, you know, Thursday.'
'I know.'
'Highly immoral.'
'Very.'
'Well, let's have that cup of tea and you can tell me about that emotional problem of yours — is it about Daisy Mutlar?'
'No — I don't have any emotional problems.'
'But you said—?'
'Yes, Mother, that was an excuse to stop you barging in on Emma and Hamlet.'
'Oh,' she said, realisation dawning. 'Well, let's have a cup of tea anyway.'
I breathed a sigh of relief and Mother walked into the kitchen — to find Hamlet and Emma talking as they did the washing up. Mother stopped dead and stared at them.
'It's disgusting!' she said at last.
'Excuse me?' enquired Hamlet.
'What you're doing in the living room — on my sofa.'
'What are we doing, Mrs Next?' asked Emma.
'What are you doing?' flustered my mother, her voice rising. 'I'll tell you what you're doing. Well, I won't because it's too . . . here, have a look for yourself
And before I could stop her she opened the door to the living room to reveal . . . Friday, alone, asleep on the sofa. My mother looked confused and stared at me.
'Thursday, just what is going on?'
'I can't even begin to explain it,' I replied, wondering where Melanie had gone. It was a big room but not nearly large enough to hide a gorilla. I leaned in and saw that the French windows were ajar. 'Must have been a trick of the light.'
'Trick of the light?'
'Yes. May I?'
I closed the door and froze as I noticed Melanie tiptoeing across the lawn, fully visible through the kitchen windows.
'How can it be a trick of the light?'
'I'm not really sure,' I stammered. 'Have you changed the curtains in here? They look kind of different.'
'No. Why didn't you want me to look in the living room?'
'Because . . . because ... I asked Mrs Beatty to look after Friday and I knew you didn't approve but now she's gone and everything is okay.'
'Ah!' said my mother, satisfied at last. I breathed a sigh of relief. I'd got away with it.
'Goodness!' said Hamlet, pointing. 'Isn't that a gorilla in the garden?'
All eyes swivelled outside, where Melanie had stopped in mid-stride over the sweet Williams. She paused for a moment, gave an embarrassed smile and waved her hand in greeting.
'Where?' said my mother. 'All I can see is an unusually hairy woman tiptoeing through my sweet Williams.'
'That's Mrs Bradshaw,' I murmured, casting an angry glance at Hamlet. 'She's been doing some childcare for me.'
'Well, don't let her wander around the garden, Thursday — ask her in!'
Mum put down her shopping and filled the kettle. 'Poor Mrs Bradshaw must think us dreadfully inhospitable — do you suppose she'd fancy a slice of Battenberg?'
Hamlet and Emma stared at me and I shrugged. I beckoned Melanie into the house and introduced her to my mother.
'Pleased to meet you,' said Melanie, 'you have a very lovely grandchild.'
'Thank you,' my mother replied, as though the effort had been entirely hers. 'I do my best.'
'I've just come back from Trafalgar,' I said, turning to Lady Hamilton. 'Dad's restored your husband and he said he'd pick you up at eight thirty tomorrow.'
'Oh!' she said, with not quite as much enthusiasm as I had hoped. 'That's . . . that's wonderful news.'
'Yes,' added Hamlet more sullenly, 'wonderful news.'
They looked at one another.
'I'd better go and pack,' said Emma.
'Yes,' replied Hamlet, 'I'll help you.'
And they both left the kitchen.
'What's wrong with them?' asked Melanie, helping herself to a slice of the proffered cake and sitting down on one of the chairs, which creaked ominously.
'Lovesick,' I replied. And I think they genuinely were.
'So, Mrs Bradshaw,' began my mother, settling into business mode, 'I have recently become an agent for some beauty products, many of which are completely unsuitable for people who are bald — if you get my meaning.'
'Ooooh!' exclaimed Melame, leaning closer. She did have a problem with facial hair — hard not to, being a gorilla — and had never had the benefit of talking to a cosmetics consultant. Mum would probably end up trying to sell her some Tupperware, too.
I went upstairs, where Hamlet and Emma were arguing. She seemed to be saying that her 'dear Admiral' needed her more than anything, and Hamlet said that she should come and live with him at Elsinore and 'to hell with Ophelia'. Emma replied that this really wasn't practical and then Hamlet made an extremely long and intractable speech which I think meant that nothing in the real world was simple or slick and he lamented the day he ever left his play, and that he was sure Ophelia had discussed country matters with Horatio when his back was turned. Then Emma got confused and thought he was impugning her Horatio, and when he explained that it was his friend Horatio she changed her mind and said she would come with him to Elsinore, but then Hamlet thought perhaps this wasn't such a good idea after all and he made another long speech until even Emma got bored and she crept downstairs for a beer and returned before he'd even noticed she had gone. After a while he just talked himself to a standstill without having made any decision — which was just as well as there wasn't a play for him to return to.
I was just pondering whether finding a cloned Shakespeare was actually going to be possible when I heard a tiny wail. I went back downstairs to find Friday blinking at me from the door to the living room, looking tousled and a little sleepy.
'Sleep well, little man?'
'Sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit,' he replied, which I took to mean: 'I have slept very well and now require a snack to see me through the next two hours.'
I walked back into the kitchen, something niggling away at my mind. Something that Mum had said. Something that Stiggins had said. Or maybe Emma? I made Friday a chocolate-spread sandwich, which he proceeded to smear about his face.
'I think you'll find I have just the colour for you,' said my mother, finding a shade of grey varnish that suited Melanie's black fur. 'Goodness — what strong nails!'
'I don't dig as much as I used to,' replied Melanie with an air of nostalgia. Trafford doesn't like it. He thinks it makes the neighbours talk.'
My heart missed a beat and I shouted out, quite spontaneously:
'AHHHHHHHHH!'
My mother jumped, painted a line of nail varnish up Melanie's hand and upset the bottle on to her polka-dot dress.
'Look what you've made me do!' she scolded. Melanie didn't look very happy either.
'Posh, Murray Posh, Daisy Posh, Daisy Mutlar — why did you . . . mention Daisy Mutlar a few minutes ago?'
'Well, because I thought you'd be annoyed she was still around.'
Daisy Mutlar, it must be understood, was someone whom Landen nearly married during our ten-year enforced separation. But that wasn't important. What was important was that without Landen there had never been any Daisy. And if Daisy was around, then Landen must be too—
I looked down at my hand. On my ring finger was ... a ring. A wedding ring. I pulled it forward to the knuckle to reveal a white ridge. It looked as though it had always been there. And if it had—
'Where's Landen now?'
'At his house, I should imagine,' said my mother. 'Are you staying here for supper?'
'Then . . . he's not eradicated?'
She looked confused.
'Good Lord no!'
I narrowed my eyes.
'Then I didn't ever go to Eradications Anonymous?'
'Of course not, darling. You know that myself and Mrs Beatty are the only people who ever attend — and Mrs Beatty is only there to comfort me. What on earth are you talking about? And come back! Where do you—'
I opened the door and was two paces down the garden path when I remembered I had left Friday behind, so went back to get him, found he had got chocolate down his front despite the bib, put his sweatshirt on over his T-shirt, found he had gllbbed down the front of it, got a clean one, changed his nappy and ... no socks.
'What are you doing, darling?' asked my mother as 1 rummaged in the laundry basket.
'It's Landen,' I babbled excitedly, 'he was eradicated and now he's back and it's as though he'd never gone and I want him to meet Friday but Friday is way, way too sticky right now to meet his father.'
'Eradicated? Landen? When?' asked my mother incredulously. 'Are you sure?'
'Isn't that the point about eradication?' I replied, having found six socks, none of them matching. 'No one ever knows. It might surprise you to know that Eradications Anonymous once had forty or more attendees. When I came there were less than ten. You did a wonderful job, Mother. They'd all be really grateful — if only they could remember.'
'Oh!' said my mother in a rare moment of complete clarity. 'Then . . . when eradicatees are brought back it is as if they had never gone. Ergo: the past automatically rewrites itself to take into account the non-eradication.'
'Well, yes — more or less.'
I slipped some odd socks on Friday's feet — he didn't help matters by splaying his toes — then found his shoes, one of which was under the sofa and the other right on top of the bookcase — Melanie had been climbing on the furniture, after all. I found a brush and tidied his hair, trying desperately to get an annoying crusty bit that smelt suspiciously of baked beans to lie flat. It didn't and I gave up, then washed his face, which he didn't like one bit. I was eventually on my way out of the door when I saw myself in the mirror and dashed back upstairs. I plonked Friday on the bed, put on a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt and tried to do something — anything — with my short hair.
'What do you think?' I asked Friday, who was now sitting on the dressing table staring at me.
'Aliquippa ex consequat.'
'I hope that means: "you look adorable, Mum".'
'Mollit anim est laborum.'
I pulled on my jacket, walked out of my room, came back to brush my teeth and fetch Friday's polar bear, then was out the door again, telling Mum that I might not be back that night.
My heart was still racing as I walked outside, ignoring the journalists, and popped Friday in the passenger seat of the Speedster, put down the hood — might as well arrive in style — and strapped him in. I inserted the key in the ignition and then—
'Don't drive, Mum.'
Friday spoke. I was speechless for a second, hand poised on the ignition.
'Friday?' I said. 'You're talking—?'
And then my heart grew cold. He was looking at me with the most serious look I had ever seen on a two-year-old before or since. And I knew the reason why. Cindy. It was the day of the second assassination attempt. In all the excitement I had completely forgotten. I slowly and very carefully took my hands off the key and left it where it was, trafficators blinking, oil and battery warning lights burning. I carefully unstrapped Friday, then, not wanting to open any of the doors, I climbed carefully out of the open top and took him with me. It was a close call.
'Thanks, baby, I owe you — but why did you wait until now to say anything?'
He didn't answer —just put his fingers in his mouth and sucked them innocently.
'Strong silent type, eh? Come on, wonder-boy, let's call SO-14.'
The police closed the road and the bomb squad arrived twenty minutes later, much to the excitement of the journalists and TV crews. They went live to the networks almost immediately, linking the bomb squad with my new job as the Mallets' manager, filling up any gaps in the story with speculation or, in one case, colourful invention.
The four pounds of explosives had been connected to the starter motor relay. One more second and Friday and I would have been knocking on the pearly gates. I was jumping up and down with impatience by the time I had given a statement. I didn't tell them this was the second of three assassination attempts, nor did I tell them there would be another attempt at the end of the week. But I wrote it on my hand so I wouldn't forget.
'Windowmaker,' I told them, 'yes, with an "N" — I don't know why. Well, yes — but sixty-eight if you count Samuel Pring. Reason? Who knows. I was the Thursday Next who changed the ending of Jane Eyre. Never read it? Preferred The Professor? Never mind. It'll be in my files. No, I'm with SO-27. Victor Analogy. His name's Friday. Two years old. Yes, he's very cute, isn't he? You do? Congratulations. No, I'd love to see the pictures. His aunt? Really? Can I go now?'
After an hour they said I could leave so I plonked Friday in his buggy and pushed him rapidly up to Landen's place. I arrived a bit puffed and had to stop and regain my breath and my thoughts. The house was back to how I remembered it. The tub of Tickia orologica on the porch had vanished along with the pogo stick. Beyond the more tasteful curtains I could see movement within. I straightened my shirt, attempted to smooth Friday's hair, walked up the garden path and rang the doorbell. My palms felt hot and sweaty and I couldn't control a stupid grin that had spread all over my face. I was carrying Friday for greater dramatic effect and moved him to the other hip as he was a bit of a lump. After what seemed like several hours but was, I suspect, less than ten seconds, the door opened to reveal. . . Landen, every bit as tall and handsome and as large as life as I had wished to see him all these past years. He wasn't as I remembered him — he was way better than that. My love, my life, the father of my son — made human. I felt the tears start to well up in my eyes and tried to say something but all that came out was a stupid snorty cough. He stared at me and I stared at him, then he stared at me some more, and I stared at him some more, then I thought perhaps he didn't recognise me with the short hair, so I tried to think of something really funny and pithy and clever to say but couldn't, so I shifted Friday to the other hip as he was becoming even more of a lump with every passing second and said, rather stupidly:
'It's Thursday.'
'I know who it is,' he said unkindly. 'You've got a bloody nerve, haven't you?'
And he shut the door in my face.
I was stunned for a moment and had to recover my thoughts before I rang the doorbell again. There was another pause that seemed to last an hour but I suspect was only fractionally longer — thirteen seconds, tops — and the door opened again.
'Well,' said Landen, 'if it isn't Thursday Next.'
'And Friday,' I replied, 'your son.'
'My son,' replied Landen, deliberately not looking at him, 'right.'
'What's the matter?' I asked, tears starting to well up again in my eyes, 'I thought you'd be pleased to see me!'
He let out a long breath and rubbed his forehead.
'It's difficult—'
'What's difficult? How can anything be difficult?'
'Well,' he began, 'you disappear from my life two and a half years ago, I haven't seen hide nor hair of you. Not a postcard, not a letter, not a phone call, nothing. And then you just turn up on my doorstep as though nothing has happened and I should be pleased to see you!'
I sort of breathed a sigh of relief. Sort of. Somehow I always imagined Landen being uneradicated as just a simple sort of meeting each other after a long absence. I hadn't ever thought that Landen wouldn't know he had been eradicated. When he was gone no one had known he had ever existed, and now he was back no one knew he had gone. Not even him.
'Ever heard of an eradication?' I asked.
He shook his head.
I took a deep breath.
'Well, two and a half years ago a chronupt member of SO-12 had you killed at the age of two in an accident. It was a blackmail attempt by a Goliath Corporation member called Brik Schitt-Hawse.'
'I remember him.'
'Right. And he wanted me to get his half-brother out of The Raven where Bowden and I had trapped him.'
'I remember that, too.'
'O-kay. So all of a sudden you didn't exist. Everything we had done together hadn't happened. I tried to get you back by going with my father to your accident in 1947, was thwarted and chose to live inside fiction while little Friday was born and return when I was ready. Which is now. End of story.'
We stared at each other for another long moment that might also have been an hour but was probably only twenty seconds, I moved Friday to the other hip again and then finally he said:
'The trouble is, Thursday, that things are different now. You vanished from my life. Gone. I've had to carry on.'
'What do you mean?' I asked, suddenly feeling very uneasy.
'Well, the thing is,' he went on slowly, 'I didn't think you were coming back. So I married Daisy Mutlar.'
25
Practical Difficulties Regarding Uneradications
DANISH PERSON SOUGHT
A man of Danish appearance was sought yesterday in connection with an armed robbery at the First Goliath Bank in Banbury. The man, described as being 'of Danish appearance', entered the bank at 9.35 and demanded that the teller hand over all the money. Five hundred pounds in sterling and a small amount of Danish Kroner held in the foreign currencies department were stolen. Police described this, small sum of Kroner as of 'particular significance' and pledged to wipe out the menace of Danish criminality as soon as possible. The public have been warned to be on the lookout for anyone of Danish appearance, and to let the police know of any Danes acting suspiciously, or, failing that, any Danes at all.
Article in The Toad, 15 July 1988
'You did what?'
'Well, you did vanish without a trace — what was I meant to do?' I couldn't believe it. The little scumbag had sought solace in the arms of a miserable cow who wasn't good enough to carry his bag, let alone be his wife. I stared at him, speechless. I think my mouth might even have dropped open at that point, and I was just wondering whether I should burst into tears, kill him with my bare hands, slam the door, scream, swear or all of the above at the same time when I noticed that Landen was doing that thing he does when he's trying not to laugh.
'You one-legged piece of crap,' I said at last, smiling with the relief, 'you did no such thing!'
'Had you going, though, didn't I?' He grinned.
Now I was angry.
'What did you want to go and make that stupid joke for? You know I'm armed and unstable!'
'It's no more stupid than your dopey yarn about me being eradicated!'
'It's not a dopey yarn.'
'It is. If I had been eradicated, then there wouldn't be any little boy . . .'
His voice trailed off and suddenly all our remonstrations dissipated as Friday became the centre of attention. Landen looked at Friday and Friday looked at Landen. I looked at both of them in turn, then, taking his fingers out of his mouth, Friday said:
'Bum.'
'What did he say?'
'I'm not sure. Sounds like a word he picked up from St Zvlkx.'
Landen pressed Friday's nose.
'Beep,' said Landen.
'Bubbies,' said Friday.
'Eradicated, eh?'
'Yes.'
'That must be the most preposterous story I have ever heard in my life.'
'I have no argument with that.'
He paused.
'Which I guess makes it too weird not to be true.'
We moved towards each other at the same time and I bumped into his chin with my head. There was a crack as his teeth snapped together and he yelped in pain — I think he had bitten his tongue. It was as Hamlet said. Nothing is ever slick and simple in the real world. He hated it for that reason — and I loved it.
'What's so funny?' he demanded.
'Nothing,' I replied, 'it's just something Hamlet said.'
'Hamlet? Here?'
'No — at Mum's. He was having an affair with Emma Hamilton, whose boyfriend Admiral Nelson attempted to commit suicide.'
'By what means?'
'The French navy.'
'No . . . no,' said Landen, shaking his head. 'Let's just stick with one ludicrously preposterous story at a time. Listen, I'm an author and I can't think up the sort of cr— I mean nonsense you get yourself into.'
Friday managed to squeeze off one shoe despite the best efforts of my double knots and was now tugging at his sock.
'Handsome fellow, isn't he?' said Landen after a pause.
'He takes after his father.'
'Nah — his mother. Is his finger stuck permanently up his nose?'
'Most of the time. It's called "The Search". An amusing little pastime that has kept small children entertained since the dawn of time. Enough, Friday.'
He took his finger out with an almost audible 'pop' and handed Landen his polar bear.
'Ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip.'
'What did he say?'
'I don't know,' I replied, 'it's something called Lorem Ipsum — a sort of quasi-Latin that typesetters use to make up blocks of realistic-looking type.'
Landen raised an eyebrow.
'You're not joking, are you?'
'They use it a lot in the Well of Lost Plots.'
'The what?'
'It's a place where all fiction is—'
'Enough!' said Landen, clapping his hands together. 'We can't have you telling ridiculous stories here on the front step. Come on in and tell me them inside.'
I shook my head and stared at him.
'What?'
'My mother said Daisy Mutlar was back in town.'
'She has a job here, apparently.'
Really?' I asked suspiciously. 'How do you know?'
'She works for my publisher.'
'And you haven't been seeing her''
'Definitely not!'
'Cross your heart, hope to die?'
He held up his hand.
'Scout's honour.'
'Okay,' I said slowly, 'I believe you.'
I tapped my lips.
'I don't come inside until I get one right here.'
He smiled and took me in his arms. We kissed very tenderly and I shivered.
'Consequat est laborum,' said Friday, joining in with the hug.
We walked into the house and I put Friday on the floor. His sharp eyes scanned the house for anything he could pull on top of himself.
'Thursday?'
'Yes?'
'Let's just say for reasons of convenience that I was eradicated.'
'Yuh?'
'Then everything that happened since the last time we parted outside the SpecOps building didn't really happen?'
I hugged him tightly.
'It did happen, Land. It shouldn't have, but it did.'
'Then the pain I felt was real?'
'Yes. I felt it too.'
'Then I missed you getting bulgy — got any pictures, by the way?'
'I don't think so. But play your cards right and I may show you the stretch marks.'
'I can hardly wait.'
He kissed me again and stared at Friday while an inane grin spread across his face.
'Thursday?'
'What?'
'I have a son!'
I decided to correct him.
'No — we have a son!'
'Right. Well,' he said, rubbing his hands together, 'I suppose you'd better have some supper. Do you still like fish pie?'
There was a crash as Friday found a vase in the living room to knock over. So I mopped it up while apologising, and Landen said it was okay but shut the doors of his office anyway. He made us both supper and I caught up with what he was doing while he wasn't eradicated — if that makes any sense at all — and I told him about Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, wordstorms, Melanie and all the rest of it.
'So a grammasite is a parasitic life form that lives inside books?'
'Pretty much.'
'And if you don't find a cloned Shakespeare then we lose Hamlet?'
'Yup.'
'And the Superhoop is inextricably linked to the avoidance of a thermonuclear war?'
'It is. Can I move back in?'
'I kept the sock drawer just how you liked it.'
I smiled.
'Alphabetically, left to right?'
'No, rainbow, violet to the right — or was that how Daisy liked— Ah! Just kidding! You have no sense of— Ah! Stop it! Get off! No! Ow!'
But it was too late. I had pinned him to the floor and was attempting to tickle him. Friday sucked his fingers and looked on, disgusted, while Landen managed to get out of my hands, roll round and tickle me, which I didn't like at all. After a while we just collapsed into a silly giggling mess.
'So, Thursday,' he said as he helped me off the floor, 'are you going to spend the night?'
'No.'
'No?'
'No. I'm moving in and staying for ever.'
We put Friday to bed in the spare room and made up a sort of cot for him. He was quite happy sleeping almost anywhere as long as he had his polar bear with him. He'd stayed over at Melanie's house and once at Mrs Tiggy-Winkle's, which was warm and snug and smelt of moss, sticks and washing powder. He had even slept on Treasure Island during a visit there I made last year to sort out the Ben Gunn goat problem — Long John had talked him to sleep, something he was very good at.
'Now then,' said Landen as we went to our room, 'a man's needs are many—'
'Let me guess! You want me to rub your back?'
'Please. Right there in the small where you used to do it so well. I've really missed that.'
'Nothing else?'
'No, nothing. Why, did you have something in mind?'
I giggled as he pulled me closer. I breathed in his scent. I could remember pretty well what he looked like and how he sounded, but not his smell. That was something that was instantly recognisable as soon I pressed my face into the folds of his shirt, and it brought back memories of courting, and picnics, and passion.
'I like your short hair,' said Landen.
'Well, I don't,' I replied, 'and if you ruffle it once more like that I may feel inclined to poke you in the eye.'
We lay back on the bed and he pulled my sweatshirt very slowly over the top of my head. It caught on my watch and there was an awkward moment as he tugged gently, trying to keep the romance of the moment. I couldn't help it and started giggling.
'Oh, do please be serious, Thursday!' he said, still pulling at the sweatshirt. I giggled some more and he joined in, then asked whether I had any scissors and finally removed the offending garment. I started to undo the buttons of his shirt and he nuzzled my neck, something that gave me a pleasant tingly sensation. I tried to flip off my shoes but they were lace-ups and when one finally came off it shot across the room and hit the mirror on the far wall, which fell off and smashed.
'Bollocks!' I said. 'Seven years' bad luck.'
'That was a only a two-year mirror,' explained Landen. 'You don't get the full seven-year jobs from the pound shop.'
I tried to get the other shoe off and slipped, sinking Landen's shin — which wasn't a problem as he had lost a leg in the Crimea and I'd done it several times before. But there wasn't a hollow 'bong' sound as usual.
'New leg?'
'Yeah! Do you want to see?'
He removed his trousers to reveal an elegant prosthesis that looked as though it had come from an Italian design studio — all curves, shiny metal and rubber absorption joints. A thing of beauty. A leg among legs.
'Wow!'
'Your uncle Mycroft made it for me. Impressed?'
'You bet. Did you keep the old one?'
'In the garden. It has a hibiscus in it.'
'What colour?'
'Blue.'
'Light blue or dark blue?'
'Light.'
'Have you redecorated this room?'
'Yes. I got one of those wallpaper books and couldn't make up my mind which one to use, so I just took the samples out of the book and used them instead. Interesting effect, don't you think?'
'I'm not sure that the Regency flock matches Bonzo, the Wonder Hound.'
'Perhaps,' he conceded, 'but it was very economic.'
I was nervous as hell, and so was he. We were talking about everything but what we really wanted to talk about.
'Shh!'
'What?'
'Was that Friday?'
'I didn't hear anything.'
'A mother's hearing is finely attuned. I can hear a half-second wail across ten shopping aisles.'
I got up and went to have a look but he was fast asleep, of course. The window was open and a cooling breeze moved the muslin curtains ever so slightly, causing shadows of the street lamps to move across his face. How I loved him, and how small and vulnerable he was. I relaxed and once more regained control of myself. Apart from a stupid drunken escapade that luckily went nowhere, my romantic involvement with anyone had been the sum total of zip over the past two and a half years. I had been waiting for this moment for ages. And now I was acting like a lovesick sixteen-year-old. I took a deep breath and turned to go back to our bedroom, taking off my T-shirt, trousers, remaining shoe and socks as I walked, half hobbled and hopped down the corridor. I stopped just outside the bedroom door. The light was off and there was silence. This made things easier. I stepped naked into the bedroom, padded silently across the carpet, slipped into bed and snuggled up to Landen. He was wearing pyjamas and smelled different. The light came on and there was a startled scream from the man lying next to me. It wasn't Landen but Landen's father — and next to him, his wife, Houson. They looked at me, I looked back, stammered, 'Sorry, wrong bedroom,' and ran out of the room, grabbing my clothes from the heap outside the bedroom door. But I wasn't in the wrong room and the lack of a wedding ring confirmed what I feared. Landen had been returned to me — only to be taken away again. Something had gone wrong. The uneradication hadn't held.
'Don't I recognise you?' said Houson, who had come out of the bedroom and was staring at me as I retrieved Friday from the spare bedroom, where he was tucked up next to Landen's Aunt Ethel.
'No,' I replied, 'I've just walked into the wrong house. Happens all the time.'
I left my shoes and trotted downstairs with Friday tucked under my arm, picked up my jacket from where it was hanging on the back of a different chair in a differently furnished front room and ran into the night, tears streaming down my face.
26
Breakfast with Mycroft
FEATHERED FRIEND FOUND TARRED
Swindon's mysterious seabird asphalt-smotherer has struck again, the victim this time a stormy petrel found in an alleyway off Commercial Road. The unnamed bird was discovered yesterday covered in a thick glutinous coating that forensic scientists later confirmed as crude oil. This is the seventh such attack in less than a week and Swindon police are beginning to take notice. 'This has been the seventh attack in less than a week,' declared a Swindon policeman this morning, 'and we are beginning to take notice.' The inexplicable seabird-tarrer has so far not been seen but an expert from the NSPB told the police yesterday that the suspect would probably have a displacement of 280,000 tons, be covered in rust and floundering on a nearby rock, Despite numerous searches by police in the area, a suspect of this description has not yet been found.
Article in the Swindon Daily Eyestrain, 18 July 1988
It was the following morning. I was sitting at the kitchen table staring at my ring finger and the complete absence of a wedding band. Mum walked in wrapped in a dressing gown and with her hair in curlers, fed DH82, let Alan out of the broom cupboard where we had to keep him these days and pushed the delinquent dodo outside with a mop. He made an angry plinking noise, then attacked the boot-scraper.
'What's wrong, sweetheart?'
'It's Landen.'
'Who?'
'My husband. He was reactualised last night but only for about two hours.'
'My poor darling! That must be very awkward.'
'Awkward? Extremely. I climbed naked into bed with Mr and Mrs Parke-Laine.'
My mother went ashen and dropped a saucer.
'Did they recognise you?'
'I don't think so.'
'Thank the GSD for that!' she gasped, greatly relieved. Being embarrassed in public was something she cared to avoid more than anything else, and having a daughter climbing into bed with patrons of the Swindon Toast League was probably the biggest faux pas she could think of.
'Good morning, pet,' said Mycroft, shuffling into the kitchen and sitting down at the breakfast table. He was my extraordinarily brilliant inventor uncle, and apparently had just returned from the 1988 Mad Scientists Conference, or MadCon '88 as it was known.
'Uncle,' I said, probably with less enthusiasm than I should have mustered, 'how good to see you again!'
'And you, my dear,' he said kindly. 'Back for good?'
'I'm not sure,' I replied, thinking about Landen. 'Aunt Polly well?'
'In the very best of health. We've been to MadCon — I was given a lifetime achievement award for something but for the life of me I can't think what, or why.'
It was a typically Mycroft statement. Despite his undoubted brilliance, he never thought he was doing anything particularly clever or useful — he just liked to tinker with ideas. It was his Prose Portal invention which had got me inside books in the first place. He had set up home in the Sherlock Holmes canon to escape Goliath but had remained stuck there until I rescued him about a year ago.
'Did Goliath ever bother you again?' I asked. 'After you came back, I mean?'
'They tried,' he replied softly, 'but they didn't get anything from me.'
'You wouldn't tell them anything?'
'No. It was better than that. I couldn't. You see, I can't remember a single thing about any of the inventions they wanted me to talk about.'
'How is that possible?'
'Well,' replied Mycroft, taking a sip of tea, 'I'm not sure, but logically speaking I must have invented a memory erasure device or something and used it selectively on myself and Polly — what we call the Big Blank. It's the only possible explanation.'
'So you can't remember how the Prose Portal actually works?'
'The what?'
'The Prose Portal. A device for entering fiction.'
'They were asking me about something like that, now you mention it. It would be very intriguing to try and redevelop it but Polly says I shouldn't. My lab is full of devices, the purpose of which I haven't the foggiest notion about. An ovinator, for example — it's clearly something to do with eggs, but what?'
'I don't know.'
'Well, perhaps it's all for the best. These days I only work for peaceful means. Intellect is worthless if it isn't for the betterment of us all.'
'I'll agree with you on that one. What work were you presenting to MadCon '88?'
'Theoretical Nextian mathematics, mostly,' replied Mycroft, warming to the subject dearest to his heart — his work. 'I told you all about Nextian geometry, didn't I?'
I nodded.
'Well, Nextian number theory is very closely related to that, and in its simplest form allows me to work backwards to discover the original sum from which the product is derived.'
'Eh?'
'Well, say you have the numbers twelve and sixteen. You multiply them together and get 192, yes? Now, in conventional maths if you were given the number 192 you would not know how that number was derived. It might just as easily have been three times sixty-four or six times thirty-two or even 194 minus two. But you couldn't tell just from looking at the number alone, now, could you?'
'I suppose not.'
'You suppose wrong,' said Mycroft with a smile. 'Nextian number theory works in an inverse fashion from ordinary maths — it allows you to discover the precise question from a stated answer.'
'And the practical applications of this?'
'Hundreds.' He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and passed it over. I unfolded it and found a simple number written upon it: 2216091 -1, or two raised to the power of two hundred and sixteen thousand and ninety-one, minus one.
'It looks like a big number.'
'It's a medium—sized number,' he corrected.
'And?'
'Well, if I was to give you a short story of ten thousand words, instructed you to give a value for each letter and punctuation mark and then wrote them down, you'd get a number with sixty-five thousand or so digits. All you need to do then is to find a simpler way of expressing it. Using a branch of Nextian maths that I call FactorZip we can reduce any sized number to a short, notated style.'
I looked at the number in my hand again.
'So this is?'
'A FactorZipped Sleepy Hollow. I'm working on reducing all the books ever written to a number less than fifty digits long. Makes you think, eh? Instead of buying a newspaper every day you'd simply jot down today's number and pop it in your Nexpanding calculator to read it.'
'Ingenious!' I breathed.
'It's still early days but I hope one day to be able to predict a cause simply by looking at the event. And after that, trying to construct unknown questions from known answers.'
'Such as?'
'Well, the answer: "Good lord, no, quite the reverse!" I've always wanted to know the question to that.'
'Right,' I replied, still trying to figure out how you'd know by looking at the number nine that it had got there by being three squared or the square root of eighty-one.
'Isn't it just?' he said with a smile, thanking my mother for the bacon and eggs she had just put down in front of him.
Lady Hamilton's departure at 8.30 was really only sad for Hamlet. He went into a glowering mood and made up a long soliloquy about his heart that was aching fit to break and how cruel was the hand that fate had dealt him. He said that Emma was his one true love and her departure made his life bereft; a life that had little meaning and would be better ended — and so on and so forth until eventually Emma had to interrupt him and thank him but she really must go or else she'd be late for something she couldn't specify. So he then screamed abuse at her for five minutes, told her she was a whore and marched out, muttering something about being a chameleon. With him gone we could all get on with our goodbyes.
'Goodbye, Thursday,' said Emma, holding my hand, 'you've always been very kind to me. I hope you get your husband back. Would you permit me to afford you a small observation that I think might be of help?'
'Of course.'
'Don't let Smudger dominate the forward hoop positions. He works best in defence, especially if backed up by Biffo — and play offensively if you want to win.'
'Thank you,' I said slowly, 'you're very kind.'
I gave her a hug and my mother did too — a tad awkwardly as she had never fully divested herself of the suspicion that Emma had been carrying on with Dad. Then, a moment later, Emma vanished — which must be what it's like when Father arrives and stops the clock for other people.
'Well,' said my mother, wiping her hands on her pinafore, 'that's her gone. I'm glad she got her husband back.'
'Yes,' I agreed somewhat diffidently, and walked off to find Hamlet. He was outside, sitting on the bench in the rose garden, deep in thought.
'You okay?' I asked, sitting down next to him.
'Tell me truthfully, Miss Next. Do I dither?'
'Well — not really.'
'Truthfully now!'
'Perhaps ... a bit.'
Hamlet gave out a groan and buried his face in his hands.
'Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I! A slave to this play with contradictions so legion that scholars write volumes attempting to explain me. One moment I love Ophelia, the next I treat her cruelly. I am by turns a petulant adolescent and a mature man, a melancholy loner and a wit telling actors their trade. I cannot decide whether I'm a philosopher or a moping teenager, a poet or a murderer, a procrastinator or a man of action. I might be truly mad or sane pretending to be mad or even mad pretending to be sane. By all accounts my father was a war-hungry monster — was Claudius's act of assassination so bad after all? Did I really see a ghost of my father or was it Fortinbrass in disguise, trying to sow discord within Denmark? How long did I spend in England? How old am I? I've watched sixteen different film adaptations of Hamlet, two plays, read three comic books and listened to a wireless adaptation. Everything from Olivier to Gibson to Barrymore to William Shatner in Conscience of the King.'
'And?'
'Every single one of them is different.'
He looked around in quiet desperation for his skull, found it and then stared at it meditatively for a few moments before continuing:
'Do you have any idea the pressure I'm under being the world's leading dramatic enigma?'
'It must be intolerable.'
'It is. I'd feel worse if anyone else had figured me out — but they haven't. Do you know how many books there are about me?'
'Hundreds?'
'Thousands. And the slanders they write! The Oedipal thing is by far the most insulting. The goodnight kiss with Mum has got longer and longer. That Freud fellow will have a bloody nose if ever I meet him. My play is a complete and utter mess — four acts of talking and one of action. Why does anyone trouble to watch it?'
His shoulders sagged and he appeared to sob quietly to himself. I rested a hand on his shoulder.
'It is your complexity and philosophical soul-searching that we pay money to see — you are the quintessential tragic figure, questioning everything, dissecting all life's shames and betrayals. If all we wanted was action, we'd watch nothing but Chuck Norris movies. It is your journey to resolving your demons that makes the play the prevaricating tour de force that it is.'