‘What will you do in your retirement, Uncle?’
‘I don’t know, pet. I have some books I’ve been wanting to write for some time.’
‘About your work?’
‘Much too dull. Can I try an idea out on you?’
‘Sure.’
He smiled, looked around, lowered his voice and leaned closer.
‘Okay, here it is: brilliant young surgeon Dexter Colt starts work at the highly efficient yet underfunded children’s hospital doing pioneering work on relieving the suffering of orphaned amputees. The chief nurse is the headstrong yet beautiful Tiffany Lampe. Tiffany has only recently recovered from her shattered love affair with anaesthetist Dr Burns and—’
‘—they fall in love?’ I ventured.
Mycroft’s face fell.
‘You’ve heard it, then?’
‘The bit about the orphaned amputees is good,’ I added, trying not to dishearten him. ‘What are you going to call it?’
‘I thought of Love among the Orphans. What do you think?’
By the end of the meal Mycroft had outlined several of his books to me, each one with a plot more lurid than the last. At the same time Joffy and Wilbur had come to blows in the garden, discussing the sanctity of peace and forgiveness amid the thud of fists and the crunch of broken noses.
At midnight Mycroft took Polly in his arms and thanked us all for coming.
‘I have spent my entire life in pursuit of scientific truth and enlightenment,’ he announced grandly, ‘answers to conundrums and unifying theories of everything. Perhaps I should have spent the time going out more. In fifty-four years neither Polly nor myself has ever taken a holiday, so that is where we’re off to now.’
We walked into the garden, the family wishing Mycroft and Polly well on their travels. Outside the door of the workshop they stopped and looked at one another, then at all of us.
‘Well, thanks for the party,’ said Mycroft. ‘Pear soup followed by pear stew with pear sauce and finishing with bombs surprise—which was pear—was quite a treat. Unusual, but quite a treat. Look after MycroTech while I’m away, Wilbur, and thanks for all the meals, Wednesday. Right, that’s it,’ concluded Mycroft. ‘We’re off Toodle-oo.’
‘Enjoy yourselves,’ I said.
‘Oh, we will!’ he said, bidding us all goodbye again and disappearing into the workshop. Polly kissed us all, waved farewell and followed him, closing the door behind her.
‘It won’t be the same without him and his daft projects, will it?’ said Landen
‘No,’ I replied. ‘It’s—’
I felt a strong tingling sensation as a noiseless white light erupted from within the workshop and shone in pencil-thin beams from every crack and rivet hole, each speck of grime showing up on the dirty windows, every crack in the glass suddenly alive with a rainbow of colours. We winced and shielded our eyes, but no sooner had the light started than it had gone again, faded to nothing in a crackle of electricity. Landen and I exchanged looks and stepped forward. The door opened easily and we stood there, staring into the large and now very empty workshop. Every single piece of equipment had gone. Not a screw, not a bolt, not a washer.
‘He isn’t just going to write romantic novels in his retirement,’ observed Joffy.
‘Most probably he just took it all so no one else would carry on with his work. Mycroft’s scruples were the equal of his intellect.’
My mother was sitting on an upturned wheelbarrow, her dodos clustered around her on the off-chance of a marshmallow.
‘They’re not coming back,’ said my mother sadly. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know.’
7. White Horse, Uffington, Picnics for the Use of
‘We decided that “Parke-Laine-Next” was a bit of a mouthful, so I kept my surname and he kept his. I called myself “Ms” instead of “Miss”, but nothing else changed. I liked being called his wife in the same way I liked calling Landen my husband. It felt sort of tingly. I had the same feeling when I stared at my wedding ring. They say you get used to it but I hoped that they were wrong. Marriage, like spinach and opera, was something I had never thought I would like. I changed my mind about opera when I was nine years old. My father took me to the first night of Madame Butterfly at Brescia in 1904. After the performance Dad cooked while Puccini regaled me with hilarious stories and signed my autograph book—from that day on I was a devoted fan. In the same way, it took being in love with Landen to make me change my mind about marriage. I found it exciting and exhilarating, two people, together, as one. It was where I was meant to be. I was happy, I was contented, I was fulfilled.
And spinach? Well, I’m still waiting.
‘What do you think they’ll do?’ asked Landen as we lay in bed, he with one hand resting gently on my stomach and the other wrapped tightly around me. The bedclothes had been thrown off and we had only just regained our breath.
‘Who?’
‘SO-1 this afternoon. About you punching the Neanderthal.’
‘Oh, that. I don’t know. Technically speaking I really haven’t done anything wrong at all. I think they’ll let me off, considering all the good PR work I’ve done—looks a bit daft to arrest their star operative, don’t you think?’
‘That’s always assuming they think logically like you or I.’
‘It does, doesn’t it?’
I sighed.
‘People have been busted for less. SO-1 like to make an example from time to time.’
‘You don’t have to work, you know.’
I looked across at him but he was too close to focus on, which was sort of nice, in its way.
‘I know,’ I replied, ‘but I’d like to keep it up. I don’t really see myself as a mumsy sort of person.’
‘Your cooking might tend to support that fact.’
‘Mother’s cooking is terrible, too—I think it’s hereditary. My SO-1 hearing is at four. Want to go and see the mammoth migration?’
‘Sure.’
The doorbell rang.
‘Who could that be?’
‘It’s a little early to tell,’ quipped Landen. ‘I understand the “go and see” technique sometimes works.’
‘Very funny.’
I pulled on some clothes and went downstairs. There was a gaunt man with lugubrious features standing on the doorstep. He looked as close to a bloodhound as one can get without actually having a tail and barking.
‘Yes?’
He raised his hat and gave me a somnolent smile.
‘The name is Hopkins,’ he explained. ‘I’m a reporter for The Owl. I was wondering if I could interview you about your time within the pages of Jane Eyre?’
‘You’ll have to go through Cordelia Flakk at SpecOps, I’m afraid. I’m not really at liberty—’
‘I know you were inside the book; in the first and original ending Jane goes to India, yet in your ending she stays and marries Rochester. How did you engineer this?’
‘You really have to get clearance from Flakk, Mr Hopkins.’
He sighed.
‘Okay, I will. Just one thing. Did you prefer the new ending, your new ending?’
‘Of course. Didn’t you?’
Mr Hopkins scribbled in a notepad and smiled again.
‘Thank you, Miss Next. I’m very much in your debt. Good day!’
He raised his hat again and was gone.
‘What was all that about?’ asked Landen as he handed me a cup of coffee.
‘Pressman.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘Nothing. He has to go through Flakk.’
Uffington was busy that morning. The mammoth population in England, Wales and Scotland amounted to 249 individuals in nine groups, all of whom migrated north to south around late autumn and back again in the spring. The routes followed the same pattern every year with staggering accuracy. Inhabited areas were mostly avoided—except Devizes, where the high street was shuttered up and deserted twice a year as the plodding elephantines crashed and trumpeted their way through the centre of the town, cheerfully following the ancient call of their forebears. No one in Devizes could get any sleep or proboscidea damage insurance cover, but the extra cash from tourism generally made up for it.