'How simply dreadful!' she responded in a lame and insincere display of sympathy. 'I'm so sorry to hear that. Goliath, as part of their move to a faith-based corporate management system, are committed to reversing all the unpleasant matters we may previously have been engaged in. You need to fill in this form, and this form — and section D of this one — and then take a seat. We'll get one of our highly trained apologists to see you just as soon as they can.'

She handed me several long forms and a numbered ticket, then indicated a door to one side. I opened it and walked into the apologarium. It was a large hall with floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a serene view of the Irish Sea. On one side was a row of perhaps twenty cubicles containing suited apologists, who all sat listening intently to what they were being told with the same sad and contrite expression. On the other side were rows upon rows of wooden seating that held eager and once bullied citizens, anxiously clasping their numbered tickets and patiently waiting their turn. I looked at my ticket. It was number 6,174. I glanced up at the board, which told me that number 836 was now being interviewed.

'Dear, sweet people!' said a voice through a Tannoy. 'Goliath is deeply sorry for all the harm it may inadvertently have caused you in the past. Here at the Goliath Apologarium™ we are only too happy to assist in your problem, no matter how small . . .'

'You!' I said to a man who was hobbling past me towards the exit. 'Have Goliath repented to your satisfaction?'

'Well, they didn't really need to,' he replied blandly. 'It was I who was at fault — in fact, I apologised for wasting their valuable time!'

'What did they do?'

'They bathed my neighbourhood with ionising radiation, then denied it for seventeen years, even after people's teeth fell out and I grew a third foot.'

'And you forgave them?'

'Of course. I can see now that it was a genuine accident and the public have to accept risks if we are to have abundant clean energy, limitless food and household electro-defragmentisers.'

He was carrying a sheath of papers; not the application forms that I had to fill out but leaflets on how to join New Goliath. Not as a consumer, but as a worshipper. I had always been deeply distrustful of Goliath but this whole 'repentance' thing smelt worse than anything I had so far witnessed. I turned, tore up my numbered ticket and headed for the exit.

'Miss Next!' called out a familiar voice. 'I say, Miss Next!'

A short man with pinched features and a rounded head covered with the fuzz of an aggresively short crew cut was facing me. He was wearing a dark suit and heavy gold jewellery and was arguably the person I liked least — this was Jack Schitt, once Goliath's top advanced weapons guru and ex-convict of The Raven. This was the man who had tried to prolong the Crimean War so he could make a fortune out of Goliath's latest super-weapon, the plasma rifle.

Anger rose quickly within me. I turned Friday in the other direction so as not to give his young mind any wrong ideas about the use of violence and then grasped Schitt by the throat. He took a step back, stumbled and collapsed beneath me with a yelp. Sensing I had been in this position before, I released him and placed my hand on the butt of my automatic, expecting to be attacked by a host of Jack's minders. But there was nothing. Just sad citizens looking on sorrowfully.

'There is no one here to help me,' said Jack Schitt, slowly getting to his feet. '1 have been assaulted eight times today — I count myself fortunate. Yesterday it was twenty-three.'

I looked at him and noticed, for the first time, that he had a black eye and a cut on his lip.

'No minders?' I echoed. 'Why?'

'It is my absolution to face those I have bullied and harangued in the past, Miss Next. When we last met I was head of Goliath's Advanced Weapons Division and corporate laddernumber 329.' He sighed. 'Now, thanks to your well-publicised denouncement of the failings of our plasma rifle, the corporation has decided to demote me. I am an Apology Facilitation Operative second class, ladder-number 12,398,219. The mighty have fallen, Miss Next.'

'On the contrary,' I replied, 'you have merely been moved to a level more fitting to your competence. It's a shame. You deserved much worse than this.'

His eyes twitched as he grew angry. The old Jack, the homicidal one, returned for a moment. But the feelings were short-lived and his shoulders fell as he realised that without the Goliath Security Service to back him up, his power over me was minimal.

'Maybe you're right,' he said simply. 'You will not have to wait your turn, Miss Next, I will deal with your case personally. Is this your son?' He bent down to look closer. 'Cute fellow, isn't he?'

'Eiusmod tempor incididunt adipisiting elit,' said Friday, glaring at Jack suspiciously.

'What did he say?'

'He said: "If you touch me my mum will break your nose.'"

Jack stood up quickly.

'I see. Goliath and myself offer a full, frank and unreserved apology.'

'What for?'

'I don't know. Have it on account. Would you care to come to my office?'

He beckoned me out of the door and we crossed a courtyard with a large fountain in the middle, past a few suited Goliath officials chattering in a corner, then through another doorway and down a wide corridor full of clerks moving backwards and forwards with folders tucked under their arms.

Jack opened a door, ushered me in, offered me a chair and then sat himself. It was a miserable little office, devoid of any decoration except a shabby Lola Vavoom calendar on the wall and a dead plant in a pot. The only window looked out on to a wall. He arranged some papers on his desk and spoke into the intercom.

'Mr Higgs, would you bring the Thursday Next file in, please?'

He looked at me earnestly and set his head at a slight angle, as though trying to affect some sort of apologetic demeanour.

'None of us quite realised,' he began in the sort of soft voice that undertakers use when attempting to persuade you to buy the deluxe coffin, just how appalling we had been until we started asking people if they were at all unhappy with our conduct.'

'Why don't we cut the cr—' I looked at Friday, who looked back at me. '—cut the, cut the . . . nonsense and go straight to the place where you atone for your crimes.'

He sighed and stared at me for a moment, then said:

'Very well. What did we do wrong again?'

'You can't remember?'

'I do lots of wrong things, Miss Next, you'll excuse me if I can't remember details.'

'You eradicated my husband,' I said through gritted teeth. 'Of course! And what was the name of the eradicatee?'

'Landen,' I replied coldly, 'Landen Parker-Laine.'

At that moment a clerk arrived with a file marked 'most secret' and laid it on his desk. Jack opened it and leafed through.

'The record shows that at the time you say your husband was eradicated your case officer was Operative Schitt-Hawse. It says here that he pressured you to release Operative Schitt — that's me — from within the pages of The Raven by utilising an unnamed ChronoGuard operative who volunteered his services. It says that you complied but our promise was revoked owing to an unforeseen and commercially necessary overriding blackmail continuance situation.'

'You mean corporate greed, don't you?'

'Don't underestimate greed, Miss Next — it's commerce's greatest motive force. In this context it was probably due to our plans to use the BookWorld to dump nuclear waste and sell our extremely high-quality goods and services to characters in fiction. You were then imprisoned in our most inaccessible vault from which you escaped, methodology unknown.'

He closed the file.