‘That,’ replied Miss Havisham, ‘was a standard book-to-book transfer. When you’re jumping solo you can sometimes make it through without going to the library—so much the better; the cat’s banal musings can make one’s head ache. But since I am taking you with me, a short visit is sadly necessary. We’re now in the back-story of Kafka’s The Trial. Next door is Josef K’s hearing, you’re up after him.’
   ‘Oh,’ I remarked, ‘is that all.’
   Miss Havisham missed the sarcasm, which was probably just as well, and I looked around. The room was sparsely furnished, a washing tub sat in the middle and next door, from the sound of it at least, a political meeting seemed to be in progress. A woman entered from the courtroom, smoothed her skirts, curtsied and returned to her washing.
   ‘Good morning, Miss Havisham,’ she said politely.
   ‘Good morning, Esther,’ replied Miss Havisham. ‘I brought you something.’ She handed her a box of Pontefract cakes and then asked: ‘Are we on time?’
   There was a roar of laughter from behind the door, which quickly subsided into excited talking.
   ‘Won’t be long,’ replied the washerwoman. ‘Snell and Hopkins have already gone in. Would you like to take a seat?’
   Miss Havisham sat, but I remained standing.
   ‘I hope Snell knows what he’s doing,’ muttered Havisham darkly. ‘The examining magistrate is something of an unknown quantity.’
   The applause and laughter suddenly dropped to silence in the room next door, and we heard the door handle grasped. Behind the door a deep voice said:
   ‘I only wanted to point out to you, since you may not have realised it yet, that today you have thrown away all the advantage that a hearing affords an arrested man in every case.’
   I looked at Havisham with some consternation but she shook her head, as though to tell me not to worry.
   ‘You scoundrels!’ shouted a second voice, still from behind the door. ‘You can keep all your hearings!’
   The door opened and a young man with a red face, dressed in a dark suit, ran out, fairly shaking with rage. As he left the man who had spoken—I assumed this to be the examining magistrate—shook his head sadly and the courtroom started to chatter about Josef K’s outburst. The magistrate, a small, fat man who breathed heavily, looked at me and said.
   ‘Thursday N?’
   ‘Yes, sir?’
   ‘You’re late.’
   And he shut the door.
   ‘Don’t worry,’ said Miss Havisham kindly, ‘he always says that. It’s to make you ill at ease.’
   ‘It works. Aren’t you coming in with me?’
   She shook her head and placed her hand on mine.
   ‘Have you read The Trial?’
   I nodded.
   ‘Then you will know what to expect. Good luck, my dear.’
   I thanked her, grasped the door handle and, with heavily beating heart, entered.

18. The Trial of Fräulein N

   ‘The Trial, Franz Kafka’s masterpiece of enigmatic bureaucratic paranoia, was unpublished in the writer’s lifetime. Indeed, Kafka lived out his short life in relative obscurity as an insurance clerk and bequeathed his manuscripts to his best friend on the understanding that they would be destroyed. How many other great writers, one wonders, penned masterworks which actually were destroyed upon their death? For the answer, you will have to look in among the sub-basements of the Great Library, twenty-six floors of unpublished manuscripts. Amongst a lot of self-indulgent rubbish and valiant yet failed attempts at prose you will find works of pure genius. For the greatest non-work of non-non-fiction, go to Sub-basement 13, Category MCML, Shelf 2919/812, where a rare and wonderful treat awaits you—Bunyan’s Boot-scraper by John McSquurd. But be warned. No trip to the Well of Lost Plots should be undertaken alone…’

UA OF W CAT. The Jurisfiction Guide to the Great Library


   The courtroom was packed full of men all dressed in black, chattering and gesticulating constantly. There was a gallery running around just below the ceiling where more people stood, also talking and laughing, and the room was hot and airless to the point of suffocation. There was a narrow path between the men, and I slowly advanced, the crowd merging behind me and almost propelling me forward. As I walked the spectators chattered about the weather, the previous case, what I was wearing and the finer points of my case—of which, it seemed, they knew nothing. At the other end of the hall was a low dais upon which was seated, just behind a low table, the examining magistrate. Behind him were court officials and clerks talking with the crowd and each other. To one side of the dais was the lugubrious man who had knocked on my door and tricked me into confessing back in Swindon. He was holding an impressive array of official-looking papers. This, I assumed, was Matthew Hopkins, the prosecution lawyer. Snell joined me and whispered in my ear:
   ‘This is only a formal hearing to see if there is a case to answer. With a bit of luck we can get your case postponed to a more friendly court. Ignore the onlookers—they are simply here as a narrative device to heighten paranoia and have no bearing on your case. We will deny all charges.’
   ‘Herr Magistrate,’ said Snell, as we took the last few paces to the dais, ‘my name is Akrid S defending Thursday N, in Jurisfiction v the Law, case number 142857.’
   The magistrate looked at me, took out his watch and said:
   ‘You should have been here an hour and five minutes ago.’
   There was an excited murmur from the crowd. Snell opened his mouth to say something but it was I who answered.
   ‘I know,’ I said, ‘I am to blame. I beg the court’s pardon.’
   At first, the magistrate didn’t hear me and began to repeat himself for the benefit of the crowd:
   ‘You should have been here an hour and… what did you say?’
   ‘I said I was sorry and begged your pardon, sir,’ I repeated.
   ‘Oh,’ said the examining magistrate as a hush fell upon the room. ‘In that case, would you like to go away and come back in, say, an hour and five minutes’ time, when you will be late through no fault of your own?’
   The crowd applauded at this, although I couldn’t see why.
   ‘At Your Honour’s pleasure,’ I replied. ‘If it is the court’s ruling that I do so, then I will comply.’
   ‘Very good,’ whispered Snell.
   ‘Oh!’ said the magistrate again. He briefly conferred with his clerks behind him, seemed rattled for a moment, stared at me again and said:
   ‘It is the court’s decision that you be one hour and five minutes late!’
   ‘I am already one hour and five minutes late!’ I announced to scattered applause from the room.
   ‘Then,’ said the magistrate simply, ‘you have complied with the court’s ruling and we may proceed.’
   ‘Objection!’ said Hopkins.
   ‘Overruled,’ replied the magistrate as he picked up a tatty notebook that lay on the table in front of him. He opened it, read something and passed the book to one of his clerks.
   ‘Your name is Thursday N. You are a house-painter?’
   ‘No, she—’ said Snell.
   ‘Yes,’ I interrupted. ‘I have been a house-painter, Your Honour.’
   There was a stunned silence from the crowd, punctuated by someone at the back who yelled: ‘Bravo!’ before another spectator thumped him. The examining magistrate peered at me more closely.
   ‘Is this relevant?’ demanded Hopkins, addressing the bench.
   ‘Silence!’ yelled the magistrate, continuing slowly and with very real gravity: ‘You mean to tell me that you have, at one time, been a house-painter?’
   ‘Indeed, Your Honour. After I left school and before college I painted houses for two months. I think it might be safe to say that I was indeed—although not permanently—a house-painter.’
   There was another burst of applause and excited murmuring.
   ‘Herr S?’ said the magistrate. ‘Is this true?’
   ‘We have several witnesses to attest to it, Your Honour,’ answered Snell, getting into the swing of the strange proceedings.
   The room fell silent again.
   ‘Herr H,’ said the magistrate, taking out a handkerchief and mopping his brow carefully and addressing Hopkins directly, ‘I thought you told me the defendant was not a house-painter?’
   Hopkins looked flustered.
   ‘I didn’t say she wasn’t a house-painter, Your Honour, I merely said she was an operative for SpecOps 27.’
   ‘To the exclusion of all other professions?’ asked the magistrate.
   ‘Well, no,’ stammered Hopkins, now thoroughly confused.
   ‘Yet you did not state she was not a house-painter in your affidavit, did you?’
   ‘No, sir.’
   ‘Well then!’ said the magistrate, leaning back in his chair as another peal of laughter and spontaneous applause broke out for no reason. ‘If you bring a case to my court, Herr H, I expect it to be brought with all the details intact. First she apologises for being late, then she readily agrees to having painted houses. Court procedure will not be compromised—your prosecution is badly flawed.’
   Hopkins bit his lip and went a dark shade of crimson.

   ‘I beg the court’s pardon, Your Honour,’ he replied through gritted teeth, ‘but my prosecution is sound—may we proceed with the charge?’
   ‘Bravo!’ said the man at the back again.
   The magistrate thought for a moment and handed me his dirty notebook and a fountain pen.
   ‘We will prove the veracity of prosecution counsel by a simple test,’ he announced. ‘Fräulein N, would you please write the most popular colour that houses were painted when you were’—and here he turned to Hopkins and spat the words out—’a house-painter!’
   The room erupted into cheers and shouts as I wrote the answer in the back of the exercise book and returned it.
   ‘Silence!’ announced the magistrate. ‘Herr H?’
   ‘What?’ he replied sulkily.
   ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to tell the court the colour that Fräulein N has written in my book?’
   ‘Your Honour,’ began Hopkins in an exasperated tone, ‘what has this to do with the case in hand? I arrived here in good faith to arraign Fräulein N on a charge of a Class II Fiction Infraction and instead I find myself embroiled in some lunatic rubbish about house-painters. I do not believe this court represents justice—’
   ‘You do not understand,’ said the magistrate, rising to his feet and raising his short arms to illustrate the point, ‘the manner in which this court works. It is the responsibility of the prosecution counsel not only to bring a clear and concise case before the bench, but also to fully verse himself about the procedures that he must undertake to achieve that goal.’
   The magistrate sat down amidst applause.
   ‘Now,’ he continued in a quieter voice, ‘either you tell me what Fräulein N has written in this book or I will be forced to arrest you for wasting the court’s time.’
   Two guards had pushed their way through the throng and now stood behind Hopkins, ready to seize him. The magistrate waved the book and fixed the lawyer with a steely gaze.
   ‘Well?’ he enquired. ‘What was the most popular colour?’
   ‘Blue,’ said Hopkins in a miserable voice.
   ‘What’s that you say?’
   ‘Blue,’ repeated Hopkins in a louder voice.
   ‘Blue, he said!’ bellowed the magistrate. The crowd was silent and pushed and shoved to get closer to the action. Slowly and with high drama the magistrate opened the book to reveal the word green written across the page. The crowd burst into an excited cry, several cheers went up and hats rained down upon our heads.
   ‘Not blue, green,’ said the magistrate, shaking his head sadly and signalling to the guards to take hold of Hopkins. ‘You have brought shame upon your profession, Herr H. You are under arrest!’
   ‘On what charge?’ replied Hopkins arrogantly.
   ‘I am not authorised to tell you,’ said the magistrate triumphantly. ‘Proceedings have been started and you will be informed in due course.’
   ‘But this is preposterous!’ shouted Hopkins as he was dragged away.
   ‘No,’ replied the magistrate, ‘this is Kafka.’
   When Hopkins had gone and the crowd had stopped chattering, the magistrate turned back to me and said:
   ‘You are Thursday N, aged thirty-six, one hour and five minutes late and occupation house-painter?’
   ‘Yes.’
   ‘You are brought before this court on a charge of… what is the charge?’
   There was silence.
   ‘Where,’ asked the magistrate, ‘is the prosecution counsel?’
   One of his clerks whispered in his ear as the crowd spontaneously burst into laughter.
   ‘Indeed,’ said the magistrate grimly. ‘Most remiss of him. I am afraid, in the absence of prosecuting counsel, this court has no alternative but to grant a postponement.’
   And so saying he pulled a large rubber stamp from his pocket and brought it down with a crash on some papers that Snell, quick as a flash, managed to place beneath it.
   ‘Thank you, Your Honour,’ I managed to say before Snell grasped me by the arm, whispered in my ear: ‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’ and steered me ahead of him past the throng of dark suits to the door.
   ‘Bravo!’ yelled a man from the gallery. ‘Bravo!… And bravo again!’
   We walked out to find Miss Havisham deep in conversation with Esther about the perfidious nature of men in general and Esther’s husband in particular. They were not the only ones in the room. A bronzed Greek was sitting sullenly next to a Cyclops with a bloodied bandage round his head. The lawyers who were accompanying them were discussing the case quietly in the corner.
   ‘How did it go?’ asked Havisham.
   ‘Postponement,’ said Snell, mopping his brow and shaking me by the hand. ‘Well done, Thursday. Caught me unawares with your “house-painter” defence. Very good indeed!’
   ‘But only a postponement?’
   ‘Oh, yes. I’ve never known a single acquittal from this court. But next time we’ll be up before a proper judge—one of my choosing!’
   ‘And what will become of Hopkins?’
   ‘He,’ laughed Snell, ‘will have to get a very good lawyer!’
   ‘Good!’ said Havisham, getting to her feet. ‘It’s time we were at the sales. Come along!’
   As we made for the door, the magistrate called into the kitchen parlour:
   ‘Odysseus? Charge of grievous bodily harm against Polyphemus the Cyclops?’
   ‘He devoured my comrades!’ growled Odysseus angrily.
   ‘That’s tomorrow’s case. We will not hear about that today. You’re next up—and you’re late.’
   And the examining magistrate shut the door again.

19. Bargain Books

   ‘Jurisfiction was the fastest learning curve I had ever experienced. I think they were all expecting me to arrive a lot earlier than I did. Miss Havisham tested my book-jumping prowess soon after I arrived and I was marked up a dismal 38 out of 100. Mrs Nakajima was 93 and Havisham a 99. I would always need a book to read from to make a jump, no matter how well I had memorised the text. It had its disadvantages but it wasn’t all bad news. At least I could read a book aloud without vanishing off inside it…’

THURSDAY NEXT. The Jurisfiction Chronicles


   Outside the room Snell tipped his hat and vanished to represent a client currently languishing in debtors’ prison. The day was overcast yet mild. I leaned on the balcony and looked down into the yard below at the children playing.
   ‘So!’ said Havisham. ‘On with your training now that hurdle is over. The Swindon Booktastic closing-down sale begins at midday and I’m in mind for a bit of bargain hunting. Take me there.’
   ‘How?’
   ‘Use your head, girl!’ replied Havisham sternly as she grabbed her walking stick and thrashed it through the air a few times. ‘Come, come! If you can’t jump me straight there, then take me to your apartment and we’ll drive—but hurry. The Red Queen is ahead of us and there is a boxed set of novels that she is particularly keen to get her hands on—we must get there first!’
   ‘I’m sorry,’ I stammered, ‘I can’t—’
   ‘No such word as can’t!’ exploded Miss Havisham. ‘Use the book, girl, use the book!’
   Suddenly, I understood. I took the leather-bound Jurisfiction book from my pocket and opened it. The first page, the one I had read already, was about the library. On the second page there was a passage from Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and on the third a detailed description of my apartment back at Swindon—it was good, too, right down to the water stains on the kitchen ceiling and the magazines stuffed under the sofa. The rest of the pages were covered with closely typed rules and regulations, hints and tips, advice and places to avoid. There were illustrations, too, and maps quite unlike any I had seen before. There were, in fact, far more pages in the book than could possibly be fitted within the covers, but that wasn’t the oddest thing. The last ten or so pages featured several hollowed-out recesses which contained devices that were far too wide to have fitted in the book. One of the pages contained a device similar to a flare gun which had ‘Mk IV TextMarker’ written on its side. Another page had a glass panel covering a handle like a fire alarm. A note painted on the glass read: ‘IN UNPRECEDENTED EMERGENCY,* BREAK GLASS’. The asterisk, I noted somewhat chillingly, related to the footnote: ‘*Please note: personal destruction does NOT count as an unprecedented emergency.’ The last few pages were blank—for notes of my own, I assumed.
   ‘Well?’ said Havisham impatiently. ‘Are we going?’
   I flicked to the page that held the short description of my apartment in Swindon. I started to read and felt Havisham’s bony hand hang on to my elbow as the Prague rooftops and ageing tenement buildings faded out and my own apartment hove into view.
   ‘Ah!’ said Havisham, looking around at the small kitchen with a contemptuous air. ‘And this is what you call home?’
   ‘At the moment. My husband—’
   ‘The one whom you’re not sure is alive or dead or married to you or not?’
   ‘Yes,’ I said firmly, ‘that one.’
   She smiled at this and added with a baleful stare:
   ‘You wouldn’t have an ulterior motive for joining me in Expectations, would you?’
   ‘No,’ I lied.
   ‘Didn’t come to do something else?’
   ‘Absolutely not.’
   ‘You’re lying about something,’ she announced slowly, ‘but about what I’m not so sure. Children are such consummate liars. Have your servants recently left you?’
   She was staring at the dirty dishes.
   ‘Yes,’ I lied again, not so keen on her disparagement any more. ‘Domestic service is a tricky issue in 1985.’
   ‘It’s no bed of roses in the nineteenth century either,’ Miss Havisham replied, leaning on the kitchen table to steady herself. ‘I find a good servant but they never stay—it’s the lure of them, you know, the liars, the evil ones.’
   ‘Evil ones?’
   ‘Men!’ hissed Havisham contemptuously. ‘The lying sex. Mark my words, child, for no good will ever come of you if you succumb to their charms—and they have the charms of a snake, believe me!’
   ‘I’ll try to keep on my toes,’ I told her.
   ‘And your chastity firmly guarded,’ she told me sternly.
   ‘Goes without saying.’
   ‘Good. Can I borrow that jacket?’
   She was pointing at Miles Hawke’s Swindon Mallets jacket. Without waiting for a reply she put it on and replaced her veil with a SpecOps cap. Satisfied, she asked:
   ‘Is this the way out?’
   ‘No, that’s the broom cupboard. This is the way out over here.’
   We opened the door to find my landlord with his fist raised ready to knock.
   ‘Ah!’ he said in a low growl. ‘Next!’
   ‘You said I had until Friday,’ I told him.
   ‘I’m turning off the water. The gas, too.’
   ‘You can’t do that!’
   He leered. ‘If you’ve got six hundred quid on you, perhaps I can be convinced not to.’
   But his smirk changed to fear as the point of Miss Havisham’s stick shot out and caught him in the throat. She pushed him heavily against the wall in the corridor. He choked and made to move the stick but Miss Havisham knew just how much pressure was needed—she pushed the stick harder and he stayed his hand.
   ‘Listen to me!’ she snapped. ‘Touch Miss Next’s gas and water and you’ll have me to answer to. She’ll pay you on time, you worthless wretch—you have Miss Havisham’s word on that!’
   He gasped in short breaths, the tip of Miss Havisham’s stick stuck fast against his windpipe. His eyes were clouded with the panic of suffocation; all he could do was breathe fitfully and try to nod.
   ‘Good!’ replied Miss Havisham, releasing the man, who fell in a heap on the floor.
   ‘The evil ones,’ announced Miss Havisham. ‘You see what men are like?’
   ‘They’re not all like that,’ I tried to explain.
   ‘Nonsense!’ replied Miss Havisham as we walked downstairs. ‘He was one of the better ones. At least he didn’t attempt to lie his way into your favours. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this one was barely repulsive at all. Do you have a car?’
   Miss Havisham’s eyebrows rose slightly as she saw the curious paintwork on my Porsche.
   ‘It was painted this way when I bought it,’ I explained.
   ‘I see,’ replied Miss Havisham in a disapproving tone. ‘Keys?’

   ‘I don’t think—’
   ‘The keys, girl! What was Rule One again?’
   ‘Do exactly as you say.’
   ‘Disobedient, perhaps,’ she replied with a thin smile, ‘but not forgetful!’
   I reluctantly handed over the keys. Havisham grasped them with a gleam in her eye and jumped into the driver’s seat.
   ‘Is it the four-cam engine?’ she asked excitedly.
   ‘No,’ I replied, ‘standard 1.6 unit.’
   ‘Oh, well!’ snorted Havisham, pumping the accelerator twice before turning the key. ‘It’ll have to do, I suppose.’
   The engine burst into life. Havisham gave me a smile and a wink as she revved the engine up to the red line before she briskly snapped the gearshift into first and dropped the clutch. There was a screech of rubber as we careered off up the road, the rear of the car swinging from side to side as the spinning wheels sought to find traction on the asphalt.
   I have not been frightened many times in my life. Charging into the massed artillery of the Imperial Russian Army had a surreal detachment that I had found eerie rather than fearful. Tackling Hades first in London and then on the roof of Thornfield Hall had been quite unpleasant, so had leading an armed police raid, and the two occasions I had stared at close quarters down the barrel of a gun hadn’t been a bundle of joy either.
   None of those, however, even came close to the feeling of almost certain death that I experienced during Miss Havisham’s driving. We must have violated every road traffic regulation that had ever been written. We narrowly missed pedestrians, other cars, traffic bollards and ran three traffic lights at red before Miss Havisham had to stop at a junction to let a juggernaut go past. She was smiling to herself and, although erratic and bordering on homicidal, her driving had a sort of idiot savant skill about it. Just when I thought it was impossible to avoid a postbox she tweaked the brakes, flicked down a gear and missed the unyielding iron lump by the width of a hair.
   ‘The carburettors seem slightly unbalanced!’ she bellowed above the terrified screams of pedestrians. ‘Let’s have a look, shall we?’ She hauled on the handbrake and we slid sideways up a dropped kerbstone and stopped next to an open-air café, causing a group of nuns to run for cover. Havisham climbed out of the car and opened the engine cover.
   ‘Rev the car for me, girl!’ she shouted. I did as I was told and smiled wanly at one of the customers at the café, who eyed me malevolently.
   ‘She doesn’t get out often,’ I explained as Havisham returned to the driver’s seat, revved the engine loudly and left the customers at the café in a cloud of foul-smelling rubber smoke.
   ‘That’s better!’ yelled Miss Havisham. ‘Can’t you hear it? Much better!’
   All I could hear was the wail of a police siren that had started up.
   ‘Oh, Christ!’ I muttered; Miss Havisham punched me painfully on the arm.
   ‘What was that for?’
   ‘Blaspheming! If there is one thing I hate more than men, it’s blaspheming… Get out of my way, you godless heathens!’
   A group of people at a pedestrian crossing scattered in confused panic as Havisham shot past, angrily waving her fist. I looked behind us as a police car came into view, blue lights flashing, sirens blaring. I could see the occupants bracing themselves as they took the corner; Miss Havisham dropped a gear and we took a tight left bend, ran the wheels on the kerb, swerved to avoid a mother with a pram and found ourselves in a carpark. We accelerated between the rows of parked cars but the only way out was blocked by a delivery van. Miss Havisham stamped on the brakes, flicked the car into reverse and initiated a neat reverse slide that took us off in the opposite direction.
   ‘Don’t you think we’d better stop?’ I asked.
   ‘Nonsense, girl!’ snapped Havisham, looking for a way out while the police car nosed up to our rear bumper. ‘Not with the sale about to open. Here we go! Hold on!’
   There was only one way out of the carpark that didn’t involve capture—a path between two concrete bollards that looked way too narrow for my car. But Miss Havisham’s eyes were sharper than mine and we shot through the gap, bounced across a grass bank, skidded past the statue of Brunel, drove the wrong way down a one-way street, through a back alley, past the Carer’s Monument and across the pedestrianised precinct to screech to a halt in front of a long queue for the Swindon Booktastic closing-down sale—just as the town clock struck twelve.
   ‘You nearly killed eight people!’ I managed to gasp out loud.
   ‘My count was closer to twelve,’ returned Havisham as she opened the door. ‘And anyhow, you can’t nearly kill someone. Either they are dead or they are not; and not one of them was so much as scratched!’
   The police car slid to a halt behind us, both sides of the vehicle had deep gouges down the side—the bollards, I presumed
   ‘I’m more used to my Bugatti than this,’ said Miss Havisham as she handed me the keys and slammed the door. ‘But it’s not so very bad, now, is it? I like the gearbox especially.’
   The police didn’t look very friendly. They peered at Miss Havisham closely, unsure of how to put their outrage at her flagrant disregard for the Road Traffic Act into words.
   ‘You,’ said one of the officers in a barely controlled voice, ‘you, madam, are in a lot of trouble.’
   She looked at the young officer with an imperious glare.
   ‘Young man, you have no idea of the word!’
   ‘Listen, Rawlings,’ I interrupted, ‘can we—’
   ‘Miss Next,’ replied the officer firmly but positively, ‘your turn will come, okay?’
   I got out of the car. The local police didn’t much care for SpecOps and we didn’t care much for them. They would be overjoyed to pin something on any of us.
   ‘Name?’
   ‘Miss Dame-rouge,’ Havisham announced, lying spectacularly, ‘and don’t bother asking me for my licence or insurance—I haven’t either!’
   The officer pondered this for a moment.
   ‘I’d like you to get in my car, madam. I’m going to have to take you in for questioning.’
   ‘Am I under arrest?’
   ‘If you refuse to come with me.’

   Havisham glanced at me and mouthed ‘After three’. She then sighed deeply and walked over to the police car in a very overdramatic manner, shaking with muscle tremors and generally behaving like the ancient person she wasn’t. I looked at her hand as she signalled to me—out of sight of the officers—a single finger, then two, then finally, as she rested for a moment against the front wing of their car, the third and final finger.
   ‘LOOK OUT!’ I yelled, pointing up.
   The officers, mindful of the Hispano-Suiza accident two days before, dutifully looked up as Havisham and I bolted to the head of the queue, pretending we knew someone. The two officers wasted no time and leapt after us, only to lose us in the crowd as the doors to Swindon Booktastic opened and a sea of keen bibliophiles of all different ages and reading tastes moved forward, knocking both officers off their feet and sweeping Miss Havisham and me into the bowels of the bookstore.
   Inside there was a near-riot in progress, and I was soon separated from Miss Havisham; ahead of me a pair of middle-aged men were arguing over a signed copy of Kerouac’s On the Road which eventually ripped down the middle. I fought my way round the ground floor, past Cartography, Travel and Self-help, and was just giving up the idea of ever seeing Havisham again when I noticed a long red flowing robe poking out from beneath a fawn macintosh. I watched the crimson hem cross the floor and go into the elevator. I ran across and put my foot between the doors just before they shut. The Neanderthal lift operator looked at me curiously, opened the doors to let me in and then closed them again. The Red Queen stared at me loftily and shuffled slightly to achieve a more regal position. She was quite heavily built; her hair was a bright auburn shade, tied up in a neat bun under her crown, which had been hastily concealed beneath the hood of her cloak. She was dressed completely in red, and I suspected that under her make-up her skin might have been red, too.
   ‘Good morning, Your Majesty,’ I said, as politely as I could.
   ‘Humph!’ replied the Red Queen, then, after a pause, she added: ‘Are you that tawdry Havisham woman’s new apprentice?’
   ‘Since this morning, ma’am.’
   ‘A morning wasted, I shouldn’t wonder. Do you have a name?’
   ‘Thursday Next, ma’am.’
   ‘You may curtsy if you so wish.’
   So I did.
   ‘You will regret not learning with me, my dear—but you are, of course, merely a child and right and wrong are so difficult to spot at your tender age.’
   ‘Which floor, Your Majesty?’ asked the Neanderthal.
   The Red Queen beamed at him, told him that if he played his cards right she would make him a duke and then added ‘Three’ as an afterthought.
   There was one of those funny empty pauses that seem to exist only in elevators and dentists’ waiting rooms. We stared at the floor indicator as the lift moved slowly upward and stopped on the second floor. ‘Second floor,’ announced the Neanderthal, ‘Historical, Allegorical, Historical-allegorical, Poetry, Plays, Theology, Critical Analysis and Pencils.’ Someone tried to get in; but the Red Queen barked ‘Taken!’ in such a fearful tone that they backed out again.
   ‘And how is Havisham these days?’ asked the Red Queen with a diffident air as the lift moved upwards again.
   ‘Well, I think,’ I replied.
   ‘You must ask her about her wedding.’
   ‘I don’t think that’s very wise,’ I returned.
   ‘Decidedly not!’ said the Red Queen, guffawing like a sea lion, ‘But it will elicit an amusing effect. Like Vesuvius, as I recall!’
   ‘Third floor,’ announced the Neanderthal, ‘Fiction, Popular, Authors A–J.’ The doors opened to reveal a mass of book fans, fighting in a most unseemly fashion over what even I had to admit were some very good bargains. I had heard about these sorts of ‘fiction-frenzies’ before—but never witnessed one.
   ‘Come, this is more like it!’ announced the Red Queen happily, rubbing her hands together and knocking a little old lady flying as she hopped out of the elevator.
   ‘Where are you, Havisham?’ she yelled, looking to left and right. ‘She has to be… Yes! Yes! Ahoy there, Stella you old trollop!’
   Miss Havisham stopped in mid-stride and stared in the queen’s direction. In a single swift movement she drew a small pistol from the folds of her tattered wedding dress and loosed off a shot in our direction. The Red Queen ducked as the bullet knocked a corner off a plaster cornice.
   ‘Temper, temper!’ shouted the Red Queen, but Havisham was no longer there.
   ‘Hah!’ said the Red Queen, hopping into the fray. ‘The devil take her—she’s heading towards Romantic Fiction!’
   ‘Romantic Fiction?’ I echoed, thinking of Havisham’s hatred of men, ‘I don’t think that’s very likely!’ The Red Queen ignored me and made a detour through Fantasy to avoid a scrum near the Agatha Christie counter. I knew the store a little better and nipped in between Hergé and Haggard where I was just in time to see Miss Havisham make her first mistake. In her haste she had pushed past a little old lady sizing up a buy-two-get-one-free offer on contemporary fiction. The little old lady—no stranger to department store sales battle tactics—parried Havisham’s blow expertly and hooked her bamboo-handled umbrella around her ankle. Havisham came down with a heavy thud and lay still, the breath knocked out of her. I kneeled beside her as the Red Queen hopped past, laughing loudly and making ‘nyah, nyah’ noises.
   ‘Thursday!’ panted Miss Havisham as several stockinged feet ran across her. ‘A complete set of Daphne Farquitt novels in a walnut display case—run!’
   And run I did. Farquitt was so prolific and popular she had a bookshelf all to herself and her recent boxed sets were fast becoming collector’s items—it was not surprising there was a battle in progress. I entered the fight behind the Red Queen and was instantly punched on the nose. I reeled with the shock and was pushed heavily from behind while someone else—an accomplice, I assumed—thrust a walking stick between my shins. I lost my footing and fell with a thud on the hard wooden floor. This was not a safe place to be. I crawled out of the battle and joined Miss Havisham where she had taken cover behind a display of generously discounted du Maurier novels.
   ‘Not so easy as it looks, eh, girl?’ asked Havisham with a rare smile, holding a lacy white handkerchief to my bleeding nose. ‘Did you see the royal harridan anywhere?’
   ‘I last saw her fighting somewhere between Irvine and Euripides.’
   ‘Blast!’ replied Havisham with a grunt. ‘Listen, girl, I’m done for. My ankle’s twisted and I think I’ve had it. But you—you might be able to make it.’
   I looked out at the squabbling masses as a pocket Derringer fell to the ground not far from us.
   ‘I thought this might happen, so I drew a map.’

   She unfolded a piece of Satis House headed notepaper and pointed out where she thought we were.
   ‘You won’t make it across the main floor alive. You’re going to have to climb over the Police Procedurals bookcase, make your way past the cash register and stock returns, crawl under the Seafaring section and then fight the last six feet to the Farquitt boxed set—it’s a limited edition of a hundred—I will never get another chance like this!’
   ‘This is lunacy, Miss Havisham!’ I replied indignantly. ‘I will not fight over a set of Farquitt novels!’
   Miss Havisham looked sharply at me as the muffled crack of a small-calibre firearm sounded and there was the thud of a body falling.
   ‘I thought as much!’ she sneered. ‘A streak of yellow a mile wide all the way down your back! How did you think you were going to handle the otherness at Jurisfiction if you can’t handle a few crazed fiction-fanciers hell-bent on finding bargains? Your apprenticeship is at an end. Good day, Miss Next!’
   ‘Wait! This is a test?’
   ‘What did you think it was? Think someone like me with all the money I have enjoys spending my time fighting for books I can read for free in the library?’
   I resisted the temptation to say: ‘Well, yes’ and answered instead:
   ‘Will you be okay here, ma’am?’
   ‘I’ll be fine,’ she replied, tripping up a woman near us for no reason I could see. ‘Now go!’
   I turned and crawled rapidly across the carpet, climbed over the Police Procedurals to just beyond the registers, where the sales assistants rang in the bargains with a fervour bordering on messianic. I crept past them, through the empty returns department, and dived under the Seafaring section to emerge a scant two yards from the Daphne Farquitt display; by a miracle no one had yet grabbed the boxed set—and it was very discounted: down from £300 to only £50. I looked to my left and could see the Red Queen fighting her way through the crowd. She caught my eye and dared me to try to beat her. I took a deep breath and waded into the swirling maelstrom of popular prose-induced violence. Almost instantly I was punched on the jaw and thumped in the kidneys; I cried out in pain and quickly withdrew. I met a woman next to the J.G. Farrell section who had a nasty cut above her eye; she told me in a concussed manner that the Major Archer character appeared in both Troubles and The Singapore Grip. I glanced over to where the Red Queen was cutting a swathe through the crowd, knocking people aside in her bid to beat me. She smiled triumphantly as she head-butted a woman who had tried to poke her in the eye with a silver-plated bookmark. On the floor below a brief burst of machine-gun fire sounded. I took a step forward to join the fray, then stopped, considered my condition for a moment and decided that perhaps pregnant women shouldn’t get involved in bookshop brawls. So instead, I took a deep breath and yelled:
   ‘Ms Farquitt is signing copies of her book in the basement!’
   There was a moment’s silence, then a mass exodus towards the stairs and escalators. The Red Queen, caught up in the crowd, was dragged unceremoniously away, in a few seconds the room was empty.
   Daphne Farquitt was notoriously private—I didn’t think there was a fan of hers anywhere who wouldn’t jump at the chance of actually meeting her.
   I walked calmly up to the boxed set, picked it up and took it to the counter, paid and rejoined Miss Havisham behind the discounted du Mauriers, where she was idly flicking through a copy of Rebecca. I showed her the books.
   ‘Not bad,’ she said grudgingly. ‘Did you get a receipt?’
   ‘Yes, ma’am.’
   ‘And the Red Queen?’
   ‘Lost somewhere between here and the basement,’ I replied simply.
   A thin smile crossed Miss Havisham’s lips and I helped her to her feet.
   Together we walked slowly past the mass of squabbling book bargainers and made for the exit.
   ‘How did you manage it?’ asked Miss Havisham.
   ‘I told them Daphne Farquitt was signing in the basement’
   ‘She is?’ exclaimed Miss Havisham, turning to head off downstairs.
   ‘No no no,’ I added, taking her by the arm and steering her to the exit. ‘That’s just what I told them.’
   ‘Oh, I get it!’ replied Havisham. ‘Very good indeed. Resourceful and intelligent. Mrs Nakajima was quite right—I think you will do as an apprentice after all.’
   She regarded me for a moment, as if making up her mind about something. Eventually she nodded, gave another rare smile and handed me a simple gold ring that slipped easily over my little finger.
   ‘Here—this is for you. Never take it off. Do you understand?’
   ‘Thank you, Miss Havisham, it’s very pretty.’
   ‘Pretty nothing, Next. Save your gratitude for real favours, not baubles, my girl. Come along. I know of a very good bun shop in Little Dorrit—and I’m buying!’


* * *

   Outside, paramedics were dealing with the casualties, many of them still clutching the remnants of their bargains for which they had fought so bravely. My car was gone—towed away, most likely—and we trotted as fast as we could on Miss Havisham’s twisted ankle, round the corner of the building until—
   ‘—not so fast!’
   The officers who had chased us earlier were blocking our path.
   ‘Looking for something? This, I suppose?’
   My car was on the back of a low-loader, being taken away.
   ‘We’ll take the bus,’ I stammered.
   ‘You’ll take the car,’ corrected the police officer, ‘my car… Hey! Where do you think you’re going?’
   He was talking to Miss Havisham, who had taken the Farquitt boxed set and walked into a small group of women to disguise her bookjump—back to Great Expectations or the bun shop in Little Dorrit, or somewhere. I wished I could have joined her, but my skills in these matters were not really up to scratch. I sighed.
   ‘We want some answers, Next,’ said the policeman in a grim tone.
   ‘Listen, Rawlings, I don’t know the lady very well. What did she say her name was? Dame-rouge?’
   ‘It’s Havisham, Next—but you know that, don’t you? That “lady” is extremely well known to the police—she’s racked up seventy-four outrageously serious driving offences in the past twenty-two years.’
   ‘Really?’
   ‘Yes, really. In June she was clocked driving a chain-driven Liberty-engined Higham Special Automobile at 171.5 m.p.h. up the M4. It’s not only irresponsible, it’s… Why are you laughing?’
   ‘No reason.’
   The officer stared at me.
   ‘You seem to know her quite well, Next. Why does she do these things?’
   ‘Probably,’ I replied, ‘because they don’t have motorways where she comes from—or twenty-seven-litre Higham Specials.’
   ‘And where would that be, Next?’
   ‘I have no idea.’
   ‘I could arrest you for helping the escape of an individual in custody.’
   ‘She wasn’t arrested, Rawlings, you said so yourself.’
   ‘Perhaps not, but you are. In the car.’

20. Yorrick Kaine

   ‘In 1983 the youthful Yorrick Kaine was elected leader of the Whigs, at that time a small and largely inconsequential party whose desire to put the aristocracy back in power and limit voting rights to homeowners had placed it on the outer edges of the political arena. A pro-Crimean stance coupled with a wish for British unification helped build nationalist support, and by 1985 the Whigs had three MPs in Parliament. They built their manifesto on populist tactics such as reducing the cheese duty and offering dukedoms as prizes on the National Lottery. A shrewd politician and clever tactician, Kaine was ambitious for power—in whatever way he could get it.’

A.J.P. MILLINER. The New Whigs—From Humble Beginnings to Fourth Reich


   It took two hours for me to convince the police I wasn’t going to tell them anything about Miss Havisham other than her address. Undeterred, they thumbed through a yellowed statute book and eventually charged me with a little-known 1621 law about ‘Permissioning a horse and carte to be driven by personn of low moral turpithtude’, but with the ‘horse and carte’ bit crossed out and ‘car’ written in instead—so you can see how desperate they were. I would have to go before the magistrate the following week. I started to sneak out of the building to go home but—
   ‘—so there you are!’
   I turned and hoped my groan wasn’t audible.
   ‘Hello, Cordelia.’
   ‘Thursday, are you okay’ You look a bit bruised!’
   ‘I got caught in a fiction frenzy.’
   ‘No more nonsense, now—I need you to meet the people who won my competition.’
   ‘Do I have to?’
   Flakk looked at me sternly.
   ‘It’s very advisable.’
   ‘Okay,’ I replied, let me have a pee and I’ll be with you in five minutes. Okay?’
   ‘Right!’ Cordelia beamed.
   But I didn’t have a pee, instead I nipped up to the LiteraTec office.
   ‘Thursday!’ said Bowden as I entered. ‘I told Victor you had the flu. How did you get on?’
   ‘Pretty well, I think. I’ve been inside books again without a Prose Portal. I can do it on my own—more or less.’
   ‘You’re kidding.’
   ‘No,’ I told him, ‘deadly serious. Landen’s almost as good as back. I met Miss Havisham.’
   ‘What’s she like?’
   ‘Odd. It seems there is something very like SpecOps 27 inside books—I’ve yet to figure it all out. How have things been out here?’
   He showed me a copy of The Owl. The headline read: ‘New play by Will found in Swindon’. The Mole had the headline: ‘Cardenio sensation!’ and The Toad, predictably enough, led with. ‘Swindon croquet supremo Aubrey Jambe found in bath with chimp’.
   ‘So Professor Spoon authenticated it?’
   ‘He did indeed,’ replied Bowden. ‘One of us should take the report up to Volescamper this afternoon. This is for you.’
   He handed me the bag of pinkish goo attached to a report from the SpecOps forensic labs. I thanked him and read the analysis of the slime Dad had given me with interest and confusion in equal measures.
   ‘…sugar, fatty animal protein, calcium, sodium, maltodextrin, carboxy-methyl-cellulose, phenylalnine, complex hydrocarbon compounds and traces of chlorophyll.’
   I flicked to the back of the report but was none the wiser. Forensics had faithfully interpreted my request for analysis—but it told me nothing new.
   ‘What does it mean, Bowd?’
   ‘Search me, Thursday. They’re trying to match the profile to known chemical compounds, but so far nothing. Perhaps if you told us where you got it?’
   ‘I don’t think that would be safe. I’ll drop the Cardenio report in to Volescamper—I’m keen to avoid Cordelia. Tell forensics that the future of the planet depends on them—that should help. I have to know what this pink stuff is.’
   I saw Cordelia waiting for me in the lobby with her guest, who had a Finis Hotel carrier bag in one hand and a young daughter in the other. Unluckily for him Spike Stoker had been passing and Cordelia, eager to do something to amuse her competition winner, had obviously asked him to say a few words. The look of frozen, jaw-dropping horror on her guest’s face said it all. I hid my face behind the Cardenio report and left Cordelia to it.
   I blagged a ride in a squad car up to the crumbling Vole Towers. The house had changed a lot since I was last there. The mansion was besieged by the news stations, all keen to report any details regarding the discovery of Cardenio. Two dozen outside broadcast trucks were parked on the weed-infested gravel, all humming with activity. Dishes were trained into the afternoon sky, transmitting the pictures to an airship repeater station that had been routed in to bounce the stories live to the world’s eager viewers. For security, SpecOps 14 had been drafted in and operatives stood languidly about, idly chatting to one another. Mostly, it seemed, about Aubrey Jambe’s apparent indiscretion with the chimp.
   ‘Hello, Thursday!’ said a handsome young SO-14 agent at the front door. It was annoying; I didn’t recognise him. People I couldn’t remember hailing me as friends was something that had happened a lot since Landen’s eradication; I supposed I would get used to it.
   ‘Hello!’ I replied to the stranger in an equally friendly tone. ‘What’s going on?’
   ‘Yorrick Kaine is giving a press conference.’
   ‘Really? What’s Cardenio got to do with him?’
   ‘Hadn’t you heard? Lord Volescamper has given the play to Yorrick Kaine and the Whig party!’
   ‘Why would Volescamper have anything to do with a minor right-wing pro-Crimean Welsh-hater like Kaine?’
   ‘Because he’s a lord and wants to reclaim some lost power?’
   At that moment two other SpecOps operatives walked past and one of them nodded to the young agent at the door and said: ‘All well, Miles?’
   The dashing young SO-14 agent said that all was well, but he was wrong—all was not well, at least it wasn’t for me. I thought I might bump into Miles eventually but not unprepared, like this. I stared at him, hoping my shock and surprise wouldn’t show. He had spent time in my flat and knew me a lot better than I knew him. My heart thumped inside my chest and I tried to say something intelligent and witty but it came out more like:
   ‘Asterfobulongus?’
   ‘I’m sorry, what was that?’
   ‘Nothing.’
   Miles looked to left and right and leaned a little closer.
   ‘You seemed a bit upset when I called, Thursday. Is there a problem with our arrangement?’
   I stared at him for a few seconds in numbed silence before mumbling:
   ‘No—no, not at all.’
   ‘Good!’ he said. ‘We must fix a date or two.’
   ‘Yes,’ I said, running on auto-fear, ‘yes, we must Gottogo—bye.’
   I trotted off before he could say anything else. I paused for breath outside the door to the library. Sooner or later I was going to have to ask him straight out. I decided on the face of it that later suited me better than sooner, so walked through the heavy steel doors and into the library. Yorrick Kaine and Lord Volescamper were sitting behind a table, and beyond them was Mr Swaike and two security guards who were standing either side of the play itself, proudly displayed behind a sheet of bullet-proof glass. The press conference was halfway through, and I tapped Lydia Startright—who happened to be standing quite near—on the arm.
   ‘Hey, Lyds!’ I said in a low whisper.

  ‘Hey, Thursday,’ replied the reporter. ‘I heard you did the initial authentication. How good is it?’
   ‘Very good,’ I replied. ‘Somewhere on a par with The Tempest. What’s happening here?’
   ‘Volescamper has just officially announced he is giving the play to Yorrick Kaine and the Whigs.’
   ‘Why?’
   ‘Who knows? Hang on, I want to ask a question.’
   Lydia stood up and raised her hand. Kaine pointed at her.
   ‘What do you propose to do with the play, Mr Kaine? We understand that there has been talk of offers in the region of a hundred million pounds.’
   ‘Good question,’ replied Yorrick Kaine, getting to his feet. ‘We in the Whig party thank Lord Volescamper for his kind generosity. I am of the opinion that Cardenio is not for one person or group to exploit, so we in the Whig party propose offering free licences to perform the play to anyone who wishes to do so.’
   There was an excited babbling from the attendant journalists as they took this in. It was an act of unprecedented generosity, especially from Kaine, but more than that, it was the right thing to do, and the press suddenly warmed to Yorrick. It was as if Kaine had never suggested the invasion of Wales two years earlier or the reduction of the right to vote the year before; I was instantly suspicious.
   There were several more questions about the play and a lot of well-practised answers from Kaine, who seemed to have reinvented himself as a caring and sharing patriarch and not the extremist of yore. After the press conference had ended, I made my way to the front and approached Volescamper who looked at me oddly for a moment.
   ‘The Spoon report,’ I told him, handing him the buff-coloured file, ‘about the authentication… we thought you might want to see it.’
   ‘What? Of course?’
   Volescamper took the report and glanced at it in a cursory manner before passing it to Kaine who seemed to show more interest. Kaine didn’t even look at me but since I obviously wasn’t going to leave like some message-girl, Volescamper introduced me.
   ‘Oh yes! Mr Kaine, this is Thursday Next, SpecOps-27.’
   Kaine looked up from the report. His manner abruptly changed to one of charm and gushing friendship.
   ‘Ms Next, delighted!’ he enthused. ‘I read of your exploits with great interest and, believe me, your intervention improved the narrative of Jane Eyre considerably!’
   I wasn’t impressed by him or his faux charm.
   ‘Think you can change the Whig party’s fortunes, Mr Kaine?’
   ‘The party is undergoing something of a restructuring at present,’ replied Kaine, fixing me with a serious stare. ‘Old ideology has been retired and the party now looks forward to a fresh look at England’s political future. Rule by informed patriarch and voting restricted to responsible property owners is the future, Miss Next—ruling by committee has been the death of common sense for far too long.’
   ‘And Wales?’ I asked. ‘Where do you stand on Wales these days?’
   ‘Wales is historically part of the greater Britain,’ announced Kaine in a slightly more guarded manner. ‘The Welsh have been flooding the English market with cheap goods and this has to stop—but I have no plans whatsoever for forced unification.’
   I stared at him for a moment.
   ‘You have to get into power first, Mr Kaine.’
   The smile dropped from his face.
   ‘Thank you for delivering the report, Miss Next,’ put in Volescamper hurriedly. ‘Can I offer you a drink or something before you go?’
   I took the hint and made my way to the front door. I stood and looked at the outside broadcast units thoughtfully. Yorrick Kaine was playing his hand well.

21. Les Arts Modernes de Swindon, ’85

   ‘The Very Irreverent Joffy Next was the minister for the Global Standard Deity’s first church in England. The GSD had a little bit of all religions, arguing that if there was one God, then He would really have very little to do with all the fluff and muddle down here on the material plane, and a streamlining of the faiths might very well be in His interest. Worshippers came and went as they pleased, prayed according to how they felt most happy, and mingled freely with other GSD members. It enjoyed moderate success, but what God actually thought of it no one ever really knew.’

PROFESSOR M. BLESSINGTON, PR (retd)—The Global Standard Deity


   I paid to have my car released with a cheque that I felt sure would bounce, then drove home and had a snack and a shower before driving over to Wanborough and Joffy’s first ‘Les arts modernes de Swindon’ exhibition. Joffy had asked me for a list of my colleagues to boost the numbers, so I fully expected to see some work people there. I had even asked Cordelia, who I had to admit was great fun when not in PR mode. The art exhibition was being held in the Global Standard Deity church at Wanborough and had been opened by Frankie Saveloy a half-hour before I arrived. It seemed quite busy as I stepped inside; all the pews had been moved out and artists, critics, press and potential purchasers milled among the eclectic collection of art. I grabbed a glass of wine from a passing waiter, suddenly remembered I shouldn’t be drinking, sniffed at it longingly and put it down again. Joffy, looking very smart indeed in a dinner jacket and dog-collar, leapt forward when he saw me, grinning wildly.
   ‘Hello, Doofus!’ he said, hugging me affectionately. ‘Glad you could make it. Have you met Mr Saveloy?’
   Without waiting for an answer he propelled me towards where a puffy man stood quite alone at the side of the room. He introduced me as quickly as he could and then legged it. Frankie Saveloy was the compère of Name That Fruit! and looked more like a toad in real life than he did on TV. I half expected a long sticky tongue to shoot out and capture a wayward fly, but I smiled politely nonetheless.
   ‘Mr Saveloy,’ I said, offering my hand. He took it in his clammy mitt and held on to it tightly.
   ‘Delighted!’ grunted Saveloy, his eyes flicking to my cleavage. ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t get you to appear on my show—but you’re probably feeling quite honoured to meet me, just the same.’
   ‘Quite the reverse,’ I assured him, retrieving my hand forcibly.
   ‘Ah!’ said Saveloy, grinning so much the sides of his mouth almost met his ears and I feared the top of his head might fall off. ‘I have my Rolls-Royce outside. Perhaps you might like to join me for a ride?’
   ‘I think,’ I replied, ‘that I would sooner eat rusty nails.’
   He didn’t seem in the least put out. He grinned some more and said:
   ‘Shame to put such magnificent hooters to waste, Miss Next.’
   I raised my hand to slap him but my wrist was caught by Cordelia Flakk, who had decided to intervene.
   ‘Up to your old tricks, Frankie?’
   Saveloy grimaced at Cordelia.
   ‘Damn you, Dilly—out to spoil my fun!’
   ‘Come on, Thursday, there are plenty of bigger fools to waste your time on than this one.’
   Flakk had dropped the bright pink outfit for a more reserved shade but was still able to fog film at forty yards. She took me by the hand and steered me towards some of the art on display
   ‘You have been leading me around the houses a bit, Thursday,’ she said testily. ‘I only need ten minutes of your time with those guests of mine!’
   ‘Sorry, Dilly. Things have been a bit hectic. Where are they?’
   ‘He’s performing Richard III at the Ritz—you would have thought he’d never been to Swindon the way he’s carrying on. Can you please make time for them both tomorrow?’
   ‘I’ll try.’
   ‘Good.’
   We approached a small scrum where one of the featured artists was presenting his latest work to an attentive audience composed mostly of art critics who all wore collarless black suits and were scribbling notes in their catalogues.
   ‘So,’ said one of the critics, gazing at the piece through his half-moon spectacles, ‘tell us all about it, Mr Duchamp2924.’
   ‘I call it The id within,’ said the young artist in a quiet voice, avoiding everyone’s gaze and pressing his fingertips together. He was dressed in a long black cloak and had sideburns cut so sharp that if he turned abruptly he would have had someone’s eye out. He continued:
   ‘Like life, my piece reflects the many different layers that cocoon and restrict us in society today. The outer layer—reflecting yet counterpoising the harsh exoskeleton we all display—is hard, thin, yet somehow brittle—but beneath this a softer layer awaits, yet of the same shape and almost the same size. As one delves deeper one finds many different shells, each smaller yet no softer than the one before. The journey is a tearful one, and when one reaches the centre there is almost nothing there at all, and the similarity to the outer crust is, in a sense, illusory.’
   ‘It’s an onion,’ I said in a loud voice.
   There was a stunned silence. Several of the art critics looked at me, then at Duchamp2924, then at the onion.
   I was sort of hoping the critics would say something like. ‘We’d like to thank you for bringing this to our attention. We nearly made complete dopes of ourselves’, but they didn’t. They just said:
   ‘Is this true?’
   To which Duchamp2924 replied that this was true in fact, but untrue representationally, and as if to reinforce the fact he drew a bunch of shallots from within his jacket and added:
   ‘I have here another piece I’d like you to see. It’s called The id within II (grouped), and is a collection of concentric three-dimensional shapes locked around a central core…’
   Cordelia pulled me away as the critics craned forward with renewed interest.
   ‘You seem very troublesome tonight, Thursday.’ She smiled. ‘Come on, I want you to meet someone.’
   She introduced me to a young man with a well-tailored suit and well-tailored hair.
   ‘This is Harold Flex,’ announced Cordelia. ‘Harry is Lola Vavoom’s agent and a big cheese in the film industry.’
   Flex shook my hand gratefully and told me how fantastically humbled he was to be in my presence.
   ‘Your story needs to be told, Miss Next,’ enthused Flex, ‘and Lola is very enthusiastic.’
   ‘Oh, no,’ I said hurriedly, realising what was coming. ‘No, no. Not in a million years.’
   ‘You should hear Harry out, Thursday,’ pleaded Cordelia. ‘He’s the sort of agent who could cut a really good financial deal for you, do a fantastic PR job for SpecOps and make sure your wishes and opinions in the whole story were vigorously listened to.’