One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [92]
After Tuesday had gone off to fetch a photograph album, I turned to Landen. “She’s the secret plans, isn’t she?”
He looked at me but said nothing, which I took to mean she was. Tuesday’s intellect would be the driving force behind the government’s Anti-Smite Strategic Defense Shield.
“I guess we’re just about to find out if you’re the Goliath Thursday,” said Landen. “If you are, you’ll be contacting them straightaway.”
I wouldn’t, of course. “How long do you think before they figure it out?”
“I don’t know,” replied Landen, scraping the carrots he’d been chopping into a saucepan, “but know this: I’ll die to protect my daughter.”
“Me, too.”
Landen smiled. “Are you sure you’re not her?”
“I’m sure.”
Tuesday came back with the photograph album, and I joined her as she leafed through the family holidays of which I had no knowledge. I stared at the Thursday in the pictures and tried to figure her out. She never looked totally relaxed—not as much as Landen and the kids anyway, but clearly loved them all, even if she seemed to be glancing around her as though on the lookout for anyone wishing to do them or her harm. There were very few pictures in which she was smiling. She took life seriously, but her family kept her anchored, and probably as sane as she could ever hope to be. Tuesday reached for my hand and held it tightly without really thinking, and as we chatted, it crossed my mind that I could become Thursday, if the real one never showed up. I could go Blue Fairy, and all this would be mine. For a fleeting moment, it seemed like a good, worthy and attainable idea, but reality quickly returned. I was fooling myself. The longer I listened to Tuesday, the more I realized just how much she needed her mother. Not any mother, but her mother. I would never be anything more than a pale reflection.
“Landen,” I said when Tuesday had gone off to watch Bonzo the Wonder Hound, Series Twelve, “I shouldn’t have come.”
“Nonsense.”
“No, really. It was a huge mistake. I can’t be her, no matter how much I want to.”
“You sell yourself short—I’m more convinced by the minute. The way you sat with Tuesday.”
“Yes?”
“That’s how Thursday used to do it. Proud, loving—but not understanding a single word she said.”
“Land, I’m not her. I’ve got no idea what’s going on, I didn’t recognize Adrian Dorset, I didn’t know that you’d lost a leg and, and, and . . . I can’t see Jenny. I should just go and hide in a large cupboard somewhere until I’m whisked back into Fiction.”
He stared at me for a moment. “I never said her name was Jenny.”
“Damn.”
He took a step closer and held my hand. “You saw her?”
I nodded. “Jenny mentioned Thursday saying ‘Lyell was boring.’ Does that make any sense to you?”
“Thursday didn’t discuss her BookWorld work with me. She pretended it was a secret, and I pretended I didn’t know about it. Same as the SpecOps work. But I don’t know anyone called Lyell, and she hated boring people. Except me.”
“You’re not boring.”
“I am, but I’m okay with it. I’m the anchor. The shoulder.”
“And you’re all right with the support role?”
He laughed. “Of course! It’s my function. Besides, I love her. More than anything on the planet—with the possible exception of Tuesday and Friday. And I’m actually quite fond of Jenny, too, even though