The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [289]
I was quiet for a moment.
“Will there be Jane Eyre?”
“Yes,” sighed my father. “Yes, there will always be Jane Eyre.”
“And Turner? Will he still paint The Fighting Temeraire?”
“Yes, and Carravaggggio will be there too, although his name will be spelt more sensibly.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
My father was silent for a moment.
“There’s a catch.”
“What sort of catch?”
He sighed.
“Landen will be back, but you and he won’t have met. Landen won’t even know you.”
“But I’ll know him. I can introduce myself, can’t I?”
“Thursday, you’re not part of this. You’re outside of it. You’ll still be carrying Landen’s child, but you won’t know the sideslip has ever happened. You will remember nothing about your old life. If you want to go sideways to see him, then you’ll have to have a new past and a new present. Perversely enough, to be able to see him, you cannot have any recollection of him—nor he of you.”
“That’s some catch,” I observed.
“It’s the second-best there is,” Dad agreed.
I thought for a moment.
“So I won’t be in love with him?”
“I’m afraid not. You might have a small residual memory— feelings that you can’t explain for someone you’ve never met.”
“Will I be confused?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me with an earnest expression. They all did. Even Lady Hamilton, who had been moving quietly towards the sherry, stopped and was staring at me. It was clear that making myself scarce was something I had to do. But having zero recollection of Landen? I didn’t really have to think very hard.
“No, Dad. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“I don’t think you understand,” he intoned, using his paternal go-to-your-room-young-lady voice. “In a year’s time you can come back and everything will be as right as—”
“No. I’m not losing any more of Landen than I have already.”
I had an idea.
“Besides, I do have somewhere I can go.”
“Where?” inquired my father. “Where could you possibly go that Lavoisier couldn’t find you? Backwards, forwards, sideways, otherways—there isn’t anywhere else!”
I smiled.
“You’re wrong, Dad. There is somewhere. A place where no one will ever find me—not even you.”
“Sweetpea—!” he implored. “It is imperative that you take this seriously! Where will you go?”
“I’ll just,” I replied slowly, “lose myself in a good book.”
Despite their pleading, I bade farewell to Mum, Dad and Lady Hamilton, crept out of the house and sped to my apartment on Joffy’s motorbike. I parked outside the front door in clear defiance of the Goliath and SpecOps agents who were still waiting for me. I ambled slowly in; it would take them twenty minutes or more to report to base and then get up the stairs and break down the door—and I really only needed to pack a few things. I still had my memories of Landen, and they would sustain me until I got him back. Because I would get him back—but I needed time to rest and recuperate and bring our child into the world with the minimum of fuss, bother and interruptions. I packed four tins of Moggilicious cat food, two packets of Mintolas, a large jar of Marmite and two dozen AA batteries into a large holdall along with a few changes of clothing, a picture of my family and the copy of Jane Eyre with the bullet lodged in the cover. I placed a sleepy and confused Pickwick and her egg into the holdall and zipped up the bag so that only her head stuck out. I then sat and waited on a chair in front of the door with a copy of Great Expectations on my lap. I wasn’t a natural bookjumper, and without my travelbook I was going to need the fear of capture to help catapult me through the boundaries of fiction.
I started to read at the first knock on the door and continued through the volley of shouts for me to open up, past the muffled thuds and the sound of splintered wood, until finally, as the door fell in, I melted into the dingy interior of Great Expectations and Satis House.
Miss Havisham was understandably shocked when I explained what I needed, and even more shocked at the sight of Pickwick, but she consented to my request and cleared it with the Bellman— on the proviso that I’d continue with