The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [328]
“And you’re going to race him?” I asked slightly nervously.
“And beat him, too, what’s more.” She handed me a pair of bolt cutters.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Open up the speed camera and get the film out once I’ve done my run.”
She donned a pair of goggles and was gone in a howl of engine noise and screeching of tires. I looked nervously around as she and the car hurtled off into the distance, the roar of the engine fading into a hum, occasionally punctuated by muffled cracks from the exhaust. I looked around. The sun was out and I could see at least three airships droning across the sky; I wondered what was going on at SpecOps. I had written a note to Victor telling him I had to be away for a year or more and tendered my resignation. Suddenly I was shaken from my daydream by something else. Something dark and just out of sight. Something I should have done or something I’d forgotten. I shivered and then it clicked. Last night. Gran. Aornis’s mindworm. What had she been unraveling in my mind? I sighed as the pieces slowly started to merge together in my head. Gran had told me to run the facts over and over to renew the familiar memories that Aornis was trying to delete. But how do you start trying to find out what it is you’ve forgotten? I concentrated. . . . Landen. I hadn’t thought about him all day and that was unusual. I could remember where we met and what had happened to him—no problem there. Anything else? His full name. Damn and blast! Landen Parke- something. Did it begin with a B? I couldn’t remember. I sighed and placed my hand on where I imagined our baby to be, now the size of a half crown. I remembered enough to know I loved him, and I missed him dreadfully—which was a good sign, I supposed. I thought of Lavoisier’s perfidy and the Schitt brothers and started to feel rage building inside me. I closed my eyes and tried to relax. There was a phone box by the side of the road, and on impulse I called my mother.
“Hi, Mum, it’s Thursday.”
“Thursday!” she screamed excitedly. “Hang on—the stove’s on fire.”
“The stove?”
“Well, the kitchen really—wait a mo!”
There was a crashing noise and she came back on the line a few seconds later.
“Out now. Darling! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Mum.”
“And the baby?”
“Fine, too. How are things with you?”
“Frightful! Goliath and SpecOps have been camping outside since the moment you left, and Emma Hamilton is living in the spare room and eats like a horse.”
There was an angry growl and a loud whooshing noise as Havisham swept past in little more than a blur. Two flashes from the speed camera went off in quick succession, and there were several more loud bangs as Havisham rolled off the throttle.
“What was that noise?” asked my mother.
“You’d never believe me if I told you. My, er, husband hasn’t been round looking for me, has he?”
“I’m afraid not, sweetheart,” she said in her most understanding voice. She knew about Landen and understood better than most—her own husband, my father, had been eradicated himself seventeen years previously. “Why don’t you come round and talk. The Eradications Anonymous meeting is at eight this evening; you’ll be among friends there.”
“I don’t think so, Mum.”
“Are you eating regularly?”
“Yes, Mum.”
“I managed to get DH-82 to do a few tricks.”
DH-82 was her rescue thylacine. Training a usually unbelievably torpid thylacine to do anything except eat or sleep on command was almost front-page news.
“That’s good. Listen, I just called to say I missed you and not to worry about me—”
“I’m going to try another run!” shouted Miss Havisham, who had drawn up. I waved to her and she drove off.
“Are you keeping Pickwick’s egg warm?”
I told Mum that this was Pickwick’s job, that I would call again and hung up. I thought of ringing Bowden but decided on the face of it that this was probably not a good idea. Mum’s phone was bound to have been tapped and I had given them enough already. I walked back to the road and watched as a small gray dot grew larger and larger until it swept past with a strident bellow. The speed