The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [473]
“Hello.”
“—bringing you two hours of news and views, fun and competitions to see you into the day. Breakfast with Toad is sponsored by Arkwright’s Doorknobs, the finest door furniture in Wessex.”
Warwick turned to Leigh, who was looking way too glamorous for eight in the morning.
She smiled and continued, “This morning we’ll be speaking to croquet captain Roger Kapok about Swindon’s chances in the SuperHoop-88 and also to a man who claims to have seen unicorns in a near-death experience. Network Toad’s resident dodo whisperer will be on hand for your pet’s psychiatric problems, and our Othello backwards-reading competition reaches the quarterfinals. Later on we talk to Mr. Joffy Next about tomorrow’s potential resurrection with St. Zvlkx, but first the news. The CEO of Goliath has announced contrition targets to be attainable within—”
“Morning, daughter,” said my mother, who had just walked into the kitchen. “I never thought of you as an early riser.”
“I wasn’t until junior turned up,” I replied, pointing at Friday, who was eyeing the porridge pot expectantly, “but if there’s one thing he knows how to do, it’s eat.”
“It’s what you did best when you were his age. Oh,” added my mother absently, “I have to give you something, by the way.”
She hurried from the room and returned with a sheaf of official-looking papers.
“Mr. Hicks left them for you.”
Braxton Hicks was my old boss back at Swindon SpecOps. I had left abruptly, and from the look of his opening letter, it didn’t look like he was very happy about it. I had been demoted to “Literary Detective Researcher,” and it demanded my gun and badge back. The second letter was an outstanding warrant of arrest due to a trumped-up charge over possession of a small amount of illegally owned bootleg cheese.
“Is cheese still overpriced?” I asked my mother.
“Criminal!” she muttered. “Over five hundred percent duty. And it’s not just cheese, either. They’ve extended the duty to cover all dairy products—even yogurt.”
I sighed. I would probably have to go into SpecOps and explain myself. I could beg forgiveness, go to the stressperts and plead posttraumatic stress disorder or Xplkqulkiccasia or something and ask for my old job back. Perhaps if I were to get handy with a nine iron, it might swing things with my golf-mad boss. Outside SpecOps was not a good place to be if I wanted to hunt Yorrick Kaine or lobby the ChronoGuard for my husband back; it would help to have access to all the SpecOps and police databases.
I looked through the papers. I had apparently been found guilty of the cheese transgression and fined five thousand pounds plus costs.
“Did you pay this?” I asked my mother, showing her the court demand.
“Yes.”
“Then I should pay you back.”
“No need,” she replied, adding before I could thank her, “I paid it out of your overdraft—which is quite big now.”
“How . . . thoughtful of you.”
“Don’t mention it. Bacon and eggs?”
“Please.”
“Coming up. Would you get the milk?”
I went to the front door to fetch the milk, and as I bent down to pick it up, there was a whang-thop noise as a bullet zipped past my ear and thudded into the doorframe next to me. I was about to slam the door and grab my automatic when an unaccountable stillness took hold, like a sudden becalming. Above me a pigeon hung frozen in the air, the wingtip feathers splayed as it reached the bottom of a downstroke. A motorcyclist on the road was balancing impossibly still, and passersby were now as stiff and unmoving as statues—even Pickwick had stopped in midwaddle. Time, for the moment at least, had frozen. I knew only one person who had a face that could stop a clock like this—my father. The question was, where was he?
I looked up and down the road. Nothing. Since I was about to be assassinated, I thought it might help to know who was doing the assassinating, so I walked down the garden path and across the road to the alley where de Floss had hidden himself so badly the previous day. It was here that I found my father looking at a small and very pretty blond woman no more than five foot high who