The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [532]
. . . Melanie stopped in midstride over the sweet williams. She paused for a moment, gave an embarrassed smile and waved her hand in greeting.
I was just pondering whether finding a cloned Shakespeare was actually going to be possible when I heard a tiny wail. I went back downstairs to find Friday blinking at me from the door to the living room, looking tousled and a little sleepy.
“Sleep well, little man?”
“Sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit,” he replied, which I took to mean, “I have slept very well and now require a snack to see me through the next two hours.”
I walked back into the kitchen, something niggling away at my mind. Something that Mum had said. Something that Stiggins had said. Or maybe Emma? I made Friday a Nutella sandwich, which he proceeded to smear about his face.
“I think you’ll find I have just the color for you,” said my mother, picking out a shade of gray varnish that suited Melanie’s black fur. “Goodness—what strong nails!”
“I don’t dig as much as I used to,” replied Melanie with an air of nostalgia. “Trafford doesn’t like it. He thinks it makes the neighbors talk.”
My heart missed a beat, and I shouted out, quite spontaneously, “AHHHHHHHHH!”
My mother jumped and painted a line of nail varnish up Melanie’s hand and upset the bottle onto her polka-dot dress.
“Look what you’ve made me do!” she scolded. Melanie didn’t look very happy either.
“Posh, Murray Posh, Daisy Posh, Daisy Mutlar—Why did you . . . mention Daisy Mutlar a few minutes ago?”
“Well, because I thought you’d be annoyed she was still around.”
Daisy Mutlar, it must be understood, was someone whom Landen nearly married during our ten-year enforced separation. But that wasn’t important. What was important is that without Landen there had never been any Daisy. And if Daisy was around, then Landen must be, too—
I looked down at my hand. On my ring finger was . . . a ring. A wedding ring. I pulled it forward to the knuckle to reveal a white ridge. It looked as though it had always been there. And if it had . . .
“Where’s Landen now?”
“At his house, I should imagine,” said my mother. “Are you staying here for supper?”
“Then . . . he’s not eradicated?”
She looked confused. “Good Lord, no!”
I narrowed my eyes. “Then I didn’t ever go to Eradications Anonymous?”
“Of course not, darling. You know that myself and Mrs. Beatty are the only people who ever attend—and Mrs. Beatty is just there to comfort me. What on earth are you talking about? And come back! Where do you—”
I opened the door and was two paces down the garden path when I remembered I had left Friday behind, so went back to get him, found he had got chocolate all over his front despite the bib, put on his sweatshirt over his T-shirt, found he had glibbed down the front of it, got a clean one, changed his nappy, and—no socks.
“What are you doing, darling?” asked my mother as I rummaged in the laundry basket.
“It’s Landen,” I babbled excitedly. “He was eradicated, and now he’s back, and it’s as though he’d never gone, and I want him to meet Friday, but Friday is way way too sticky right now to meet his father.”
“Eradicated? Landen? When?” asked my mother incredulously. “Are you sure?”
“Isn’t that the point about eradication?” I replied, having found six socks, none of them matching. “No one ever knows. It might surprise you to know that Eradications Anonymous once had forty or more attendees. When I came, there were fewer than ten. You did a wonderful job, Mother. They’d all be really grateful—if only they could remember.”
“Oh!” said my mother in a rare moment of complete clarity. “Then . . . when eradicatees are brought back, it was as if they had never gone. Ergo: the past automatically rewrites itself to take into account the noneradication.”
“Well, yes—more or less.”
I slipped some odd socks