The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [650]
“I’d best be getting back to my book now,” she said, and turned to go.
“Did I say you could leave?” I asked in my stoniest voice.
“Well, that is to say…no.”
“Then until I say you can go, you stay with me. I’m still undecided as to your fate, and until that happens—Lord help me—you’ll stay as my cadet.”
We returned to Jurisfiction, and Thursday5 went and did some Pilates in the corner, much to the consternation of Mrs. Dashwood, who happened to be passing. I reported the Minotaur’s appearance and the state of the Austen refit to Bradshaw, who told me to have the Minotaur’s details and current whereabouts texted to all agents.
After returning to my desk, dealing with some paperwork and being consulted on a number of matters, I drew out Thursday5’s assessment form, filled it in and then checked the “Failed” box on the last page before I signed it. I folded it twice, slid it into the envelope and wavered for a moment before eventually placing it in the top drawer of my desk.
I looked at my watch. It was time to go home. I walked over to Thursday5, who had her eyes closed and was standing on one leg. “Same time tomorrow?”
She opened her eyes and stared into mine. I got the same feeling when staring into the mirror at home. The touchy-feely New Age stuff was all immaterial. She was me, but me as I might have been if I’d never joined the police, army, SpecOps or Jurisfiction. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been any happier if I’d connected with the side of me that was her, but I’d be a lot more relaxed and a good deal healthier.
“Do you mean it?” she asked.
“Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t. But remember one thing: It’s coffee and a bacon roll.”
She smiled. “Right. Coffee and bacon roll it is.” She handed me a paper bag. “This is for you.”
I peered inside. It contained Pickwick’s blue-and-white knitted cozy—finished.
“Good job,” I murmured, looking at the delicate knitting enviously. “Thank—”
But she’d gone. I walked to the corridor outside and dug out my TravelBook, turned to the description of my office at Acme Carpets and read. After a few lines, the air turned suddenly colder, there was the sound of crackling cellophane, and I was back in my small office with a dry mouth and a thirst so strong I thought I would faint. I kept a pitcher of water close by for just these moments, and thus I spent the next ten minutes drinking water and breathing deeply.
12.
Kids
Landen and I had often talked about it, but we never had a fourth. When Jenny came along, I was forty-two, and that, I figured, was it. On the occasion of our last attempt to induct Friday into the ChronoGuard’s Academy of Time, he was the eldest at sixteen, Tuesday was twelve, and Jenny, the youngest, was ten. I resisted naming Jenny after a day of the week; I thought at least one of us should have the semblance of normality.
I arrived at Tuesday’s school at ten to four and waited patiently outside the math room. She’d shown a peculiar flair for the subject all her life but had first achieved prominence when aged nine. She’d wandered into the sixth-form math room and found an equation written on the board, thinking it was homework. But it wasn’t. It was Fermat’s Last Theorem, and the math master had written it down to demonstrate how this simple equation could not be solved. The thing was, Tuesday had found a solution, thus rendering a proof of the unworkability of the equation both redundant and erroneous.
When the hunt was on for the person who had solved it, Tuesday thought they were angry with her for spoiling their fun, so she wasn’t revealed as the culprit for almost a week. Even then she had to be cajoled into explaining the answer. Professors of mathematics had tubed in from every corner of the globe to see how such a simple solution could have been staring