Jasper Fforde - The Woman Who Died a Lot

“Okay then,” I said, and sat quietly while Dr. Chumley filled out the form. I was just wondering—in vain—what else I could to lessen the fact that I might not be mad enough to run SpecOps when I noticed that the previous certificate had Detective Smalls’s name on it, and by expertly reading upside down—a skill I’d advise to anyone working in a wheezing bureaucracy—I saw that she had indeed been listed as NUT-4. She must have thought up something really wacky. Smart, young, driven, insane— the SpecOps job was almost hers. I was just thinking about whether I could function under Smalls’s leadership when Dr. Chumley stopped and stared at me.

“Why do you have ‘Jenny is a mindworm’ written on the back of your hand?”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

I looked down, and he was right—there it was. I frowned for a moment as I tried to remember who had written it and when. I licked my fingers and rubbed pointlessly at the writing—it was a tattoo, but one I couldn’t remember getting. I felt confused, angry, and my eyes moistened as I realized what was going on. The daughter Jenny I remembered—the twelve-year-old with the infectious laugh and freckled nose who had taken twenty-two hours of labor to push out wasn’t real at all. She didn’t fall off a wall when she was eight years old and didn’t have nightmares about foxes in her bedroom. Never had. Never would. As the realization dawned, I felt a sudden and overwhelming stab of grief—loss and bereavement that gave way to anger, then a sense of sad awareness that I went through this many times a day and that Landen, the kids and I had agreed that the tattoo was for the best. I knew, too, with a falling heart that this moment of clarity would be fleeting, and my eyes filled with tears.

“Acheron Hades’ little sister,” I told him as reason momentarily filtered into my head. “She gave me a mindworm before going down for life. We’re making inquiries at TJ-Maxx as to what happened to her. We’re hoping the tattoo will remind me often enough to break it. As it stands at the moment, I can forget I have the mindworm almost midsentence.”

“Does it affect your work?”

“Does what effect my work?”

“The mindworm.”

“What mindworm?” I asked, unsure of whom he was referring to. “Has Aornis been up to her tricks again?”

“You’re joking, right?” he asked.

“What would I joke about?” I asked, truthfully enough. “You’re here to rate me at Braxton’s request—hardly the time to piss about.”

Dr. Chumley took a deep breath, scrunched up the certificate for the third time and started to fill it in again. “NUT-4,” he said resignedly.

“I’m grateful,” I said, “but what made you change your mind?”

“Any more from you, my girl,” he said through gritted teeth, “and you’ll be a NUT-5 so fast it will make your head spin.”

***

“Remember to remember me to your son,” said Shazza as I walked back through Dr. Chumley’s waiting room.

“I haven’t forgotten I’m to remember,” I said with a smile, and departed, clutching my prized NUT-4 certificate. I was now officially “prone to strange and sustained delusional outbursts but otherwise normal in all respects,” and it felt good.

Ireturned my visitor’s pass, then walked the short distance to the Brunel Centre and the nearest Yo! Toast outlet. Braxton hadn’t yet arrived, so I took a seat at the counter and ordered a mocha and a marmalade on white from a very intense waitress who had clearly been thoroughly indoctrinated by the hyperefficient Yo! Toast training.

“Butter or margarine?” she demanded.

“Butter.”

“Thin or thick cut?”

“Thick.”

“Orange or lime?”

“Orange.”

“Right,” she said, and hurried off.

I sat for a moment in silence, contemplating the morning’s events. I wanted the SO-27 headship badly. It wasn’t for the prestige, and it certainly wasn’t for the cash, and it probably wasn’t totally because I didn’t want Phoebe Smalls to get it. Landen had suggested that it was so I would have something to positively define myself, and although family was great and good and wonderful, I needed something more. He was probably right. For many years Jurisfiction had been life’s marker, but since I’d discovered that due to my injuries I could no longer make the transfictional jump, my career in the BookWorld was at least temporarily curtailed.

Landen had suggested some sort of retirement, but I wasn’t ready for that. Pruning and gardening and stamp collecting and taking dodos for long rambling walks weren’t really my thing. Dealing with bad guys—now, that was my thing.

My toast arrived, and I took a bite. It was excellent. Perfectly toasted, a hint of al dente about the crust and a tangy blast of marmalade on an aftertaste of melted butter. It wasn’t difficult to see why toast had become the faddy buzz food of the noughties, with TV chefs falling over themselves to write entire books dripping with pretentious toast recipes—and a legion of critics who claimed that food chains like Yo! Toast were paying their staff too much and criticized the lack of unsaturated fat and salt on the menu.

“Next?”

I looked up. It was Regional Commander Braxton Hicks, long-serving head of the SpecOps departments in Wessex and also on the board of at least five other Swindon-based organizations. He had a nonexecutive post on the City Council, had been involved in the awarding of contracts to build St. Zvlkx’s new cathedral, was a director of the Wessex All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso’s Drinks Not Included Library Service and held posts at Cheesaholics Anonymous and the Campaign for Less Ludicrously Dressed Teenagers.

I knew him best regarding SpecOps. He’d been working there years before the service was partially disbanded and had been my boss during the whole Eyre Affair gig almost nineteen years before. The fact that he had survived so long was a mixture of affability, the ability to delegate and efficiency—mostly the last. He loved his budgets. It was why he was so much in demand. Despite his penny-pinching ways and often odd ideas, I had grown to like him enormously, and he tended to look upon me as the daughter he’d wished he had and not the one he did have, who was a bit of a tramp. In fact, Braxton wasn’t having much luck with his son, Herbert, either—he was currently in prison for armed robbery.

“Don’t get up, old girl,” he said as he sat at the counter next to me. “How’s the leg? Smarts a bit, I shouldn’t wonder. Once had a spiral fracture of the femur m’self. Skydiving for my seventieth, courtesy of Mrs. Hicks, who never tires of attempting to cash in on my life-insurance policy. Didn’t stop me running a half marathon afterward, which was odd, since I never could before.”

Despite being now well into his seventies, Braxton had lost none of his vigor, from either his tall and somewhat gangly frame nor his mustache, which was still a luxuriant red.

“I’m okay, sir—a bit busted up, but I’ll get over it. Physio helps enormously.”

He stared at me for a moment. “They nearly succeeded, didn’t they?”