Jasper Fforde - The Constant Rabbit

‘Hmm,’ said Greg, ‘you don’t think that the taste of carrot might dominate the meal?’

‘I’m counting on it.’

‘OK – you’ve got sixty minutes to make your dream a reality.’

Sue carefully chose her ingredients from nineteen separate carrot varieties, and then started chopping.

‘You don’t wash off the earth?’ asked Greg, peering over her shoulder as she prepared the carrots.

‘It adds a little frisson to the three-way,’ said Sue. ‘My sister likes to throw in an earthworm or two for good measure but she was always a little bit crazy like that.’

Just then, the doorbell rang. Not on the telly, obviously, but for real.

It was Toby.

‘She’s out with Sally and Bobby,’ I told him when he asked whether Pippa was in.

‘Sally and who ?’

‘Bobby Rabbit,’ I said, ‘who lives next door. They’ve gone to a party.’

‘She’s gone to a bunny bop with Sally and a buck rabbit?’

‘Bobby’s a girl,’ I said, ‘short for Roberta. Like in The Railway Children .’

‘Ah – Jenny Agutter.’

‘That’s the one. And look, even if away from work, we should actually say rabbits these days. “Bunnies” isn’t—’

‘Yeah, I know. Political correctness gone completely bonkers. They are bunnies in the same way that we are humans. Besides, they call us “Fudds”, which is equally offensive and basically just reverse specism.’

‘I’m not sure that it is.’

‘What isn’t? The offensiveness or the reverse specism?’

‘Both. I think it’s a false equivalency.’

He shrugged.

‘Whatever. I never knew Pippa was friendly with rabbits.’

There was a perjorative lilt to the ‘friendly with rabbits’ comment. It was one of those British phrases, along with ‘May I help you?’, that can be either exceedingly polite or hugely aggressive.

‘Pippa is friendly with anyone who wants to be friendly with her,’ I said.

‘She might have told me she was going out,’ he said. ‘I’d turned down several parties to be with her.’

There was a sense of Pippa ownership about him that I suddenly didn’t much like. His politics had always been suspect, and he wasn’t much fun as a co-worker. Actually, he was a pain in the arse. Rarely got the teas, endlessly cozied up to Whizelle and Flemming and never did a Danish-and-decent-coffee takeout run to Ascari’s. In an instant, I decided that I no longer wished to give him the benefit of the doubt in the likeability stakes.

‘I’ll pass on your comments,’ I said, now wondering when Pippa was going to dump him, and whether I could devise any strategies to assist in that direction. He paused for a moment, jangling his keys in his pocket with indecision.

‘Is there anything else?’ I asked.

‘May Hill, right?’

He didn’t really need to ask. The next-closest colony would be Bodmin. So after bidding me good evening, he departed.

When I’d made some coffee and got back to Mastercook , Greg was trying out Sue Rabbit’s meal.

‘I’ll be truthful,’ he said, ‘I’m not a big fan of carrots, but there are a host of warm subtleties that play off one another in an unexpectedly exciting way.’

All the guest chefs had similar comments, which were delivered in a state of shocked bewilderment. I got the impression that Sue Rabbit had been brought in to tick some boxes somewhere, and wasn’t expected to go anywhere in the contest.

‘That is quite, quite brilliant,’ said Greg, tasting the carrot soufflé, which collapsed beneath his spoon with a contented sigh, ‘although perhaps a little more sugar.’

Sue Rabbit easily made it through to the next round, and I then fell asleep while watching the director’s cut of While You Were Sleeping , and was woken by a car door banging and the unmistakable burble of a large V8 engine. I looked at the clock. It was two in the morning. The front door creaked open; we never locked it.

‘Still up?’ asked Pippa once I’d walked to the hall.

‘I fell asleep in front of the TV.’

‘Sorry,’ she said, realising I’d stayed up for her. ‘I would have texted but my phone got stolen.’

I leaned down to give her a hug. She smelled of soil, brandy and dandelion tobacco.

‘Not a problem,’ I said. ‘Hello, Sally.’

‘Hello, Mishter Knoxsh,’ slurred Sally, who was leaning against the door frame, much the worse for wear and with her skirt on backwards.

‘So,’ I said, ‘anyone want tea?’

‘No thanks,’ said Pippa, and made for her room, pushing Sally in front of her with a foot. ‘Sal needs a shower and then we’re going to bed. We’ll tell you all about it during breakfast.’

‘I’d like to pre-order a bucket of coffee,’ mumbled Sally, ‘and a paracetamol the size of a dustbin lid.’

I waited until I heard the shower turn on, then called Mrs Lomax to tell her Sally was OK and she could pick her up tomorrow. We’d actually spoken three times that evening already. She’d suggested coming over with a Lancashire hotpot that was ‘way too much for one’. This wasn’t the first time she’d proposed a cosy late-night tête-à-tête since Mr Lomax passed away, and it wasn’t the first time I’d quietly refused, even though Pippa and Sally had both suggested on numerous occasions I invite her around. ‘You won’t be disappointed,’ Sally had told me in a comment not really awash with ambiguity.

‘Colony One?’ Mrs Lomax had said when I’d told her where they were going. Traditionally, she had little to no idea of what her daughter got up to. Sally was the same age as Pippa, and Mrs Lomax, like me, often had difficulty coming to terms with the fact that the little girls we remembered so fondly were now fully grown-up women who did fully grown-up woman things.

Buttons are tricky for rabbits to manage with paws; zips ditto. Velcro would be usable, but is regarded by rabbits as: ‘a hideously inelegant method of clothes fastening’. Buttons can be done up by them, but it’s a two-rabbit job and requires specialist tools. The human equivalent would be ‘trying to mend an aneroid barometer in boxing gloves’.

The following morning over coffee they told me about the previous evening. Rabbit parties, I learned, were pretty wild. There was loud music, booze, fights, impassioned political discourse, more fights, more music, more booze – and a lot of sex, usually in cosy side burrows at regular intervals. But it was the music that impressed Pippa the most.

‘It’s kind of like swing and jazz and mambo all at the same time,’ she said, ‘and played with such gusto. The trombonist actually died of a brain haemorrhage during his solo and the next number was dedicated to him – then everything just carried on as before. They have a zest for life that we don’t possess; as though they need to pack as much fun and good living into their lives as possible.’

‘Rabbits have high mortality issues what with disease, foxes, industrial accidents and trombone solos,’ said Sally, who was now wearing dark glasses, avoiding all sudden movements and speaking in a quiet voice, ‘so have to live life to the full, just in case.’

‘Makes sense, I guess,’ I said. ‘What’s it like inside Colony One?’

‘Like you see on the documentaries,’ said Pippa, ‘centred around May Hill but mostly below ground, and highly ordered. Tidy, neat, zero crime and not a speck of litter anywhere. We were in a subterranean club called The Cottontail Club. While everyone danced bits of dry earth fell from the ceiling. I asked Bobby about whether there were ever any collapses, and she said there were – frequently – but they just burrowed themselves out, and to keep close to her, just in case.’