Jasper Fforde - The Constant Rabbit

She pressed the off button and handed back the phone.

‘Flaubert never gets boring, does he? l hope for your sake they haven’t been calling the other colonies on your mobile. Rabbits have lots of cousins, and they do like to chat.’

She looked around, then expertly scratched her ear with her left foot while balancing on her right.

‘I can smell coffee,’ said Bobby, ‘any going begging?’

So I poured her a cup of coffee as Pippa called Vodafone Customer Support, who suddenly became really interested when she explained that rabbits were involved.

‘They’re connecting me to the Fraud Department,’ she whispered, hand over the mouthpiece.

‘Are you going to see Harvey again?’ Bobby asked Pippa once she’d had a sip of coffee. ‘You and he seemed to hit it off really well together.’

Pippa glanced at me then glared hard at Bobby, who said: ‘Whoops’, and her ears went flat on her back with a faintly audible whap .

‘Nice decor you’ve got here, Mr Knox,’ said Bobby, looking around at our unremarkable kitchen in a ploy to divert attention from her last remark. ‘Did you design it or was it your wife who left you because you were boring?’

‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ I said, ‘but if you want to be amongst humans, you’ve got to understand what makes us angry or upset. Saying my wife left me because I’m boring, well, it’s just … rude.’

‘Your great-grandfather wore my great-grandfather as a hat,’ she said, ‘that’s hardly polite – and nor is the denial of citizenship, despite us being resident here since Roman times.’

It was a good point. I was of Maltese descent, and Pippa’s mum was Polish. Bobby was probably more British than almost everybody I knew. Even the Malletts were descended from the DeMalet family, who arrived from France in the fourteenth century.

‘Well, OK,’ said Pippa, who sounded as though her conversation with Customer Support was just ending, ‘I’ll await your call.’

‘Right, then,’ said Bobby, preparing to leave, ‘I’ll be off. Pop round later, why don’t you, Pip?’

Pippa said she would, and Bobby bounced clean from the kitchen across the hall and out of the front door in a single hop, a distance of about fifteen feet.

‘They don’t close doors much, do they?’ I said.

‘They have an odd relation with barriers,’ said Pippa, once I’d shut the door. ‘They like to roam. I think it’s why they find the rabbit-proof fences so iniquitous. Did you know the concrete foundations of MegaWarren extend seventy feet below the surface?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Harvey.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said, pleased that she had raised him as a topic of conversation, ‘tell me all about him.’

‘Harvey was kinda cute and real smart,’ she said, and I spotted a gleam in her eye that had the warning flags suddenly waving. ‘Labstock by coat and appearance but carries the McButtercup surname so he’s actually a Petstock.’

I mentally kicked myself. No wonder I couldn’t find him. He wasn’t Labstock at all. Mind you, Lugless hadn’t suggested it either, so I felt slightly better about it.

‘Best of all,’ continued Pippa, ‘he didn’t try to hit on me and knew some seriously cool dance moves.’

I didn’t like the sound of this. Harvey McButtercup was probably connected to the Underground, and if that was so, then Pippa could be at serious risk.

‘Listen: you mustn’t …’

My voice petered out. Since the accident, I’d never told Pippa there was anything she couldn’t do and couldn’t be, and I really didn’t think I should start now. If she fancied a suspected member of a banned rabbit direct action organisation, then I couldn’t stand in her way – no matter how daft that might seem.

‘Mustn’t what?’ she asked.

‘Mustn’t … be imprudent . Extra-species 44 44. Technically I was incorrect: since mammalia is the last taxonomic classification that rabbits and humans share and we differ firstly by order, not species, any contact should really be termed ‘extra-order’, and as the Venerable Bunty was heard to say, ‘We should celebrate the extraordinary’. romances are still frowned upon.’

Rabbit/human couplings raised eyebrows at best, and were met with utter revulsion at worst. While technically illegal, prosecutions were becoming more rare, owing probably to Lord Jefferson, who gave a passionate defence of his relationship with Sophie Rabbit during his resignation speech as Attorney General.

‘It’s not a romance,’ she said in the sort of way that meant it was totally a romance. ‘Besides,’ she added, chin held high, ‘coming from you that’s a bit rich. It’s not like you don’t fancy Connie.’

‘I most certainly do not . Besides, we go back a way – she and I spent some time together at uni.’

She stared at me.

‘You never told me that.’

‘Didn’t I?’

‘No, you totally missed out that little snippet. Anyway you go all mushy when she’s around, and you’ve become very pro-rabbit recently.’

She paused for a moment, then asked: ‘How well, exactly , did you know her at university?’

‘We were just good friends.’

‘Hmm. Like me and Harvey?’

I sighed.

‘OK, point taken.’

There was a pause.

‘Would you like to see him again?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, I would.’

Fox and Friends is published monthly and caters for the witty and urbane fox-about-town. It contains news, reviews, fashion – and tips on more efficient ways to kill rabbits. It’s sort of like GQ meets Horse and Hounds meets Soldier of Fortune.

Toby was a no-show the following morning. By long-standing agreement, if he wasn’t there by 9.05 a.m. sharp he’d be making his own arrangements.

When I got into the office Flemming and Whizelle were both out but Lugless was already there and ignored me when I wished him good morning. I was obligated to tell him about Harvey but had decided I wouldn’t. As far as I was concerned, Harvey was just a white rabbit driving a taxi.

Nothing unusual in that.

I made some tea, settled down to my spotting, and had my first Miffy within an hour. I thought of saying they weren’t the same rabbit solely because it would put a spanner in the works, but spotting skills were always under scrutiny; I wasn’t the only one seeing these images. And if another Spotter fingered a Miffy that I didn’t, someone would get suspicious I was developing a conscience and I’d be out of a job. It suddenly occurred to me that the Spotters who claimed to have lost the skill probably hadn’t lost anything at all – just had a daughter like Pippa, or had met some rabbits like Doc and Connie.

I looked across at Lugless, who was reading in silence. I wasn’t a big fan of Toby but we did talk to relieve the monotony of the day. After another half-hour of silence with Lugless making notes, shuffling papers and sniffing, I finally said:

‘Where’s Whizelle?’

‘Out,’ he said, without looking up.

‘Yes, I can see that. What about Flemming?’

‘Which one’s Flemming?’

‘The female with the eyepatch? Your boss?’

‘Ah, her . No, she’s out too.’

‘Do you know where?’

He stopped, dropped the file he was reading heavily on the desk, then turned to stare at me. His eyelid twitched.

‘Is that all you do here?’ he asked. ‘Talk?’

‘It relieves the tedium of the day,’ I said, ‘and builds rapport amongst team members.’

‘I prefer it when you just do as I say,’ he said. ‘Teams work best with a strong leader.’