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'A gift from me,' I told them.
'I am ibb,' said the other one, as if to make the point.
'And I am obb,' said obb.
&nb
sp; 'And I'm Thursday,' I told them, offering my hand. They shook it in turn slowly and without emotion. I could see that this pair weren't going to be a huge bundle of fun.
'And that's Pickwick.'
They looked at Pickwick, who plocked quietly, came out from behind the sofa, settled herself on her egg and pretended to go to sleep.
'Well,' I announced, clapping my hands together, 'does anyone know how to cook? I'm not very good at it and if you don't want to eat beans on toast for the next year, you had better start to learn. I'm standing in for Mary, and if you don't get in my way I won't get in yours. I go to bed late and wake up early. I have a husband who doesn't exist and I'm going to have a baby later this year so might get a little cranky – and overweight. Any questions?'
'Yes,' said the one on the left. 'Which one of us is obb, did you say?'
I unpacked my few things in the small room behind the flight deck. I had sketched a picture of Landen from memory and I placed it on the bedside table, staring at it for a moment. I missed him dreadfully and wondered, for the umpteenth time, whether perhaps I shouldn't be here hiding, but out there, in my own world, trying to get him back. Trouble was, I'd tried that and made a complete pig's ear of it – if it hadn't have been for Miss Havisham's timely rescue I would still be locked up in a Goliath vault somewhere. With our child growing within me I had decided that flight was not a coward's option but a sensible one – I would stay here until the baby was born. I could then plan my return, and following that, Landen's.
I went downstairs and explained to obb the rudiments of cooking, which were as alien to it as having a name. Fortunately I found an old copy of Mrs Beeton's Complete Housekeeper, which I told obb to study, half jokingly, as research. Three hours later it had roasted a perfect leg of lamb with all the trimmings. I had discovered one thing about Generics already: dull and uninteresting they may be – but they learn fast.
2
Inside Caversham Heights
* * *
'Book/YGIO/1204961/: Title: Caversham Heights. UK, 1976, 90,000 words. Genre: Detective Fiction. Book Operating System: BOOK V7.2. Grammasite infestation: 1 (one) nesting pair of Parenthiums (protected). Plot: Routine detective thriller with stereotypical detective Jack Spratt. Set in Reading (England), the plot (such as it is) revolves around a drugs czar hoping to muscle in on Reading's seedy underworld. Routine and unremarkable, Caversham Heights represents all the worst aspects of amateur writing. Flat characters, unconvincing police work and a pace so slow that snails pass it in the night. Recommendation: Unpublishable. Suggest book be broken up for salvage at soonest available opportunity. Current status: Awaiting Council of Genre's Book Inspectorate's report before ordering demolition.'
Library Sub-Basement Gazetteer 1982, Volume CLXI
I explained the rudiments of breakfast to ibb and obb the following morning. I told them that cereal traditionally came before the bacon and eggs but that toast and coffee had no fixed place within the meal; they had problems with the fact that marmalade was almost exclusively the preserve of breakfast and I was just trying to explain the technical possibilities of dippy egg fingers when a copy of The Toad dropped on the mat. The only news story was about some sort of drug-related gang warfare in Reading. It was part of the plot in Caversham Heights and reminded me that sooner or later – and quite possibly sooner – I would be expected to take on the mantle of Mary as part of the Character Exchange Programme. I had another careful read of the précis, which gave me a good idea of the plot chapter by chapter, but no precise dialogue or indication as to what I should be doing, or when. I didn't have to wonder very long as a knock at the door revealed a very agitated man holding a clipboard.
'Miss Next?'
'Yes?'
'The name's Wyatt.'
'What?'
'No, not Watt, Wyatt – W-Y-A-T-T.'
'What can I do for you?'
'You can get your arse into Reading, that's what you can do.'
'Steady on—'
'I don't know why people in the Character Exchange Programme think they can treat it like a holiday,' he added, clearly annoyed. 'Just because we've had a demolition order hanging over us for the past ten years, you think you can all muck about.'
'I assure you I thought no such thing,' I replied, attempting to pacify the minor character who had taken it upon himself to keep me in check. From my reading of the book I knew that he featured as nothing more than a voice on the end of a telephone.
'I'll be on to it straight away,' I told him, fetching my coat and heading for Mary's car. 'Do you have an address for me?'
He handed over a scrap of paper and reminded me I was late.
'And no ad-libbing,' he added as an afterthought. I promised I wouldn't and trotted up the lane towards Mary's car.
