“No,” said Jack hurriedly. “Some of my best friends are PDRs. But I’m not and never have been—okay?”
“Okay, okay,” said Punch, winking. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“There’s no secret. I don’t know what you mean, really I don’t,” responded Jack, complaining perhaps a little too forcefully. “Maybe another time for the beer—and keep the fighting down, yes?”
“I’ll try,” said Mr. Punch, with all the conviction of a weak-willed recovering alcoholic being offered a shot of Jack Daniel’s, “but you know how it is.”
“Look what I’ve just found,” said Judy, returning to the door as though nothing had happened and holding a broken dinner plate.
“It’s the first piece of crockery I ever threw at you. See, I wrote the date on the back.”smiled and then hugged, gingerly trying to avoid the bruised areas on each other’s bodies.
“Fish pie, sweetheart?” said Judy.
“Sounds perfect, my cherub.”she picked up the baby and walked back inside the house.
“Well then,” said Jack, still firmly rattled by Punch’s comments over his PDRness. If Punch knew, how many others? His first wife knew because she’d been one, too—the “wife who could eat no lean”—but his second wife, Madeleine, had no idea, which on reflection was a big mistake. You can’t and shouldn’t keep those sorts of secrets from loved ones.
“So,” he added, swallowing a rising feeling of panic, “enjoy your… um… evening.”
“Th-thank you,” said Punch, gently closing the front door behind him. Jack walked back down the garden path to the sound of breaking crockery and a scream from Judy that transformed mid-wail into a lascivious giggle.took a deep breath to calm himself, opened his own kitchen door and walked in. “Honey,” he said, “I’m home!”
“Wotcha, Dad,” said Ben, his nose firmly wedged into a copy of Conspiracy Theorist magazine, something in which he had a particular interest. He had been overwhelmed when he learned that his dad had an alien working for him, but underwhelmed when he actually met him. Instead of talking about faster-than-light travel and wormholes, Ash had droned on at length about seventies Datsun motorcars, collectible plates and who he thought was the best Cartwright on Bonanza.
“Hi, Ben,” replied Jack. “Yeti populations holding steady?”
“Pretty much. Hear about the explosion up at Obscurity?”
“Let me guess,” said Jack, leaning backward to avoid being struck by a spoon that little Stevie had hurled across the room. “A government cover-up?”bad it got at the NCD and no matter how many times Briggs suspended him, Jack’s home life more than compensated for it. His wife of five years was Madeleine, and they had each brought two children to the home: Jack’s Pandora and Ben, and Madeleine’s Jerome and Megan. To cement the union still further, they’d also had Stevie, who was now eighteen months.
“This spoon hurling is getting stronger and more accurate,” said Jack, selecting another spoon from the drain board and sitting down at the table. Stevie gave a broad grin, took the new spoon and stared at it thoughtfully for a moment.
“Yes, indeed,” replied Madeleine, who was in the process of making a pot of tea, “the Olympic Ladle-Flinging Team wants to train him up for the 2020 Olympics.”smiled and looked at Megan, who was busy coloring at the other end of the table. “What’s that, princess?”
“It’s the Blue Baboon.”
“I never knew the Blue Baboon was green.”
“Can’t find the right crayon,” she said, and carried on coloring.and Jack were both on the second time around, marriage-wise. Unlike Jack, who was a widower, Madeleine had an ex-husband, Neville, who just turned out to be something of a dud. He had an eye for the ladies, too—a habit that Madeleine couldn’t overlook during their marriage, much to the surprise of her ex-husband, who thought his roguish charm would have her forgiving anything. It didn’t.loved Madeleine dearly, and he suddenly felt guilty that he’d not told her about his PDRness. But he would, this instant—it was the right and proper thing to do.got up, kissed her and said with an emboldened heart, “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Yes?”
“It’s… that… I’m… Punch and Judy have moved in next door,” said Jack, losing his nerve entirely.
“I know. It should be quite a show,” replied Madeleine. “I’ve had the residents’ committee around already. They’ve opened a complaint book and want us to log every single problem we have with them.”
“I hope they’ve got a big book and several gallons of ink,” said Jack, giving up on confessions for the foreseeable future and fetching the milk from the fridge, “but I don’t think it will do much good. The pair of them have racked up so many noise-abatement orders they could wallpaper the toilet with them—and, if the rumors are correct, have done so.”
“What do we do?” asked Madeleine. “You know I can’t stand all that residents’ association curtain-twitching, protect-house-prices-at-all-costs stuff.”shrugged. “Nothing, for the moment. Keep an eye out, and if you hear them threatening to throw the baby downstairs again, let me know and we’ll get social services involved. They won’t do anything, but it might just calm them down a bit.”
“Fair enough. You know they’ve got a pet crocodile in the back garden?”
“It figures. There’ll be a string of sausages, a beadle, a hangman and a dog named Toby involved somewhere, too.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s a Nursery Crime thing. Punch and Judy are… PDRs.”
“I thought they might be,” replied Madeleine thoughtfully.
“You did?” asked Jack, suddenly worried. “How? How did you know? What, was it something they said? The way they walked? What?”
“It was probably,” said Madeleine, giving him a “how dopey do you think I am?” look, “something to do with their heads being made of painted papier-mâché.”
“Keen sense of observation you have there, pumpkin.”
“But why the ceaseless violence?”
“PDRs just can’t help themselves. Ever have a song going around in your head all day and you can’t shake it? Then find yourself humming it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s the same with Punch and Judy and any other nursery character, but instead of a song it’s actions. Look at it as a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder or a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Punches have toned down their act a lot since the seventeenth century—infanticide, wife beating and multiple murder aren’t generally considered entertainment these days.”
“Are all forms of compulsive behavior a sign of PDRness?” she asked slowly.
“No, no, of course not,” replied Jack hurriedly, thinking about his own obsessional hatred for fat. “There have to be several other factors as well.”gurgled at him from his high chair, and Jack, glad of the distraction, leaned over and affectionately tweaked his ear.
“Hi, Dad,” said Pandora as she walked into the kitchen with her fiancé, the Titan Prometheus. Having a daughter engaged to a four-thousand-year-old myth could be stressful at times, but Jack was determined not to be a flustery old hen of a father—and the union was improving her Greek no end. They were getting married in a month’s time, and there were still a lot of details to be ironed out.
“Do you think the record of the wedding should be as a video, a tapestry, depictions on a Grecian urn or as a twenty-eight-foot-long marble bas-relief?”
“I have a friend who can do urns at a discount,” added Prometheus helpfully, as the budget of the wedding had long since spiraled out of control since Bacchus had taken over the reception arrangements.
“An urn, I guess,” conceded Jack.
“Oh, goody!” cried Pandora happily. “I always saw my wedding recorded in profile. Now, Dad, remember what you promised about not doing a plot device number fifty-two on the day of my wedding?”
“There’s only the annual Tortoise v. Hare race on that weekend, and there’s never any trouble at that, sweetpea,” he said, “so there’ll be no conclusion of a case near your wedding that results in an overdramatic dash to the church.”
“Great!” said Pandora, and she and Prometheus walked out, talking about how they could stop Artemis and Aphrodite from squabbling, as they invariably did.
“Perhaps we should just let them fight in some mud and pretend it’s part of the entertainments?” suggested Prometheus.large family and the expense of a wedding was a severe drain on Jack’s salary, despite Bacchus’ concession that they could drop Orpheus and go with a Santana tribute band instead. Madeleine had a limited income from her photography but insisted on concentrating on high-end, limited-print-run photographic books. Good food for the soul, but famine for the wallet.
“How are things at work?” she asked, handing Stevie another spoon.
“Not… terrific,” replied Jack with a twinge of understatement, stirring some sugar into his tea.
“I’m surprised you’re back so early, what with Johnny Cake on the loose.”
“I’m… not on that case—and he’s a cookie.”stared at him quizzically and said, “Listen, I don’t know poo about police procedures, but even I know that the Gingerbreadman is NCD.”helped himself to a gingernut, smelled it, made a face and put it back in the cookie jar.
“Briggs gave it to… Copperfield.”
“David?” she echoed in surprise. “He’s a sweet guy, but he couldn’t find an egg in a henhouse.”shrugged. “Like it or not, there it is. Briggs thinks I’m overdoing it and that the Riding-Hood incident was beyond what any officer should have to face…. He’s made Mary acting head while I’m on sick leave.”
“Oh, sweetheart!” she said, giving him an extra-tight hug. “I’m sorry to hear that. But don’t worry—Briggs usually suspends you at least once during any investigation.”
“And that’s what worries me,” responded Jack, returning her hug and kissing her tenderly on the forehead. “I’m not on an investigation. And I won’t be until I’ve passed some sort of mental review board.”
“Yikes. Being sane might render you almost useless at the NCD.”
“I know that. But you didn’t have to say it.”spoon ricocheted off the back of Jack’s head and hit a plant pot on the windowsill.
“Was that you, monster?”opened his eyes wide and shrieked with laughter.smiled, untangled herself from the embrace and stacked the tea things.
“So aside from losing a prime case that is clearly yours, being knocked from the top job at the division and the prospect of having to convince a complete stranger that you’re not a drooling lunatic, how else was your day?”
“Peachy. I bought an Allegro Sports Equipe. Do you want to see it?”
“Maybe later.” She handed him a stack of plates to put in the dishwasher. “Would you have a word with Jerome? I heard his pet sniggering to itself again this morning.”was eight, and he wanted to be a vet. To get into practice, he had taken to bringing strays home with him. First it was fleas with kittens attached, then puppies with fleas attached, then fleas with fleas attached. All of this could be vaguely tolerated, until he brought something home that deftly escaped into the void within the interior walls, and no one had seen it since.walked into the living room and bent down to listen at the baseboard. There was a sound a bit like someone blowing a raspberry, and he frowned, got up and walked into the hall. He opened the door to the closet under the stairs and heard a faint rustling. He quietly turned on the light and peered into the musty gloom.
“He doesn’t mean any harm,” said a voice behind him. It was Jerome, his face a picture of angelic innocence.
“You know your mother wants it out, my lad.”
“I asked him to go into the garden shed, but he said his rheumatism was troubling him again.”
“It can speak English?”
“And Italian, but his German is a bit rusty.”looked around the small closet and chanced upon a little pile of glittery objects.
“What are my spare keys doing in here?” he asked, sorting through the heap of shiny items. He also found a pair of cuff links that had been missing for a couple of days, a brooch, a couple of coins and the Waterman pen that he’d thought he’d lost at work.winced. “He likes to collect shiny things. I try to get them back before you notice. He must have been around the house last night.”started to rummage some more. There was a rustle, and something small and misshapen popped its head out of a cardboard box, stared at Jack for a moment and then vanished through a hole that had been gnawed in the plasterboard. Jack backed out of the cupboard as fast as he could.
“Did you see it?” asked Jerome after Jack had not spoken for some moments.
“Ye-e-es,” said Jack slowly, unsure of what he had seen but not liking it one bit. The creature was an ugly little monkeylike brute with hair that looked like that of a black pig with psoriasis. What was worse was that it had a chillingly humanoid face, and it had given Jack an impish grin and a wink before vanishing.
“Jerome?”
“Yes, Jack?”
“What was that?”
“His name’s Caliban, and he’s my friend.”
“Well, you can tell him from me he’s got to live somewhere else.”
“But—”
“No buts. He’s got to go.”left Jerome in the closet and rejoined Madeleine.
“The brooch you thought you’d lost,” he said, placing the jewelry on the table.
“Where was it?”
“Jerome’s pet is something of a magpie. Have you seen it?”
“No.”
“It’s a bit… odd. If anything else goes missing, you’ll probably find it in the closet under the stairs.” He thought for a moment. “Do we have to go out tonight? I’m a bit pooped.”
“I’d like you to accompany me,” she replied with a smile, “but I can go on my own and flirt outrageously and in a totally undignified manner with young single men of a morally casual demeanor.”
“You know, I don’t feel quite so pooped anymore.”
“Good. We should be out the door by seven-thirty.”
. The Déjà Vuunreadable modern author: Of all the pseudointellectual rubbish that hits the literary world every year, few authors can hope to compete in terms of quasi-highbrow unreadability than the accepted master in the field, Otis ChufftY. With unread copies of his books gracing every bookshelf in the fashionable areas of London, ChufftY’s prodigious output in terms of pointless, long-winded claptrap has few equals and brings forth gasps of admiration from his competitors. Even after several million in book sales and frequent appearances on late-night artsy-fartsy chat shows, ChufftY’s work remains as fashionably unreadable as ever. “It’s the bipolarity of human sufferance,” Mr. ChufftY explained when asked the secret of his success, “and the forbearance of wisdom in the light of the ultimate ignorance of nothing.”
“Remind me what we’re doing here,” asked Jack. “You’re a photographer, not an author.”
“The Armitage Shanks Literary Awards are sponsored by both the Quangle-Wangle and my publishers, the Crumpetty Tree Press,” she replied as they lined up outside the Déjà Vu Hotel with an assortment of other guests, “and I’m married to DCI Jack Spratt, who quite apart from being tall and ruggedly handsome also happens to be the officer who cracked the Humpty case.”shuffled forward a few steps. “I get it,” said Jack, sliding his hand around her waist, “I’m your trophy husband and you’re showing me off.”
“In one,” replied Madeleine, pushing his hand lower so it met the smooth curve of her bottom, “and Crumpetty Tree looks on me favorably when I drag you along, as it makes the event seem vaguely important and not a collection of pseudointellectual farts patting one another on the back.”
“I always suspected that. Are you going to raffle me at the end of the evening?”laughed. “Only if I can buy all the tickets. Now, listen: Try not to be rude to the writers this year.”
“As if I would!”previous year’s event had not been without incident. Jack didn’t much care for what he called “the Modern Novel” and had told the previous year’s winner precisely that. It hadn’t gone down very well.Déjà Vu Hotel was a popular venue in Reading for awards ceremonies. It was big enough to service a good-size crowd, had excellent catering facilities and coupled a congenial atmosphere with a fine opportunity for a few daft jokes.
“Have you ever been to the Déjà Vu before?” asked Madeleine as they entered the main doors.looked around the entrance lobby. “I don’t think so,” he answered, “but it does look sort of familiar.”joined the line at the entrance to the ballroom. A liveried footman was reading the invitations and announcing the guests in a loud voice.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Lord Spooncurdle!” he boomed, giving an overobsequious bow to Reading’s most visible nobleman, who walked solemnly down the stairs, took a glass of champagne from a waiter and shook hands with someone he thought he knew but didn’t.line shuffled forward.
“James Wheat-Reed Esq. and his niece Roberta—he says.”and his “niece” smiled and descended the stairs. The footman continued, introducing the guests in a respectful tone of voice.
“Mr. and Mrs. Croft and their fat daughter, Erica.”
“The Dong—with his celebrated luminous nose.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Boore—by name, by nature.”it was Jack and Madeleine’s turn. The footman read their invitation, looked them up and down in a critical manner, sighed and said:
“Inspector and Mrs. Jack Spratt.”walked down the staircase to the ballroom as the band struck up a tune that they thought they should recognize but couldn’t quite place. A vaguely familiar waiter gave them a glass of champagne each, and Madeleine looked around for anyone she knew. Jack followed her closely. He didn’t really enjoy this sort of function, but anything that made people remember Madeleine, he thought, had to be good for her exhibitions. Besides, there weren’t many people he didn’t know in Reading society. He had interviewed most of them at one time or another and arrested at least a half dozen.
“Hello, Marcus!”
“Madeleine, dahling!”
“Jack, this is Marcus Sphincter. He’s one of the writers short-listed for the prize this year.”
“Congratulations,” said Jack, extending a hand.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you—most kind.”
“So what’s the title of this book you’ve written?”
“The terms ‘title,’ ‘book’ and ‘written’ are so passé and 2004,” announced Marcus airily, using his fingers in that annoying way that people do to signify quotation marks.
“It is 2004,” pointed out Jack.
“So early 2004,” said Marcus, hastily correcting himself.
“Anyone can ‘write’ a ‘book.’ To raise my chosen art form to a higher plane, I prefer to use the terms ‘designation,’ ‘codex’ and ‘composed.’"
“Okay,” said Jack, “what’s the appellative of the tome you’ve created?”
“The what?”
“Hadn’t you heard?” asked Jack, hiding a smile and using that annoying finger-quotes thing back at Marcus, “‘Codex,’ ‘composed’ and ‘designation’ are out already; they were just too, too early evening.”
“They were?” asked Marcus, genuinely concerned.
“Your book, Marcus,” interrupted Madeleine as she playfully pinched Jack on the bum. “What’s it called?”
“I call it… The Realms of the Leviathan.”
“Ah,” murmured Jack, “what’s it about, a herd of elephants?”laughed loudly, Jack joined him, and so did Madeleine, who wasn’t going to be a bad sport.
“Elephants? Good Lord, no!” replied Marcus, adjusting his glasses. “The leviathan in my novel is the colossal and destructive force of human ambition and its ability to destroy those it loves in its futile quest for fulfillment. Seen through the eyes of a woman in London in the mid-eighties as her husband loses control of himself to own and want more, it asks the fundamental question ‘to be or to want’—something I consider to be the ‘materialistic’ Hamlet’s soliloquy. Ha-ha-ha.”
“Ha-ha-ha,” said Jack, but thinking, Clot. “Is it selling?”
“Good Lord, no!” replied Marcus in a shocked tone. “Selling more than even a few copies would render it… popular. And that would be a death knell for any serious auteur, n’est-ce pas? Ha-ha-ha.”
“Ha-ha-ha,” said Jack, but thinking, Even bigger clot.
“But it’s been short-listed for twenty-nine major awards,” continued Marcus. “I’ll send you a signed copy if you have a tenner on you.”
“If I gave you twenty, you could write me a sequel, too.”pulled Jack away and told him to behave himself, while at the same time trying to stop herself from having a fit of giggles.
“God, I love you,” she whispered in his ear, “but please stop messing around and behave yourself!”
“Spratt!” boomed Lord Spooncurdle, bored with talking to writers and agents and not recognizing anyone else.
“Hello, sir,” said Jack brightly. “You remember my wife, Madeleine?”
“Of course, of course,” he replied genially, offering his hand to Madeleine. “Your husband did a splendid job on that Humpty lark. Never did trust Spongg, y’know—eyes too close together. Reminded me of a governess who ran off with the handsome young silver and half the family’s boot boy.”excused herself with a whispered entreaty for Jack not to talk about his NCD work, as it usually had a confusing effect on people, and went off to mingle.
“Been here before, Spratt?” asked Spooncurdle, waving a hand at the inside of the Déjà Vu. “I’m sure I’ve seen that headwaiter, but I’m damned if I know where. I say, old stick, do us a favor and ask him if he has a lion tattooed on his left buttock.”
“He hasn’t,” replied Jack, humoring him. “I asked earlier.”
“Did you, by George? Must have been someone else. I must say, I never knew you were a member of the Most Worshipful Company of Cheese Makers.”
“I’m not, sir. This is the Armitage Shanks Literary Awards.”
“A literary award for cheese making? That doesn’t sound very likely.”
“There’s no cheese making here, sir—I think you’re confusing the event.”
“Nonsense, old boy,” said Spooncurdle amiably, having never knowingly been mistaken once in all of his sixty-seven years. “I say,” he added, changing the subject completely and leaning closer, “sorry to hear about that Riding-Hood debacle. Don’t let it get you down, eh? We all drop a serious clanger sooner or later.”
“You’re too kind,” replied Jack, wondering if this was a good time to point out that Spooncurdle had himself “dropped a clanger” on numerous occasions—and that shooting a grouse beater was illegal, despite the good Lord’s insistence that it wasn’t, or shouldn’t be.them the footman boomed out, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Admiral Robert Shaftoe. Never lost a ship, a man or in retreat, a second.”
“Bobby a cheese maker?” said Spooncurdle suddenly. “How extraordinary. I must go and speak to him. You will excuse me?”
“Of course.”left Jack standing on his own near the bar. He ordered a drink but was not alone for long.
“Hello, Jack.”small man in his late forties and dressed in a black collarless shirt had appeared next to him. He was accompanied by a thin, gawky woman dressed in flamboyant mix-and-match clothes, a necklace of large orange beads and a huge pair of spectacles with matching frames.
“Hello, Neville,” said Jack coldly. He never felt easy speaking to Madeleine’s first husband. He was, after all, supporting this man’s children and loved them as he did his own, and Neville’s continuing efforts to ingratiate himself with Madeleine and the children would have been acceptable—if he didn’t try to do it at Jack’s expense.
“This is Virginia Kreeper,” said Neville, introducing the thin woman to Jack. She nodded and stared at Jack with ill-disguised malevolence, as though Neville had said some disparaging things about him prior to their meeting.
“Hello, Virginia,” Jack replied pleasantly, and made a point of starting a conversation with her rather than Neville. “What do you do?”
“I’m a counselor,” she replied in a thin, nasal voice.
“Really?” returned Jack. “Reading council?”
“No, counselor. I offer help to people who are suffering stress.”
“What sort of stress?” asked Jack suspiciously.stared him straight in the eye. “Anything from police harassment to… being swallowed alive by a wolf.”felt himself stiffen defensively. “You’ve been busy recently, then.”
“No thanks to you,” she replied sarcastically. “Every time the NCD breaks a case, I end up picking up the pieces. First the three pigs that you shamelessly pursued with the slenderest evidence imaginable, now the Riding-Hood disaster—it could take years of counseling before she and her grandmother can even speak, let alone dress themselves or have any sort of useful life skills.”was looking at Jack with obvious delight. He despised Jack with the lingering hatred of an idle underachiever who had lost everything by his own stupidity and was now looking for someone to blame. Virginia was not a girlfriend; he had simply brought her along to try to humiliate Jack, something he seemed to treat a bit like a hobby. Jack sighed. He hadn’t expected he’d have to defend his actions to anyone, least of all to some dopey friend of Neville’s, but he wasn’t going to take this sitting down.
“Ever been face-to-face with a serial wife killer?” he asked her.
“No.”
“How about being chased by a deranged genetic experiment with murder on its mind?”sighed. “No.”
“Staked out a grandmother’s cottage for three weeks solid because you had a gut instinct something might happen?”
“No.”
“Walked unarmed into an illegal porridge buy?”
“No!”
“You run a relatively risk-free life, in fact. I don’t. I put my ass on the line every time I go out there. Don’t think that ‘Nursery’ in the title of my division makes it cozy kittens, fluffy toys and shades of pink—it’s a violent and dangerous world, full of murder, theft and cannibalism. When did you last make a life-or-death decision?”was unrepentant. “That doesn’t condone harassment of the three pigs or the reckless disregard with which you failed to protect Riding-Hood and her grandmother.”stared at her coldly. “You don’t get it, do you?” he said after a pause, his voice rising. “In the world of nursery crime, some things just happen, despite my best endeavors. Humpty takes a nose dive, the pigs boil the wolf—and Riding-Hood and her gran get eaten. In my world, the world of the vaguely predestined, you have to work five times as hard to involve yourself in the unfolding of the case and ten times harder still to change the outcome. I couldn’t stop the wolf eating them—but I did my best.”
“Your best?” said Kreeper with a contemptuous laugh. “How can you have the cold arrogance to stand there and tell me you did everything in your power to stop them from being eaten?”
“Because,” said Jack slowly, “the wolf ate me, too.”’s mouth dropped open. She didn’t know about this; not many people did. Being swallowed whole wasn’t something he’d like to repeat, as it had ruined a perfectly good suit, but once past the esophagus it hadn’t been so bad. Strangely, it wasn’t as dark as he had suspected—but certainly cramped, with Red and her granny in there, too. But Briggs had been right: Without the woodsman’s timely intervention, they’d all be wolf shit by now, and Kreeper would be talking to a column of air.up, Jack pounced. “They didn’t tell you that? Didn’t tell you I went in alone and unarmed to face a murderous wolf as soon as I realized it wasn’t Gran in bed?”shook her head.
“Did they tell you I grabbed Riding-Hood’s ankles as she disappeared down his gullet? That I had my feet pressed against the wolf’s jaws to stop her from going down? That I couldn’t save her and was gobbled up, too?”voice rose. He’d been vilified in the press about this, and he’d had enough. “But get this,” he continued, “I could have just legged it and called the regulars. But I didn’t. I faced down the wolf and was devoured for my trouble. The first time, in fact, that a serving police officer in the British Isles has been eaten alive in the line of duty. Did Josh Hatchett write any of that?”stopped talking and looked around. Every occupant of the Déjà Vu ballroom was staring at him, hanging on his every word. Neville had a look like thunder. He had hoped Virginia would decimate his ex-wife’s husband, but he had underestimated Jack. Again.
“What was it like?” asked a nearby guest, breaking the silence that had descended on the ballroom.
“The gastric juices burn your nose hairs, if you must know,” replied Jack, adding by way of explanation and giving a shrug,
“It’s an NCD thing.”and Virginia took the opportunity to slip away. Partly because they felt defeated and deflated, and partly because Neville could see Madeleine approaching, and he was something of a coward in the presence of his ex-wife.
“Really,” said Madeleine, leading Jack to another part of the room as the conversation started up again, “I leave you alone for five minutes and you start banging on about being eaten. Honestly, what did I tell you?”
“Sorry.”sighed and stared at him. She understood him, but the NCD thing could be confusing for anyone not used to it. Jack shrugged and took another drink from a passing waiter. He felt bored and tired. It had been a long day.
“I didn’t come to an awards ceremony to have my professional actions judged,” he grumbled.gave him a hug. “Never mind, sweetheart. Let’s find our table.”
Дата добавления: 2015-10-21; просмотров: 25 | Нарушение авторских прав
| <== предыдущая лекция | | | следующая лекция ==> |