'Pickers laying an egg and turning out to be a girl?' I replied. 'What do you mean – you're going to have a baby, Land?'
'No, silly, you know what I mean.'
'I do?' I asked, looking up at him with carefully engineered innocence.
'Well?'
'Well what?' I stared into his bright, concerned face with what I thought was a blank expression. But I couldn't hold it for long and was soon a bundle of girlish giggles and salty tears. He hugged me tightly and placed his hand gently on my tum.
'In there? A baby?'
'Yes. Small pink thing that makes a noise. Seven weeks. Probably appear Julyish.'
'How are you feeling?'
'All right,' I told him. 'I felt a bit sick yesterday but that might have had nothing to do with it. I'll work until I start waddling and then take leave. How are you feeling?'
'Odd,' said Landen, hugging me again. 'Odd … yet elated.' He grinned. 'Who can I tell?'
'No one quite yet. Probably just as well – your mum would knit herself to death!'
'And what's wrong with my mother's knitting?' asked Landen, feigning indignation.
'Nothing.' I giggled. 'But there is a limit to storage space.'
'At least it's recognisable,' he said. 'That jumper your mum gave me for my birthday; what does she think I am, a squid?'
I burried my face in his collar and held him close. He rubbed my back gently and we stood together for several minutes without talking.
'Did you have a good day?' he asked at last.
'Well,' I began, 'we found Cardenio, I was shot dead by an SO-14 marksman, became a vanishing hitch-hiker, saw Yorrick Kaine, suffered a few too many coincidences and knocked a Neanderthal unconscious.'
'No puncture this time?'
'Two, actually – at the same time.'
'What was Kaine like?'
'I don't really know. He arrived at Volescamper's as we were leaving – aren't you even curious about the marksman?'
'Yorrick Kaine is giving a talk tonight about the economical realities of a Welsh free-trade agreement—'
'Landen,' I said, 'it's my uncle's party tonight. I promised Mum we'd be there.'
'Yeah, I know.'
'Are you going to ask me about the incident with SO-14 now?'
Landen sighed. 'All right. What was it like?'
'Don't ask.'
My Uncle Mycroft had announced his retirement. At the age of seventy-seven, and following the events of the Prose Portal and Polly's imprisonment in 'I wandered lonely as a cloud', they had both decided that enough was enough. The Goliath Corporation had been offering Mycroft not one but two blank cheques for him to resume work on a new Prose Portal, but Mycroft had steadfastly refused, maintaining that the Portal could not be replicated even if he had wanted it to be. We took my car up to Mum's house and parked a little way up the road.
'I never thought of Mycroft retiring,' I said as we walked down the street.
'Me neither,' Landen agreed. 'What do you suppose he'll do?'