Something Rotten (Thursday Next 4)

'A prince? Of anywhere I'd know?'

'Denmark, as it happens.'

'My . . . late boyfriend bombarded Copenhagen quite mercilessly in 1801. He said the Danes put up a good fight.'

'We Danes like a tussle, Lady Hamilton,' replied the prince with a great deal of charm, 'although I'm not from Copenhagen myself. A little town up the coast – Elsinore. We have a castle there. Not very large Barely sixty rooms and a garrison of under two hundred. A bit bleak in the winter.'

'Haunted?'

'One that I know of. What did your late boyfriend do when he wasn't bombarding Danes?'

'Oh, nothing much,' she said offhandedly, 'fighting the French and the Spanish, leaving body parts around Europe – it was quite de rigueur at the time.'

There was a pause as they stared at one another. Emma started to fan herself.

'Goodness!' she murmured. 'All this talk of body parts has made me quite hot!'

'Right!' said my mother, jumping to her feet. 'That's it! I'm not having this sort of smutty innuendo in my house!'

Hamlet and Emma looked startled by her outburst but I managed to pull her aside and whispered:

'Mother! Don't be so judgemental – after all, they're both single, and Hamlet's interest in Emma might take her mind off someone else.'

'Someone . . . else?'

You could almost hear the cogs going around in her head. After a long pause she took a deep breath, turned back to them and smiled broadly.

'My dears, why don't you have a walk in the garden? There is a gentle cooling breeze and the niche d' amour in the rose garden is very attractive this time of year.'

'A good time for a drink, perhaps?' asked Emma hopefully.

'Perhaps,' replied my mother, who was obviously trying to keep Lady Hamilton away from the bottle.

Emma didn't reply. She just offered her arm to Hamlet, who took it graciously and was going to steer her out of the open doors to the patio when Emma stopped him with a murmur of 'Not the French windows' and took him out by way of the kitchen.

'As I was saying,' said my mother as she sat down, 'Emma's a lovely girl. Cake?'

'Please.'

'Here,' she said, handing me the knife, 'help yourself'

'Tell me,' I began, as I cut the Battenberg carefully, 'did Landen come back?'

'That's your eradicated husband, isn't it?' she replied kindly. 'No, I'm afraid he didn't.' She smiled encouragingly. 'You should come to one of my Eradications Anonymous evenings – we're meeting tomorrow night.'

In common with my mother, I had a husband whose reality had been scrubbed from the here and now. Unlike my mother, whose husband still returned every now and then from the timestream, I had a husband, Landen, who only existed in my dreams and recollections. No one else had any memories or knowledge of him at all. Mum knew about Landen only because I'd told her. To anyone else, Landen's parents included, I was suffering some bizarre delusion. But Friday's father was Landen, despite his non-existence, just as my brothers and I had been born despite my father not existing. Time travel is like that. Full of unexplainable paradoxes.

'I'll get him back,' I mumbled.

'Who?'

'Landen.'

Joffy reappeared from the garden with Friday, who, in common with most toddlers, didn't see why adults couldn't give aeroplane rides all day. I gave him a slice of Battenberg, which he dropped in his eagerness to devour it. The usually torpid DH82 opened an eye, ate the cake and was asleep again in under three seconds.

'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet!' Friday cried indignantly.

'Yes, it was impressive, wasn't it?' I agreed. 'Bet you never saw Pickwick move that fast – even for a marshmallow.'