One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (Thursday Next 6)

“You’re not seeing just me, are you?”

“No,” I said, “there are others. Lots of them.”

“Then you see what I mean. What does Landen think you are?”

I shrugged. “The real Thursday mad, I think.”

“Don’t upset him,” said Jenny. “Thursday wouldn’t like it.”

“Thursday could be dead.”

“I know for a fact that she isn’t.”

“How?”

But at that moment Landen came pacing down the corridor, and Jenny jumped back into the broom cupboard.

“That was your old buddy Lydia Startright, wanting to get an exclusive before the network vans turn up. I told her you weren’t here and I had no idea where you were.”

“Did she believe you?”

“She’s an excellent journalist—of course not.”

We sat in silence for some moments. I didn’t think I would tell him I’d just seen Jenny, but the seeds of doubt had been sown. I could be the real Thursday. And even though the ramifications of being someone suffering bizarre delusions were not good news, the possibility that I would be with the man I loved was some consolation.

“Ask me some questions,” I said finally. “I want to convince myself I’m not her.”

“What’s my middle name?” he asked.

“Is it . . . Whitby?”

“Not even close. Where was our first date?”

“At the Alhambra. The Richard III thing.”

“No, that was later. Where did I lose my leg?”

“You’ve lost a leg?”

Mrs. Next came back into the room. “You never told me you’d bought a gold-plated toilet.”

Landen frowned. “We don’t have a gold-plated toilet.”

“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Next. “I think I’ve just peed in your tuba.”

She then muttered something about “the shocking price of dodo feed” and went out without saying good-bye to either of us.

“Daft as a brush,” said Landen, “and just a teeny-weeny bit repulsive.”

“Plock.”

I turned. A dodo stood at the open door. It was nothing like the Pickwick/Lorina back home. This dodo was old. Her beak was worn and scaly, she had no feathers, and her left foot had a tremor. She was dressed in an all-over body warmer made of fleecy material and was regarding me curiously.

“Pickwick?”

“Plock?” said the dodo, cocking her head to one side. She walked unsteadily up to me and looked very closely at me for a long time.

“Plock, plock,” she said, and rubbed her beak affectionately on my trouser leg before walking over to her water dish.