The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next 7)

“Ah yes,” he admitted, “but at least I’m consistent. Can you say the same for the rest of the serial liars who deign to call themselves civilized?”

We ignored him. This had been the future Friday’s plan all along. The last-ditch effort to save the planet. The Destiny Aware letters as part of the union agreement, the faith that his young self would figure it out and have the selflessness to give up his freedom to help those he had sworn to protect. And it meant that Friday had the one thing he’d been wishing for: a function. All he had to do was kill Gavin.

So we said our good-byes, and Tuesday gave Gavin another one of those long kisses that was just a little bit too uncomfortable to behold, and I gave Gavin a hug in which he pulled me a little too close for comfort, and even Landen shook his hand and said that Gavin had his thanks.

“There’s still a teensy-weeny problem,” said Friday. “Motive.”

“Aren’t his future crimes the reason you kill him?” I said.

“Seems a bit cold-blooded,” replied Friday. “Besides, once the eventline has changed, they’ll be no motive at all, and I’m not sure the eventline can tolerate stuff like that. It has to fit together at least a little bit.”

“I know why,” said Gavin. “Because you think I’m a shit and it’s possible I might have gotten your sister pregnant.”

There was a sudden icy silence.

“Tuesday?” I said in my extra-stern voice. “You had sex with Gavin?”

“Might have,” she said in an offhand manner.

“Tell me you used protection?”

“Well, Mum,” she said, staring at her hands absently, “we were kind of caught up in the moment.”

“And it was a terrific moment,” mused Gavin, rolling his eyes. “ Hubba-hubba.”

And we set to squabbling after that, mostly about young people not being responsible, and that “being dead in under an hour” is no excuse for anything, and that Gavin should jolly well be more careful because he won’t be around after today, and then Tuesday said that she wanted something to remember him by and if that was a child with superior intellect and his nose— which was quite good, as it happened—then she jolly well would, and besides she was sixteen, and lots of people she knew got pregnant at sixteen, and didn’t we want her to have a normal life and be a normal person and do dumb teenage things so she was a real person and so on and so forth until Landen yelled:

“STOP!”

And we did.

“Have you seen the time?”

“Shit,” said Gavin, staring at the homemade atomic clock on Tuesday’s wall. “I’m not dead. How did that happen?”

He was right. It was 14 02 and twenty-six seconds. Destiny had not been fulfilled. We all looked at one another, confused.

“What happens now?” asked Gavin. “Shoot me dead and apologize to destiny for being late?”

“No,” replied Friday. “It hasn’t happened because it wasn’t meant to happen—and if we don’t fix this ri

ght now, it will never happen, and Gavin will murder those agents in the future, and Goliath will succeed in coercing HR-6984 into our path.”

It was Landen who broke the empty confused silence.

“I’ve an idea,” he said. “What if everything we know right now is entirely consistent with the eventline? Gavin is killed and Friday goes to prison and the ChronoGuard serial killer is still active thirty-seven years from now? That the Letters of Destiny will happen exactly as stated?”

“Great Scott,” said Friday, looking at us all with a shocked expression. “Gavin and I have been set up. I was being tricked into killing him: I kill Gavin, I go to prison, the ChronoGuard members are still murdered, and the whole plan carries on as normal. They relied on me to fulfill my destiny and to do it without question. The whole thing makes total sense. Even if I had killed Gavin, nothing would have changed—because that slimy piece of shit over there is the wrong Gavin!”

“There’s another Gavin Watkins?” asked Landen.

“Probably dozens. But there’s only one other who would have been ChronoGuard, and he’s the sixteenth man. All they had to do was swap over the Letters of Destiny.”

He held up a copy of Gavin’s summary.

“This isn’t you. You’re not going to die, and I’m not going to kill you.”

Gavin looked triumphant “I told you I’d never buy a Vauxhall.”