First Among Sequels (Thursday Next 5)

Landen and I exchanged looks.

“Have you ever wondered,” remarked Friday in a languid monotone from behind a curtain of oily hair, “how nostalgia isn’t what it used to be?”

I smiled. Dopey witticisms at least showed he was trying to be clever, even if for the greater part of the day he was asleep.

“Yes,” I replied, “and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations.”

“I’m serious,” he said, mildly annoyed.

“Sorry!” I replied. “It’s just difficult to know what you’re thinking when I can’t see your face. I might as well converse to the side of a yak.”

He parted his hair so I could see his eyes. He looked a lot like his father did at that age. Not that I knew him then, of course, but from photographs.

“Nostalgia used to have a minimum twenty years before it kicked in,” he said in all seriousness, “but now it’s getting shorter and shorter. By the late eighties, people were doing seventies stuff, but by the mid-nineties the eighties-revival thing was in full swing. It’s now 2002, and already people are talking about the nineties—soon nostalgia will catch up with the present and we won’t have any need for it.”

“Good thing, too, if you ask me,” I said. “I got rid of all my seventies rubbish as soon as I could and never regretted it for a second.”

There was an indignant plock from Pickwick.

“Present company excepted.”

“I think the seventies are underrated,” said Landen. “Admittedly, fashion wasn’t terrific, but there’s been no better decade for sitcoms.”

“Where’s Jenny?”

“I took her dinner up to her,” said Friday. “She said she needed to do her homework.”

I frowned as I thought of something, but Landen clapped his hands together and said, “Oh, yes! Did you hear that the British bobsled team has been disqualified for using the banned force ‘gravity’ to enhance performance?”

“No.”

“Apparently so. And it transpires that the illegal use of gravity to boost speed is endemic within most downhill winter sports.”

“I wondered why they managed to go so fast,” I replied thoughtfully.

Much later that night, when the lights were out, I was staring at the glow of the streetlamps on the ceiling and thinking about Thursday1–4 and what I’d do to her when I caught her. It wasn’t terribly pleasant.

“Land?” I whispered in the darkness.

“Yes?”

“That time we…made love today.”

“What about it?”

“I was just thinking—how did you rate it? Y’know, on a one-to-ten?”

“Truthfully?”

“Truthfully.”

“You won’t be pissed off at me?”

“Promise.”

There was a pause. I held my breath.

“We’ve had better. Much better. In fact, I thought you were pretty terrible.”