I slept over at Joffy’s place. I say slept but that wasn’t entirely accurate. I just stared at the elegantly moulded ceiling and thought of Landen. At dawn I crept quietly out of the vicarage, borrowed Joffy’s Brough Superior motorcycle and rode into Swindon as the sun crept over the horizon. The bright rays of a new day usually filled me with hope but that morning I could think only of unfinished business and an uncertain future. I rode through the empty streets, past Coate and up the Marlborough road towards my mother’s house. She had to know about Dad however painful the news might be, and I hoped she would take solace, as I did, in his final selfless act. I would go to the station and hand myself into Flanker afterwards. There was a good chance that SO-5 would believe my account of what happened with Aornis but I suspected that convincing SO-1 of Lavoisier’s chronuption might take a lot more. Goliath and the two Schitts were a worry but I was sure I would be able to think of something to keep them off my back. Still, the world hadn’t ended yesterday which was a big plus—and Flanker couldn’t exactly charge me with ‘failing to save the planet his way’, no matter how much he might want to.
As I approached the junction outside Mum’s house I noticed a suspiciously Goliath-looking car parked across the street, so I rode on and did a wide circuit, abandoning the motorcycle two blocks away and treading noiselessly down the back alleys. I skirted around another large dark-blue Goliath motor-car, climbed over the fence into Mum’s garden and crept past the vegetable patch to the kitchen door. It was locked so I pushed open the large dodo-flap and crawled inside. I was just about to switch on the lights when I felt the cold barrel of a gun pressed against my cheek—I started and almost cried out.
‘Lights stay off,’ growled a husky woman’s voice, ‘and don’t make any sudden moves.’
I dutifully froze. A hand snaked into my jacket and removed Cordelia’s automatic.
DH-82 was fast asleep in his basket, the idea of being a fierce guard-Tastiger had obviously not entered his head.
‘Let me see you,’ said the voice again. I turned and looked into the eyes of a woman who had departed more rapidly into middle age than years alone might allow. I noticed that her gun arm wavered slightly, she had a slightly florid appearance and her hair had been clumsily brushed and pulled into a bun. But for all that it was clear she had once been beautiful; her eyes were bright and cheerful, her mouth delicate and refined, her bearing resolute.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
‘This is my mother’s house.’
‘Ah!’ she said, giving a slight smile and raising an eyebrow. ‘You must be Thursday.’
She returned her pistol to a holster that was strapped to her thigh beneath several layers of her large brocade dress and started to rummage in the cupboards.
‘Do you know where your mother keeps the booze?’
‘Suppose you tell me who you are?’ I demanded, my eyes alighting on the knife block as I searched for a weapon—just in case.
The woman didn’t give me an answer, or at least, not to the question I’d asked.
‘Your father told me Lavoisier eradicated your husband.’
I halted my surreptitious creep towards the carving knives.
‘You know my father?’ I asked in some surprise.
‘I do so hate that term eradicated,’ she announced grimly, searching in vain amongst the tinned fruit for anything resembling alcohol. ‘It’s murder, Thursday—nothing less. They killed my husband, too—even if it did take three attempts.’
‘Who?’
‘Lavoisier and the French revisionists.’
She thumped her fist on the kitchen top as if to punctuate her anger and turned to face me.
‘You have memories of your husband, I suppose?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me too,’ she sighed. ‘I wish to heaven I hadn’t, but I have. Memories of things that might have happened. Knowledge of the loss. It’s the worst part of it.’
She opened another cupboard door revealing still more tinned fruit.
‘I understand your husband was barely two years old—mine was forty-seven. You might think that makes it better but it doesn’t. The petition for his divorce was granted and we were married the summer following Trafalgar. Nine years of glorious life as Lady Nelson—then I wake up one morning in Calais, a drunken, debt-ridden wretch and with the revelation that my one true love died a decade ago, shot by a sniper’s bullet on the quarter-deck of the Victory.’
‘I know who you are,’ I murmured, ‘you’re Emma Hamilton.’
‘I was Emma Hamilton,’ she replied sadly. ‘Now I’m a broke out-of-timer with a dismal reputation, no husband and a thirst the size of the Gobi.’
‘But you still have your daughter?’
‘Yes,’ she groaned, ‘but I never told her I was her mother.’
‘Try the end cupboard.’
She moved down the counter, rummaged some more and found a bottle of cooking sherry. She poured a generous helping into one of my mother’s teacups. I looked at the saddened woman and wondered if I’d end up the same way.
‘We’ll sort out Lavoisier eventually,’ muttered Lady Hamilton sadly, downing the cooking sherry. ‘You can be sure of that.’
‘We?’
She looked at me and poured another generous—even by my mother’s definition—cup of sherry.
‘Me—and your father, of course.’
I sighed. She obviously hadn’t heard the news.
‘That’s what I came to talk to my mother about.’
‘What did you come to talk to me about?’
It was my mother. She had just walked in wearing a quilted dressing gown and her hair sticking out in all directions. For someone usually so suspicious of Emma Hamilton, she seemed quite cordial and even wished her ‘Good morning’—although she swiftly removed the sherry from the counter and replaced it in the cupboard.
‘You early bird!’ she cooed. ‘Do you have time to take DH-82 to the vet’s this morning? His boil needs lancing again.’
‘I’m kind of busy, Mum.’
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, sensing the seriousness in my voice. ‘Was that business at Vole Towers anything to do with you?’
‘Sort of. I came over to tell you—’
‘—Yes?’
‘That Dad has—Dad is—Dad was—’
Mum looked at me quizzically as my father, large as life, strode into the kitchen.
‘—is making me feel very confused.’
‘Hello, Sweetpea!’ said my father, looking considerably younger than the last time I saw him. ‘Have you been introduced to Lady Hamilton?’
‘We had a drink together,’ I said uncertainly. ‘But—You’re—you’re—alive!’
He stroked his chin and replied: ‘Should I be something else?’