‘Diane,’ she said between clenched teeth, ‘oxfay at the oorday.’
‘What?’
‘Oxfay at the oorday,’ she repeated, then, because Diane wasn’t getting it: ‘Fox – at the door.’
I turned and noted that Mr Ffoxe, the Senior Group Leader, was indeed at the door, holding a copy of the popular periodical for foxes, Fox and Friends. He walked over to the counter to order and it didn’t look as though he’d noticed us.
‘I’m so outta here,’ said Diane, ears completely flat on her back. She turned to walk away and in her panic momentarily lapsed to lolloping on all fours like a standard rabbit, before she managed to regain her dignity to stand on two feet and then walk briskly away.
‘What’s the panic?’ I asked. ‘You’re legal.’
‘Foxes don’t give a limp lettuce for legality,’ whispered Connie. ‘The government putting foxes in charge of rabbits is like – I don’t know – putting a fox in charge of a henhouse.’
She paused.
‘That idiom doesn’t really quite work, does it?’
She indicated the table and asked me to join her.
‘I should be getting back to—’
‘Please?’
She looked sort of desperate, so I sat down opposite. Diane had spilled a milk jug on the table earlier, and it had dripped on the chair, so I suddenly had a damp behind.
‘So,’ I said, ‘is that the Diane who was caught off-colony and you had to bail out?’
‘That’s the one,’ said Connie, keeping a watchful eye on Mr Ffoxe. ‘She’s just been appropriated by a better husband. The duel was this morning, so we’ve been celebrating since then. I’m not sure duelling with pistols is the best way to sort it out, but they are quite fun – one of the odder things carried over from you after the Event.’
‘What do you think caused it?’
‘Diane’s appropriation? Boredom, probably.’
‘I meant the Event.’
It was an oft-asked question, but instead of the usual shrug, she thought for a moment and said:
‘Since there were dramatic portents before the Event occurred – snow flurries, power surges, green sunsets, electrical storms, a full moon, dogs howling for no reason – perhaps scientists should reframe the question from how it happened to why it happened.’
It was a good point. Behavioural psychologists had recently suggested that because the consequences of the Event seemed to highlight areas of the human social experience that perhaps needed greater exploration, understanding and some kind of concerted action, it was possible that searching for a physical reason for all of this was actually missing the point. Although once a fringe idea, the notion that the Event might have been satirically induced was gaining wider acceptance.
‘The Event does have all the trappings of satire,’ I said, ‘although somewhat clumsy in execution.’
‘We live in unsubtle times,’ said Connie. ‘I think—’
‘Well, well,’ came a low voice close at hand. ‘May I join your cosy little tête-à-tête?’
It was Torquil Ffoxe. His copy of Fox and Friends was folded open at an article entitled ‘The lightning neck-break: your questions answered’ and he was holding a large cappuccino. I couldn’t be sure but he looked as though he were inhaling deeply to take in Connie’s earthy aroma. If so, it was to his liking, as his lips were wet with saliva. The neighbouring table found him repulsive and hurriedly left, but other diners found his politics sound enough to stay. They were curious, too. Foxes and rabbits were rarely seen together without some kind of conflict taking place, and I think a couple at the back were secretly taking bets with the diners next to them as to how many minutes before Connie’s skull was crushed.
‘Why don’t you join us?’ said Connie in an even tone, although I could feel her leg under the table shake nervously. Mr Ffoxe looked at me, then Connie, then sat down in the chair I had recently vacated to make room for him.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I appear to have sat on something wet.’
‘Diane spilt the soya milk,’ I said.
‘Who’s Diane?’ asked Mr Ffoxe.
‘Mrs Rabbit’s twelfth cousin on her father’s aunt’s sister’s daughter’s … Nope,’ I said, ‘I’ve forgotten the rest.’
‘I wasn’t interested anyway,’ said Mr Ffoxe. ‘Now Peter, aren’t you going to introduce me to your little bunny friend?’
‘I’m not sure “bun—”’
‘Your bunny friend,’ said Mr Ffoxe again, ‘introduce her to me.’
I swallowed nervously. Even having a passing acquaintance to a fox spoke bundles about a person – and it was rarely, if ever, a proud boast.
‘Mr Ffoxe, this is Mrs Constance Grace Rabbit, my next-door neighbour. Mrs Rabbit, Mr Torquil Featherstonehaugh45 Ffoxe, Senior Group Leader, Colony One.’
Mr Ffoxe narrowed his eyes.
‘Have we met?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said in a loud, clear voice, ‘but you told that scum at TwoLegsGood where they could find Dylan Rabbit, my husband. They came round and jugged him in front of the children.’
He stared at her for a moment in silence, then said in a measured tone:
‘That is a disgusting and baseless accusation which does you no credit and for which you should be ashamed. Besides, it was never proven, and neither were any of the others.’
‘Others?’
‘Alleged others. Nemo sine vitio est.46’
I saw Connie narrow her eyes and a sense of hardy resolve seemed to fall across her like a shadow.
‘It’s not the only time you and I have connected,’ she said. ‘Four years ago you murdered my niece for being caught off-colony two minutes before curfew and four miles away.’
‘She never would have made it home in time, and I’m sure you have many, many nieces. What’s the big deal?’
‘This: you crushed her head in your jaws, but didn’t finish the job. It took her nine hours to die.’
‘I don’t recall the incident,’ said Mr Ffoxe, ‘but then I retire a lot of rabbits so it’s tricky to remember individual cases. Most shiver with fright and shit themselves before I deal with them – and none try to resist. What evolutionary value is there in a species that won’t lift a paw to defend itself? There’s hunter, and there’s hunted. It’s the way of things.’
Connie said nothing and instead picked up Mr Ffoxe’s cappuccino and then, slowly and deliberately, poured it out on to the floor next to us. The entire café was staring at us in horrified silence by now, and the expectation of sudden violence seemed to fill the air like a damp fog. When she was done, Connie placed the cup gently back on the saucer and stared at Mr Ffoxe defiantly.
‘Happy?’ he asked.
‘No, but it’ll do for now. Say, is that a little bit of mange on your neck?’
The café, which I thought had already taken about as sharp an intake of breath as possible over the spilled coffee, took another. It was a grossly inflammatory comment, and one that I had not thought that anyone would ever dare make. The thing was, Mr Ffoxe did have a patch of mange on his neck, half covered by his silk cravat. We’d known about it in the office for a while, but foxes, notoriously sensitive over their orange fur and oddly small paws, usually took badly to anyone raising the subject. This time was no exception, and he lunged forward, mouth open, teeth bared. In my eagerness to get away I instinctively pushed away from the table and went sailing over backwards to land entangled with my chair in a painful heap on the floor. I struggled to my feet, expecting to find Connie’s neck limp and broken, but instead she’d produced a large pearl-handled flick-knife and had it pressed against Mr Ffoxe’s throat.