The Well of Lost Plots

'Water!' I cried. 'Water for her burns!'

The small crowd of onlookers were hopeless and could do nothing but stare at us in shock.

'Thursday?' she murmured although she couldn't see me. 'Please take me home.'

I'd never jumped dual, taking someone with me, but I did it now. I jumped clean out of Pendine and into Great Expectations, right into Miss Havisham's room at Satis House, next to the rotting wedding party that never was, the darkened room, the clocks stopped at twenty to nine. It was the place where I had first seen her all those weeks ago, and it would be the place I saw her last. I laid her on the bed and tried to make her comfortable.

'Dear Thursday,' she said. 'They got to me, didn't they?'

'Who, Miss Havisham?'

'I don't know.'

She started coughing and for a moment I didn't think she would stop.

'You are close to me, my dear — they will come for you next!'

'But why, Miss Havisham, why?'

She grabbed my wrist and stared at me with her piercing grey eyes which had not wavered in their resolve for even one moment.

'Here,' she said, handing me her Ultra Word™ copy of The Little Prince, 'you try!'

'But—'

'I will not survive this,' she whispered, 'but I have enough strength to make a good exit. Hand me the brandy and take me to my last appearance in the book; I will make my peace with Pip and Estella. It is for the best, I think.'

News of Miss Havisham's accident got around Great Expectations quickly; I made up a story about her falling in the fire and invited Pip to come up and try to improvise her death scene. He was upset but it did give him a good motivation to go back up to Satis House for the incident at the lime kilns. They discussed it together, she and Pip, and when they were ready I said my goodbyes and left the room. I waited outside with a heavy heart and tensed as there a shriek and a flickering orange light shone beneath the door. I heard Pip curse, and then more thumps and shouts as he smothered the fire with his cape. Jaw clenched, I walked away, my heart heavy with loss. She had been bossy and obnoxious on occasion but she had protected me and taught me well. I would remember her until my dying days.

26 Post-Havisham blues

'The Bellman lived in a grace-and-favour apartment at Norland Park when he wasn't working in The Hunting of the Snark. He had been head of Jurisfiction for twenty years and was required, under Council of Genres mandate, to stand down. The Bellman, oddly enough, had always been called the Bellman — it was no more than coincidence that he had actually been a Bellman himself. The previous Bellman had been Bradshaw and, before him, Virginia Woolf. Under Woolf, Jurisfiction roll-calls tended to last several hours.'

THE BELLMAN — The Hardest Job in Fiction

I walked into the Jurisfiction offices an hour later and tingled the Bellman's bell. It was a signal for the immediate attention of the Bellman, and within a few moments he had appeared, still with a napkin stuck in his collar from lunch. I sat down and explained what had happened. When he heard, he needed to sit down, too.

'Where is the Bluebird now?' he asked.

'Back at the stores,' I replied. 'I've ordered an investigation; it looks as though the stub axle failed through metal fatigue.'

'An accident?'

I nodded my head. They hadn't got to her after all. Despite all that had happened, I still had less than nothing suspicious to pin on her death, and only a misplaced key on Perkins'. Motor racing has its own share of dangers, and Havisham knew that more than most.

'How long has she got?'

'They're improvising her death scene in Expectations as we speak. The doctor said a chapter at most — as long as we can keep references or appearances to a minimum.'

He patted me on the shoulder.

'We'll have to get an A-grade Generic trained to take her place,' he said softly. 'Expectations won't be demolished.'

He turned to me.

'You're off the active list for a few days, Miss Next. Take it easy at home and we'll get some quiet jobs for you to do until you're ready to return to full duties.'

Tweed appeared.

'What's going on?' he demanded. 'They told me—'

The Bellman took him by the arm and explained what had happened as I thought about Havisham and life without her. Tweed approached and laid a hand upon my shoulder.

'I'm sorry, Thursday. Havisham was one of the best; we all thought the world of her.'

I thanked him.

'You might be interested in these copies of reports from Text Grand Central.' .

'What are they?'

He placed them on the table in front of me.

'They are the UltraWord™ reports written by Perkins, Deane and Miss Havisham. They all give it the thumbs-up. If Perkins was murdered, it wasn't because of UltraWord™.'

'The Ultimate Reading Experience?'

'Looks like it. A modern system like this needs people like you to police it, Next. I want you to consider a permanent post here inside fiction.'

I looked up at him. This seemed to me like rather a good idea. After all, there was no one waiting for me back at Swindon.

'Sounds good, Tweed. Can I sleep on it?'

He smiled.

'Take as long as you want.'

I went back to Mary's flying boat and read over what Miss Havisham had done with her final scene in Great Expectations. A professional to the last, she had enacted her own death with a sensitivity and fallibility that I had never seen her exhibit in life. I found a bottle of wine, poured myself a large glass and drank it gratefully. Oddly I thought there was a reason why perhaps I shouldn't be drinking, but couldn't think what it was. I looked at my hand where there had been a name written that morning. Havisham had instructed me to scrub it out, and I had — but even so I was intrigued and tried to figure out from the small marks still visible what had been written there.

'Lisbon,' I muttered. 'Why would I write "Lisbon" on my hand?'

I shrugged. The delicate red was a welcome friend and I poured another glass. I pulled out the UltraWord™ copy of The Little Prince that Havisham had given me and opened the cover. There was an odd smell of melons about the book and the paper felt like a sort of thin plastic, the letters a harsh black against the milky-white pages. The text glowed in the dim light of the kitchen and, intrigued, I took the book into the darkness of the utility cupboard, where the text was still as clear as day. I returned to my place at the table and tried the read sensitive preferences page, the words changing from red to blue as I read them, then back again as I reread them. In this manner I turned the PageGlow™ feature on and off, and then played with the levels of the background and music tracks.