Thank you.

Okay, now I wish I hadn’t bothered. Except a second or two later, I got, I’m looking forward to seeing you too.

And while that felt better, it was, if anything, even more confusing.

Chapter 10

It was pretty typical for my life that when I finally had a brunch date with an attractive, only slightly annoying man, my mum rang.

“A bit busy right now.” Busy, in this case, was code for standing in my underpants, trying to find an outfit that said “I’m sexy, yet respectable, and I promise I won’t randomly try to kiss you again, but if you change your mind, I’d be up for it.” Maybe something in the jumper family? Cuddly, but with a touch of sensuality.

“Luc”—there was an edge of concern in her voice that I really wanted to ignore—“I need you to come right away.”

“How right away is right away?” Did I, for example, have time for a couple of rounds of French toast and an eggs Benedict with a hot barrister?

“Please, mon caneton. It is important.”

Okay, she had my attention. The thing is, Mum has a crisis every half hour, but she’s usually pretty good at signalling the difference between “Judy’s lost her watch in a cow” and “There’s water coming through the ceiling.” I flumped down onto the edge of the bed. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to say over the phone.”

“Mum,” I asked, “have you been kidnapped?”

“No. Then I would be saying, Help, I have been kidnapped.”

“But you couldn’t say that, because the kidnappers wouldn’t let you.”

She made an exasperated noise. “Don’t be silly. The kidnappers would have to let me tell you I’d been kidnapped; otherwise what would be the point of kidnapping me in the first place?” A brief pause. “What you should have asked is, Have you been replaced by a robot policeman from the future who wants to murder me?”

I blinked. “Have you?”

“No, but that is what I would say if I had been replaced by a robot policeman from the future who wants to murder you.”

“You do know I have an actual date. With an actual man.”

“And I’m very happy for you, but this cannot wait.”

“Mum,” I said firmly, “this is getting weird. What’s going on?”

There was a pause, which a paranoid part of me did think felt like the kind of pause you’d leave if you had to nonverbally ask a kidnapper for instructions. “Listen to me, Luc. This is not the same as when I said you had to come immediately because my life was in danger, and it turned out that I just needed you to replace the battery in my smoke alarm. Although I do maintain that I could have died. I am old and I am French. I fall asleep with a cigarette all the time. Also it was making a very annoying noise. It was like Guantanamo Bay.”

“How was it like Guant… Actually, never mind.”

“Please come over. I’m sorry to do this, but I am playing the ‘You have to trust me’ card. Because you have to trust me.”

Well. That was that. When it came down to it, there was me and Mum, and then there was everybody else. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I knew the decent thing to do was ring Oliver and try to explain. But I didn’t know how—what was I going to say: “Hi, I have this really intense relationship with my mother that probably looks creepy and codependent from the outside so I’m calling off the date I basically begged you to go on with me”? Also, I was a coward. So I texted instead: Can’t make it. Can’t explain why. Sorry. Enjoy brunch!

Then I hastily revised my sartorial choices from “I am going on a date and trying to salvage my reputation” to “I might have to deal with anything from a death in the family to an exploding toilet” and pegged it to the station. While I was on the train, Oliver called and I winced, before nobly diverting him to voicemail. He left one too. Who the fuck does that?

Judy was waiting for me at Epsom in her rickety, green Lotus Seven. I coerced two spaniels into the footwell and slid in underneath the third.

She snapped her goggles into place. “All aboard?”

I’d long since given up expecting her to care either way. And today was no exception. She slammed her foot down with an enthusiasm that, had I not been fully aboard, would have left me smeared all over the road.

“How’s Mum?” I yelled, over the rush of the wind and the rattle of the engine and the excitement of the spaniels.

“Bloody distraught.”

I nearly threw up my own heart. “Fuck. What’s happened?”

“Yara Sofia had a complete breakdown in the lip-synch. And she’d hitherto been so sickeningly fierce.”

“And in the real world?”

“Oh, Odile’s fine. Fighting fit. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, wet nose, glossy coat, all that.”

“Then why did she sound upset on the phone?”

“Well, bit of a shock. But you’ll find out.”

I extricated one of the spaniels from my crotch. “Look, I’m kind of freaking out here. And it would be really helpful if you’d tell me what was going on.”

“Nil freakerandum, old thing. But I’m afraid I absolutely have to be like Dad on this one.”

“Whose dad?”

“Anybody’s dad. You know, Be like dad, keep mum.”

“What?” To give Judy her due, she had managed to distract me from the imminent mysterious disaster.

“Sorry. Probably not PC anymore. Probably now you have to say: Be like dad, keep in touch with your feelings, or something.” She thought for a moment. “Or I suppose for you homosexuals it’s Be like dad, keep dad. Which is just bally confusing for everybody.”

“Yeah, that’s what they put on our T-shirts. Some people are just bally confusing for everybody. Get over it.”

“Anyway. I know it’s all a bit wobble-inducing, but stiff upper lip, I’ll have you there in no time.”

“Honestly, it’s fine. Take your—”

The sudden jolt of acceleration ripped away the remains of my protestation. And I spent the next ten minutes trying not to die, juggling spaniels, and clinging to the sides of the vehicle as we careened up hill and down dale, through twisty country lanes and villages that, prior to our passing through them, I’d have characterised as sleepy.

We screeched to a halt outside Mum’s, which had once been the village post office, and was now a pretty little detached house called “The Old Post Office” that sat at the end of a road called “Old Post Office Road.” That seemed to be how names worked around here. Old Post Office Road was off Main Road, which turned variously into Mill Road, Rectory Road, and Three Fields Road.