The Woman Who Died a Lot

“You’ll go to school, my girl—even if only for the morning. Just remember not to take the dopey teenage thing too far.”

“No flashing?”

“Right,” I said, “and especially not to Gavin Watkins.”

She gave a loud harumph and, without another word, got up from the breakfast table and stomped upstairs to get ready for school.

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?” asked Landen, sitting down at the table.

“I don’t know,” I replied, staring after Tuesday. “Whatever we do, it’ll probably turn out to be wrong.”

“Hurt yourself?” he asked.

“Where?”

“On your face. It looks like someone thumped you.”

“I assure you no one did,” I replied, although I had noticed it myself, as well as several skinned knuckles and two broken fingernails that I had no memory of breaking.

“And that bandage?” he asked, pointing to my wrapped hand.

“Oh, that was a burn,” I replied hastily—on a saucepan.”

I poured some more coffee. I hadn’t burned myself, of course. I had simply covered up the tattoo on the back of my hand that read JENNY IS A MINDWORM so that Landen didn’t see it and go off on a furious rant. What was confusing to me was that I was the one with the warning tattoo—it would have made more sense on Landen’s hand.

“I’d better make sure Jenny is ready for school,” he said, rising.

“She’s ready,” I said, “and . . . just doing her homework. I’ll ensure that Tuesday looks after her on the bus in.”

I repeated the instructions to Tuesday in case Landen was within earshot, and Tuesday acted out her part by saying something to Jenny. I let Tuesday out of the security gate, made sure she was safe onto the school bus, then returned inside. The Wingco was in the kitchen when I got back.

“Was that Imaginary Childhood Friend of any use?” I asked. “Mr. Snuffles? Not really,” admitted the Wingco. “The trouble with ICFs is that they are invented by children and so don’t have a large vocabulary or sophisticated worldview. It’s an ongoing problem—most of the time we talk about sibling rivalry, the price of sweeties and how repulsive spinach is. Still, I’ll keep at it. Oh, I managed to get some information.”

“And?”

“Tresco Supermax was tricky to begin with, but I said I was working for you and eventually got through to Records.”

“And?”

“Aornis never arrived. They raised the alarm when the prisoner was two hours overdue. The police were called, then SO-5, and that was it.”

“Okay,” I said, pinning a large map of southern England on the kitchen wall and drawing a red circle around Swindon with a felt pen. “She left here at one-fifteen P.M. on the second July, 2002 and was being driven toward Cornwall, but she never made it. Have you called Land’s End International? She would have been flown out of there to Tresco.”

“I’ve got the operations manager calling me back.”

“Anything on Highsmith and Quinn, the guards?” I asked.

The Wingco consulted his notes.

“Quinn died six months ago in a car accident when she ran a red light into the path of a bus. Highsmith quit the prison service after losing Aornis. They were chosen for Aornis duty as they were both completely deaf.”

“They think she used speech to manipulate memories?”

“Apparently.”

“They know nothing about her,” I said with a sigh.

The Wingco handed me a Post-it with Highsmith’s address on it, and I thanked him.

“Someone named John Duffy called,” he added.

“Yes?”

“He’s your personal assistant at the library and wanted to know when you would be starting work. Apparently they have a lot of ‘pressing issues.’”

“So do I.”

We took the car into Swindon and spoke to Highsmith, who was tidying up his allotment now that it was the end of the growing season. Only his speech gave us any clue to his disability—he’d been deaf for so long he had adapted almost perfectly. He was keen to assist us, especially when I told him I could get him Joffy’s autograph, but he was of little help.

“The last thing I remember was leaving Swindon with Aornis in the back of the van.”

“By motorway, to Land’s End?”

“Right. I think I remember turning off the M4 and onto the M5, but I couldn’t swear to it. Next thing I know, I’m sitting on a bench at Carlisle railway station five days later with forty thousand pounds in cash, eight kilos of bootleg Camembert in the car and a wife waiting for me in Wrexham.”

“You explained all this to SO-5?”

“Many times. Quinn was the same, only she ‘came to’ a day sooner then me, upside down in a Mercedes she’d bought for cash two hours previously. There was an iguana on the backseat, and the trunk was full of rabbits.”

I exchanged looks with Landen. One of Aornis’ little memory tricks was to make you think you were someone you weren’t, then send you off to cause mayhem on a five-day nonrecall bender. We thanked Highsmith, who told us that on the plus side he now had a very lovely wife and two-year-old daughter— and when no one claimed the cheese, he was allowed to keep it.

“That was a waste of a morning,” said Landen, once we had dropped into Yo! Toast for a coffee and a bowl of crusty toastettes.