Something rotten

'Hamlet,' he replied, kissing her proffered hand, 'Prince.'

Her eyelashes fluttered momentarily.

'A prince? Of anywhere I'd know?'

'Denmark, as it happens.'

'My . . . late boyfriend bombarded Copenhagen quite mercilessly in 1801. He said the Danes put up a good fight.'

'We Danes like a tussle, Lady Hamilton,' replied the prince with a great deal of charm, 'although I'm not from Copenhagen myself. A little town up the coast � Elsinore. We have a castle there. Not very large Barely sixty rooms and a garrison of under two hundred. A bit bleak in the winter.'

'Haunted?'

'One that I know of. What did your late boyfriend do when he wasn't bombarding Danes?'

'Oh, nothing much,' she said offhandedly, 'fighting the French and the Spanish, leaving body parts around Europe � it was quite de rigueur at the time.'

There was a pause as they stared at one another. Emma started to fan herself.

'Goodness!' she murmured. 'All this talk of body parts has made me quite hot!'

'Right!' said my mother, jumping to her feet. 'That's it! I'm not having this sort of smutty innuendo in my house!'

Hamlet and Emma looked startled by her outburst but I managed to pull her aside and whispered:

'Mother! Don't be so judgemental � after all, they're both single, and Hamlet's interest in Emma might take her mind off someone else.'

'Someone . . . else?'

You could almost hear the cogs going around in her head. After a long pause she took a deep breath, turned back to them and smiled broadly.

'My dears, why don't you have a walk in the garden? There is a gentle cooling breeze and the niche d' amour in the rose garden is very attractive this time of year.'

'A good time for a drink, perhaps?' asked Emma hopefully.

'Perhaps,' replied my mother, who was obviously trying to keep Lady Hamilton away from the bottle.

Emma didn't reply. She just offered her arm to Hamlet, who took it graciously and was going to steer her out of the open doors to the patio when Emma stopped him with a murmur of 'Not the French windows' and took him out by way of the kitchen.

'As I was saying,' said my mother as she sat down, 'Emma's a lovely girl. Cake?'

'Please.'

'Here,' she said, handing me the knife, 'help yourself'

'Tell me,' I began, as I cut the Battenberg carefully, 'did Landen come back?'

'That's your eradicated husband, isn't it?' she replied kindly. 'No, I'm afraid he didn't.' She smiled encouragingly. 'You should come to one of my Eradications Anonymous evenings � we're meeting tomorrow night.'

In common with my mother, I had a husband whose reality had been scrubbed from the here and now. Unlike my mother, whose husband still returned every now and then from the timestream, I had a husband, Landen, who only existed in my dreams and recollections. No one else had any memories or knowledge of him at all. Mum knew about Landen only because I'd told her. To anyone else, Landen's parents included, I was suffering some bizarre delusion. But Friday's father was Landen, despite his non-existence, just as my brothers and I had been born despite my father not existing. Time travel is like that. Full of unexplainable paradoxes.

'I'll get him back,' I mumbled.

'Who?'

'Landen.'

Joffy reappeared from the garden with Friday, who, in common with most toddlers, didn't see why adults couldn't give aeroplane rides all day. I gave him a slice of Battenberg, which he dropped in his eagerness to devour it. The usually torpid DH82 opened an eye, ate the cake and was asleep again in under three seconds.

'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet!' Friday cried indignantly.

'Yes, it was impressive, wasn't it?' I agreed. 'Bet you never saw Pickwick move that fast � even for a marshmallow.'

'Nostrud laboris nisi et commodo consequat,' replied Friday with great indignation. 'Excepteur sint cupidatat non proident!'

'Serves you right,' I told him. 'Here, have a cucumber sandwich.'

'What did my grandson say?' asked my mother, staring at Friday, who was trying to eat the sandwich all in one go and making a nauseating spectacle of himself.

'Oh, that's just him jabbering away in Lorem Ipsum. He speaks nothing else.'

'Lorem . . . what?'

'Lorem Ipsum. It's dummy text used by the printing and typesetting industry to demonstrate layout. I don't know where he picked it up. Comes from living inside books, I should imagine.'

'I see,' said my mother, not seeing at all.

'How are the cousins?' I asked.

'Wilbur and Orville both run MycroTech these days,' answered Joffy as he passed me a cup of tea. 'They made a few mistakes while Uncle Mycroft was away, but I think he's got them on a short leash now.'

Wilbur and Orville were my aunt and uncle's two sons. Despite having two of the most brilliant parents around, they were almost solid mahogany from the neck up.

'Pass the sugar, would you? A few mistakes?'

'Quite a lot actually. Remember Mycroft's memory erasure machine?'

'Yes and no.'

'Well, they opened a chain of high-street erasure centres called Mem-U-Gon. You could go in and have unpleasant memories removed.'

'Lucrative, I should imagine.'

'Extremely lucrative � right up to the moment they made their first mistake. Which was, considering those two, not an if but a when.'

'Dare I ask what happened?'

'I think that it was the equivalent of setting a vacuum cleaner to "blow" by accident. A certain Mrs Worthing went into the Swindon branch of Mem-U-Gon to remove every single recollection of her failed first marriage.'

'And�?'

'Well, she was accidentally uploaded with the unwanted memories of seventy-two one-night stands, numerous drunken arguments, fifteen wasted lives and almost a thousand episodes of Name That Fruit! She was going to sue but settled instead for the name and address of one of the men whose exploits are now lodged in her memory. As far as I know, they married.'

'I like a story with a happy ending,' put in my mother.

'In any event,' continued Joffy, 'Mycroft forbade them from using it again and gave them the Chameleocar to market. It should be in the showrooms quite soon � if Goliath haven't pinched the idea first.'

'Ah!' I muttered, taking another bite of cake. 'And how is my least-favourite multinational?'

Joffy rolled his eyes.

'Up to no good as usual. They're attempting to switch to a faith-based corporate management system.'

'Becoming a . . . religion?'

'Announced only last month on the suggestion of their own corporate precog, Sister Bettina of Stroud. They aim to switch the corporate hierarchy to a multi-deity plan with their own gods, demigods, priests, places of worship and official prayerbook. In the new Goliath, employees will not be paid with anything as unspiritual as money, but faith � in the form of coupons which can be exchanged for goods and services at any Goliath-owned store. Anyone holding Goliath shares will have these exchanged on favourable terms with these "Coupons" and everyone gets to worship the Goliath upper echelons.'

'And what do the "devotees" get in return?'

'Well, a warm sense of belonging, protection from the world's evils and a reward in the afterlife � oh, and I think there's a T-shirt in it somewhere, too.'

'That sounds very Goliath-like.'

'Doesn't it just?' Joffy smiled. 'Worshipping in the hallowed halls of consumer-land. The more you spend, the closer to their "god" you become.'

'Hideous!' I exclaimed. 'Is there any good news?'

'Of course! The Swindon Mallets are going to beat the Reading Whackers to win the Superhoop this year.'

'You've got to be kidding!'