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After a minute or two of Tara banging on about morse code, Star gave up. “Okay, have it your way, Tara. I’ve got important stuff to do.”

“Bugger off, then,” said Tara. “I’m going to have a few more gin and tonics before my hair appointment. Wish me luck!”

As Star turned to leave, she tripped on Tara’s oversized handbag—goodness only knows what she kept in it— and crashed into an ornamental pot-plant revealing none other than Auntie April.

“Oh, my!” said April with an embarrassed titter. “Fancy meeting you two here!”

Tara leapt up. “You were spying on us! We are the spies!” She jabbed an accusing finger at April. “How dare you be the spy!”

“How dare YOU!” said April, scrambling over the fallen pot-plant in her haste to get away.

“HOW DARE YOU!” shouted Tara. She lunged at the fleeing April and managed to grab hold of her jacket.

“Look!” cried Star. “On her shoulder! A bell-bird.”

No sooner had they reached for the drinks in the office cupboard, than the phone rang loudly.

“Rosamund!” howled Star. “Where is that daft niece of yours, and what good is she if she doesn’t even answer the calls! Rosamund!”

“I thought you gave her the afternoon?” Tara mouthed while picking the annoying phone. “Cartwright and Wrexham Private Investigators, can I help you?”

Her face frowned. “Herself speaking.”

“Yes, we do private investigations. Very successfully I may say. Alright Ma’am, let me check my agenda.” She looked in the air, flipping an imaginary agenda. “Oh, you’re in luck, our 5pm just cancelled. Alright then, see you at our office. Au revoir.”

Tara hung up with a smile.

Star was busy slurping the mojito while struggling with the mint bits in her teeth. “What? Tell me this instant!”

“Our second case! Isn’t it exciting!”

“Sure thing, what it is this time? Evil possession?”

“Actually, it’s not that far off. Apparently, our ladyship needs a falgrante delicto of adultery. Her husband seems to be a cheating one, and with a twinge of double personality… Or at least that’s what she said.”

“Fantastic. Can’t wait for all the juicy details. I’ll go prepare my sequin red dress to set the honey trap darling.”

“Good lord, get a hold of yourself Star, it’s only been a day, and you’re ready to jump on the next passing horse as it were.”

“Who said you shouldn’t mix pleasure with business.”

“Right. Thought that was the reverse…”

“Tsk. Just to get the last word.”

“Indeed.”

Aunt Idle:

I’ll admit Mater did well with the get back into shape programme, despite my skepticism.  She did hone her muscles a bit, but she was still harping on about wanting plastic surgery.  I probably shouldn’t have asked her if she was showing off her biceps or her bingo wings the other day, because that started her off again. I tried to make it up by complimenting her thigh muscles, but spoiled it by saying it was a shame the skin hung down past her kneecaps. Bert said maybe she could hold the skin up with some suspenders and made me spit my eucalyptus tea out and nearly choke to death. Mater was all set to take offence until she saw me choking, and then she started laughing too. I’m smiling remembering it, because we all saw the funny side then and couldn’t stop laughing for ages. God knows we needed a good laugh.

I’d had another one of those telepathic chats with Corrie the day before. If I’d known those silly girls were going to navigate their way here via that route I’d have said something, but I never thought they’d be so daft.  There’s me envisioning a pleasant drift through the Mediterranean, and an unexpected sail across an immense shallow lake that had appeared in the middle east with crystal clear waters and a sandy bottom (I could picture it all, I tell you) and then an invitingly tropical trip along the Indian coast with ports of call at virgin new coastlines  ~ but no, they’d gone the other way.  Across the Atlantic. And now they were fighting off bandits every step of the way and having to go miles out of their way to avoid plague ridden slums.  They hadn’t even made their way past the eastern seaboard yet, despite it being considerably narrower now.

They lost Pan for days in one of those half submerged coastal cities, rife with lawless floating shanties.  I hope my impressions are wrong, I do really, but it seemed like he’d been kidnapped for a barbecue.  Tender and juicy.

His ability to stay submerged under the water for so long saved him, that and Corrie’s ability to stay in telepathic contact with him.

They left the coastline and headed south after that and didn’t head back towards land for awhile but when they did, they found the lagoons and inlets were infested with alligators and some kind of water pig. Not sure if I picked that up right, but seems like the hogs had escaped from the farms during the Great Floods and taken to the water. Pan was forbidden to waterlark in these waters and had to stay confined to the raft.

I don’t know if they’ll get here in time for Mater’s birthday. Might be my hundredth birthday by the time they get here at this rate.

Nobody came at all yesterday, not to get my breakfast and leave my sandwiches for lunch and a tea flask, and the evening one didn’t come either. I didn’t have a cup of tea all day long, good job I found that bottle of sherry in the cabinet or I’d have been parched.  I found a half eaten tin of assorted biscuits left over from Christmas, and had to make do with those. Not very nice because they were all the ones I don’t like, which was why I’d left them in the first place. I wasn’t too hungry to sleep though, not after all that sherry.

A woman came this morning, one I hadn’t seen before.  I didn’t recognize her anyway, which doesn’t tell you much I suppose.  She seemed distracted, and did a very shoddy job, I must say, lumpy porridge, burnt toast with no jam, and she forgot to put sugar in my tea as well.

You just can’t get the staff these days.  No character to them anymore, just a series of faceless drones, it never used to be like that. The staff didn’t used to come and go and flit about like these lot, they were always there, as long as you could remember, part of the household.   It all changed during the war though, the horrors of servantlessness. That was a rude awakening, having to do our own cooking and laundry. I’d have given anything to see even that feckless lazy Annie Finton, even if all she did was the ironing.  The old boy turned out to have a knack for cooking and quite enjoyed it, so that was a blessing. Darned if I can remember his name though.  Truth be told, he was better than cook had ever been. He wasn’t afraid to experiment a little, diverge from the traditional.  I think the trouble with cook was that she hated cooking all along.  She never came back after the war, she got a job in a factory. Liked the freedom, she said. I ask you! No accounting for taste.

The latex rompers were shaping her old body in a way she quite enjoyed. It was like being back in her… she counted on her fingers to be sure. To be even surer she counted twice. Yes! It was like being back in the sixties, especially with the choice of colours that had been made by whomever had made the rompers. Her silhouette looked gorgeous, if you didn’t pay too much attention to the bingo wings and the pelican throat. She laughed. It was like seeing a superposition of a younger and an older self. She would have loved the face of Ricardo if he saw her like that. And the beehive haircut, it certainly was a good idea. She wondered if she was still under LSD. But the walls and the beehive hair seemed too solid for that.

A sliding door that she had not noticed before opened.

“Good to see you’re settling in,” said the woman who entered with a puff of bacon smell. “I’m Barbara.” She was holding a tray with a steaming plate of sweet peas and carrots. Sophie always had a sharp eye but couldn’t see any real bacon among the peas and the carrots. She smiled to the newcomer anyway. Barbara had the same latex rompers with the same colours. And she had a beehive haircut.

“Hello! Barbara,” said Sophie. “I like that name. I knew a man once… well not that you’re a man. Are you? Anyway I see you have a beehive haircut too. Am I back in the sixties?” She realised she was a bit confused, not able to finish one sentence or follow a single narrative. But the smell of bacon was so unnerving.

Barbara put the tray on the table.

“Well, no,” she said to Sophie. “It’s just a haircut that I like and it’s very practical for all sort of things.” She reached into hers and got out a pen and a notebook. Sophie lifted her hand to her haircut.

“Do I have?..”

“No dear. But, I need your sign here… just a formality.” Barbara smiled and handed the notebook to Sophie along with the pen. Then she crossed her arms waiting. Her fingers were drumming on her soft pale skin and Sophie couldn’t help but notice that Barbara had six fingers on one of her hands.

“Where am I?” she asked.

The evening helper said she was very sorry to tell me that my niece wouldn’t be able to make it this week, as she’d been on holiday and got quarantined.  You needn’t be sorry about that, I told her, I don’t know who she is anyway.  Not that I’m ungrateful, it’s very kind of her to come and visit me.  She tells me all about people I’ve never heard of, and I pretend to take an interest. I’m polite you see, brought up that way.

Then she said, you’ll have to go easy on the toilet paper, it’s all sold out. Panic buying, she said.

That’s what happens when people start shitting themselves with fear, I said, and she tutted at me as if I was a seven year old, the cheeky young whippersnapper.  And how shall I go easy on it, shall I crap outside behind the flat topped bushes under my window? Wipe my arse on a leaf?

Don’t be daft, you’d fall over, she replied crisply. She had a point.  My hip’s still playing me up, so my plans to escape are on hold. Not much point in it with all this quarantine nonsense going on anyway.   I might get rounded up and put in a tent by a faceless moron in a hazmat suit.  I must say the plague doctors outfits were much more stylish.  And there was no panic buying of loo rolls in those days either.

I don’t know what the world’s coming to. A handful of people with a cough and everyone loses their minds.  Then again, when the plague came, everyone lost their minds too. Not over toilet paper though.  We didn’t start losing our minds until the carts started rolling past every night full of the bodies.  No paper masks in those days either, we wound scarves around our faces because of the stench.

The worst thing was being locked in the house when the kitchen maid came down with it.  All of us, all of the nine children, my wife and her mother, the cook and the maids, all of us untouched, all but that one kitchen maid.  If only they’d taken her away, the rest of us might not have perished.  Not having enough food did us in, we were weakened with starvation. Shut in the house for weeks, with no escape.  Nothing to do but feast on the fears, like a smothering cloud. Like as not, we just gave up, and said, plague, carry me off, I can bear no more. I know after the youngest 6 children and the oldest boy died, I had no will to live.  I died before the wife did and felt a bit guilty about that, leaving her to face the rest of it alone.  She wasn’t happy about that, and who can blame her.

One thing for sure, it wasn’t running out of blasted toilet paper that was worrying me.

“Och aye, now that’s intriguing,” remarked Jacqui, looking up from her phone. “Well I’ll be darned.”

“What’s that, honey?” asked her friend Ella Marie, looking up from her needlepoint. She was working on a cushion cover with an Egyptian theme.

“How far away is Chickasaw?”

“Why, that’s not far away at all,” Arthur said, and then went into some detail involving road numbers that neither of the ladies paid attention to.

“What all is a happening over there in Chickasaw anyway?” asked Ella Marie.

“Can you drive me over there? I have to kidnap a baby,” said Jacqui.

Noticing the astonished looks on her friends faces she hastened to add, “Oh it had already been kidnapped. I just have to kidnap it back, the mother misses it.”

Arthur and his wife said “Ah” in unison, recalling the time when the divorced father had snatched the neighbours children, causing poor Mary Lou no end of grief.

“Of course we’ll help you, that child needs his mother,” Arthur said. “Where in Chickasaw are they holding him?”

“That’s the tricky part, Art. The exact location isn’t known. In fact, ” Jacqui said, “In all honestly I don’t quite know where to go from here.”

April

April was born in Manila, Arkansas (close to Whisp), birth date unknown.

Her family’s origins is South-Asian. April is an aspiring artist, using her free time as a nanny to explore her art. She met June in 1999, while June was on the run from the police and broke into the household where April was in charge of twins and a pack of dogs at the time. June’s unexpected help with the twelve whining household dogs helped win her over and they became inseparable friends shortly after that, despite June’s temper and kleptomania habits.

It’s taking blimmin forever for the Oober to get here, and, wouldn’t you just know it, rain!

“Hop in,” says the driver. He’s leaning over holding open the front door. An older chappie with a shiny forehead and rosacea. He definitely drinks. Maybe he’s come straight from the pub. Still, it’s raining and I’m late, so I hop in. In the back seat, mind. I’m not much of a one for talking.

“I’m Finnley.” I crack a smile to make up for sitting in the back. It feels strange smiling. In my mind, there’s not much point to smiling. It just encourages people to be overly familiar.

“Bert,” he says. He’s Australian I think from the accent and his expression is more of a sneer than a smile. I reckon I pissed him off not getting in the front seat.  “F i n n l e y.” He sounds it out like he’s learning a new language. “Always thought that was a boy’s name?”

“Can be either.”

Do I look like a boy, Bert? 

Anyhow, that’s enough chitchat for me. I get my phone out and make like I am checking for messages. Haha. As if.

“Here on holiday, Finnley? Pity about the weather.”

Oh here we go.

“A job.”

“Oh yeah, corker! Where’s that, Finnley?”

“Washingtown Beige House, Bert.”

I have to be honest, saying it out loud still gives me goosebumps. And Bert’s surprise doesn’t disappoint.

May quickly realized that she hadn’t planned this out properly at all. While Norma was fishing in her handbag for paper tissues, May switched the glasses of wine, so that she had the one with the laxatives herself. It wasn’t fair to inflict that on Norma, who was already verging on distraught. And May was feeling bloated anyway. A good clear out wouldn’t do her any harm.

May listened with genuine sympathy to Norma’s distress at being mistreated, but a glance at the kitchen clock prompted her to interrupt.

“Gotta go to the john,” she said, wondering if she had the vernacular right. She had almost said “must pop to the loo”, but that was the kind of lingo she used on the previous mission.  She had to send her finance a message. The rendezvous with the spinach pot was off.  Closing the bathroom door behind her, she reached for her phone and tapped the coded message.

iggi nefa san forlik snoodetta

Almost immediately there was a reply. No coded message this time, it was just a rolling eyes icon.  May sighed with relief. What had she been thinking to plan such a thing, on such short notice?

Norma watched May leave the room, a little frown furrowing her brow. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she felt uneasy. May was acting guilty. Why? Without even knowing why she did it, she swapped her wine glass for the other one.  Immediately feeling appalled at such a silly impulse, she reached to swap them back, but it was too late.   May burst into the room, beaming.

Norma was taken aback at the difference in May’s demeanour, which threw her into a mental quandary.  Had she mistaken a discomfort due to the need to use the lavatory for a guilty conscience?  And that impulse to switch the glasses!

“Well, cheers!” she said shakily, holding up the wine glass and then draining it.

“Bottoms up!” replied May, following suit.

Aunt Idle:

I don’t know how I restrained myself from throttling Finly when she finally handed me the letter from Corrie.  A whole week she’d had it,  and wouldn’t share it until she’d cleaned every last window. Some peoples priorities, I ask you!  The funny thing was that even when I had it in my hand I didn’t open it right away. Even with Mater and Bert breathing down my neck.

It was something to savour, the feeling of having an unopened letter in ones hand.  Not that this looked like the letters we used to get years ago, all crisp and slim on white paper, addressed in fine blue ink. This was a bundle tied with a bit of wool pulled out of an old jumper by the look of it, all squiggly,  holding together several layers of yellowed thin cardboard and written on with a beetroot colour dye and a makeshift brush by the look of it.  The kind of thing that used to be considered natural and artistic, long ago, when such things were the fashion.  I suppose the fashion now, in such places where fashion still exists, is for retro plastic.  They said plastic litter wouldn’t decompose for hundreds of years, how wrong they were! I’d give my right arm now for a cupboard full of tupperware with lids. Or even without lids.  Plastic bottles and shopping bags ~ when I think back to how we used to hate them, and they’re like gold now.  Better than gold, nobody has any interest in gold nowadays, but people would sell their soul for a plastic bucket.

I waited until the sun was going down, and sat on the porch with the golden rays of the lowering sun slanting across the yard.  I clasped the bundle to my heart and squinted into the sun and sighed with joyful anticipation.

“For the love of god, will you get on with it!” said Bert, rudely interrupting the moment.

Gently I pulled the faded red woolen string, and stopped for a moment, imaging the old cardigan that it might have been.

I didn’t have to look at Mater to know what the expression on her face was, but I wasn’t going to be rushed.  The string fell into my lap and I turned the first piece of card over.

There was a washed out picture of a rooster on it and a big fancy K.

“Cornflakes!” I started to weep. “Look, cornflakes!”

“You always hated cornflakes,” Mater said, missing the point as usual.  “You never liked packet cereal.”

The look I gave her was withering, although she didn’t seem to wither, not one bit.

“I used to like rice krispies,” Bert said.

By the time we’d finished discussing cereal, the sun had gone down and it was too dark to read the letter.

“June, have you got a magnet I can borrow?” asked May, the kitchen maid. Her name wasn’t really May, it was Merhnaz, but she knew she wouldn’t get the job if they knew her parents were from Iran.  June rummaged in some drawers, and was just about to ask May what she wanted a magnet for anyway, when May started to explain.

“I cooked up all the Swiss chard from the kitchen garden, you know how Mellie Noma enjoys that Indian dish, Delhi Sagi Belly, so I thought I’d get a big batch made for the freezer, well there I was, cooked it all, snipping it up with the scissors and the damn things split into two. And the metal bit that holds the two halves together has disappeared into the pot and do you think I can find it? ”

“It might have just blinked out though, and you’ll never find it,” said June.

“I’ll be in trouble is she breaks her fake teeth on it.”

“Here we are!” June held up the magnet with a triumphant smile. “Oh by the way, May, would you be able to babysit tonight for us?” She held the magnet just out of May’s reach until the kitchen maid agreed.

Aunt Idle:

I had a long conversation (in my head, where all the best conversations are these days) with Corrie while I sat on the porch.  I think it’s easier to communicate with her because she’s trying to communicate with me too.  The others don’t come through so clear, I get images but not much in the way of conversation.  Anyway, she said Clove is with her on the raftboat, and that Clove has a little boy now, seven years old or so, named Pan. I don’t know if that’s short for a longer name or if that’s his name. Anyway, he’s a great little diver, she said, can hold his breath for longer than anyone, although lots of the kiddies are good divers now, so she tells me.  They send them out scouting in the underwater ruins. Pan finds all sorts of useful things, especially in the air pockets. They call those kiddies the waterlarks, if I heard that right.  Pan the Waterlark.

Corrie said they’re in England, or what used to be called England, before it became a state of the American United States.  Scotland didn’t though, they rebuilt Hadrian’s wall to keep the Ameringlanders out (which is what they called them after America took over), and Wales rebuilt Offa’s Dyke to keep them out too.  When America fell into chaos (not sure what happened there, she didn’t say) it was dire there for years, Corrie said. Food shortages and floods mainly, and hardly any hospitals still functioning.   Corrie delivered Cloves baby herself she said, but I didn’t want all the details, just pleased to hear there were no complications.  Clove was back on her feet in no time in the rice paddies.

A great many people left on boats, Corrie said. She didn’t know where they’d gone to.  Most of the Midlands had been flooded for a good few years now. At first the water went up and down and people stayed and kept drying out their homes, but in the end people either left, or built floating homes.  Corrie said it was great living on the water ~ it wasn’t all that deep and they could maneouver around in various ways. It was great sitting on the deck watching all the little waterlarks popping up, proudly showing their finds.

I was thoroughly enjoying this chat with Corrie, sitting in the morning sun with my eyes closed, when the sky darkened and the red behind my eyelids turned black.  There was a hot air balloon contraption coming down,  and looked like it was heading for the old Bundy place.   Maybe Finly was back with supplies.  Maybe it was a stranger with news.  Maybe it was Devan.

The door flew open, sending the dust motes spinning crazily in the sudden shaft of sunlight. Eleri stood on the threshold, leaning theatrically against the door frame.

“You simply won’t believe what’s been happening.”

“Nothing injured here,” said Agent X brushing himself down. “What is your status, Agent V?”

“Hunky dory.” She extricated her tee shirt from a branch and inspected a deep red scrape on her arm. Her eyes circled the small clearing in which they had landed. If landed isn’t too grand a word.

“Lots of trees,” she said.

Agent X started heading towards a particularly dense area of bush. “This way to destination D,” he said brightly. “No time to lose.”

I wonder what I ever saw in him,” mused V. Although he does have quite a nice butt.

They had only trekked a few hundred meters when Agent X stopped abruptly. “Shush,” he whispered, holding his finger to his lips. “Do you hear something?”

“Damn!” shouted Agent X. “I left the water bottle behind! We can’t go back – the propeller thingy is malfunctioning! We’re coming in for a crash landing! Hold on tight V!”