Something rotten

'It's very dry in here, isn't it?' muttered Emma unsubtly, still staring at the drinks cabinet.

'I was like you once,' said Mrs Beatty, who had stopped patting my hand and returned to her knitting. 'I had a wonderful life with Edgar and then, one morning, I wake up in a different house with Gerald lying next to me. He didn't believe me when I explained the problem, and I was on medication for ten years until I came here. It is only now, in the company of your good selves, that I am coming to the realisation that it is only a malady of the head.'

I was horrified.

'Mother?'

'It's something that we must try and face, my dear.'

'But Dad visits you, doesn't he?'

'Well, I believe he does,' she said, thinking hard, 'but of course when he's gone it's only a memory. There isn't any real proof that he ever existed.'

'What about me? And Joffy? Or even Anton? How were we born without Dad?'

She shrugged at the impossibility of the paradox.

'Perhaps it was, after all, youthful indiscretions that I have expunged from my mind.'

'And Emma? And Herr Bismarck? How do you explain them being here?'

'Well,' said my mother, thinking hard, 'I'm sure there's a rational explanation for it . . . somewhere.'

'Is this what this group teaches you?' I replied angrily. 'To deny the memories of your loved ones?'

I looked around at the gathering whose members had, it seemed, given up in the face of the hopeless paradox that they lived every minute of their lives. I opened my mouth to try to describe eloquently just how I knew Landen had once been married to me when I realised I was wasting my time. There was nothing, but nothing, to suggest it was anything other than in my mind. I sighed. To be truthful, it was in my mind. It hadn't happened. I just had memories of how it might have turned out. The tall thin man, the realist, was begi

'You want proof—'

I was interrupted by an excited knock at the front door. Whoever it was didn't waste any time; they just walked straight into the house and into the front room. It was a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who was holding the hand of a confused and acutely embarrassed-looking man.

'Hello, group!' she said happily. 'It's Ralph! I got him back!'

'Ah!' said Emma. 'This calls for a celebration!' Everyone ignored her.

'I'm sorry,' said my mother, 'have you got the right house? Or the right self-help group?'

'Yes, yes,' the woman asserted. 'It's Julie, Julie Aseizer. I've been coming to this group every week for the past three years!'

There was silence in the group. All you could hear was the quiet click of Mrs Beatty's knitting needles.

'Well, I haven't seen you,' a

The group members shook their heads blankly.

'I expect you think this is really fu

The woman stood for a moment, biting her lip, but it was her husband who spoke.

'Come on, darling, I'm taking you home.'

'But wait—!' she said. 'Now he's back everything is as it was and I wouldn't have needed to come to your group, so I didn't — yet I remember—'

Her voice trailed off and her husband gave her a hug as she started to sob. He led her out, apologising profusely all the while.

As soon as they had gone the thin man sat down indignantly.

'A sorry state of affairs!' he grumbled.

'Everyone thinks it's fu

'It gave me a powerful thirst,' added Emma. 'Anyone else?'

'Maybe,' I suggested, 'they should start a self-help group for themselves — they could call it Eradications Anonymous Anonymous.'

No one thought it was fu

I didn't contribute much to the group after that, and indeed the conversation soon threaded away from eradications and on to more mundane matters, such as the latest crop of TV shows that seemed to have flourished in my absence. Celebrity Name That Fruit! hosted by Frankie Saveloy was a ratings topper these days, as was Toasters from Hell and You've Been Stapled!, a collection of England's fu

10

Mrs Tiggy-Winkle

KIERKEGAARD BOOK — BURNING CEREMONY PROVES DANISH PHILOSOPHER'S UNPOPULARITY

Chancellor Yorrick Kaine last night officiated at the first burning of Danish literature with the incineration of eight copies ot Fear and Trembling, a quantity that fell far short of the expected 'thirty or forty tons'. When asked to comment on the apparent lack of enthusiasm among the public for torching their Danish philosophy. Kaine explained that 'Kierkegaard is clearly less popular than we thought, and rightly so — next stop Hans Christian Andersen!' Kierkegaard himself was unavailable for comment, having inconsiderately allowed himself to be dead for a number of years.

I was dreaming that a large chainsaw-wielding elephant was sitting on me when I awoke at two in the morning. I was still fully dressed with a snoring Friday fast asleep on my chest. I put him back in his cot and turned the bedside lamp to the wall to soften the light. My mother, for reasons known only to herself, had kept my bedroom pretty much as it was at the time I had left home. It was nostalgic but also deeply disturbing to see just what had interested me in my late teens. It seemed that it had been boys, music, Jane Austen and law enforcement, but not particularly in that order.

I undressed and slipped on a long T-shirt and stared at Friday's sleeping form, his lips making gentle sucky motions.

'Psss!' said a voice close at hand. I turned. There, in the semi-dark, was a very large hedgehog dressed in a pinafore and bo

'Whoa!' she breathed in wonderment. 'Street lights are orange. Never would have thought that!'

'Mrs Tiggy-Winkle,' I said, 'I've only been gone two days!'

'Sorry to bother you,' she said, curtsying quickly and absently folding my shirt, which I had tossed over a chair-back, 'but there are one or two things going on that I thought you should know about — and you did say that if I had any questions to ask.'

'Okay — but not here; we'll wake Friday.'

So we crept downstairs to the kitchen. I pulled down the blinds before turning the lights on as a six-foot hedgehog in a shawl and bo

I offered Mrs Tiggy-Winkle a seat at the table. Although she, Emperor Zhark and Bradshaw had been put in charge of ru