“Good,” said Bradshaw, turning to Zhark and Tiggy-Winkle. “And you two—I want you all geared up and ready to try to get into ‘The Speckled Band’ by way of ‘The Disintegrator Ray’ by fourteen hundred hours.”

Bradshaw looked at his clipboard and then vanished. We all stood up.

“Do you want us to come with you?” asked Zhark. “Strictly speaking, your checking up on Thursday1–4 is a conflict-of-interest transgression.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, and the pair of them wished me well and vanished, like Bradshaw, into thin air.

Thursday Next

I was only vaguely consulted when the first four of the Thursday Next books were constructed. I was asked about my car, my house, and I even lent them a photo album (which I never got back). I was also introduced to the bland and faceless generic who would eventually become Thursday1–4. The rest was created from newspaper reports and just plucked from the air. If I’d cared more about how it all was going to turn out, perhaps I would have given them more time.

A fter another fruitless argument with the dispatcher at TransGenre Taxis, who told me they had two drivers off sick and it wasn’t their fault but they would “see what could be done,” I took the elevator down to the sixth floor of the Great Library and walked to the section of shelving that carried all five of the Thursday books, from The Eyre Affair all the way through to The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco. There was every edition, too—from publisher’s proof to hardback, large print and mass-market paperback. I picked up a copy of The Eyre Affair and looked carefully for a way in. I knew that the book was first-person narrative, and having a second me clearly visible to readers would be wildly confusing—if the book wasn’t confusing enough already. I soon found what I was looking for: a time lapse of six weeks after Landen’s death near the beginning of the book. I scanned the page for the correct place, and, using an oblique, nonappearing-entry method taught to me by Miss Havisham, I slipped unseen into the end of chapter one.

I arrived in the written Swindon just as the sun was dipping below the horizon, and I was standing opposite our house in the Old Town. Or at least it was the remains of our house. The fire had just been put out, and the building was now a blackened ruin, the still-hot timbers steaming as they were doused with water. Through the twinkling of blue and red emergency lights, I could see a small figure sitting in the back of an ambulance, a blanket draped across her shoulders. The legal necessity of removing Landen from the series was actually a blessing in disguise for the publishers. It freed up their Thursday romantically and also gave a reason for her psychotic personality. Boy, was this book ever crap.