“Okay. Make it granary with marmalade, go easy on the butter.”

The floor manager smiled as though I had just saved his job—which I probably had—and everything started over once again.

“Would you like some toast?” asked Lush.

“Thanks.”

I took a small bite. Everyone was watching me, so I decided to make it easy for them.

“Very good indeed.”

I saw the floor manager giving me an enthusiastic thumbs-up as he dabbed his brow with a handkerchief.

“Right,” sighed Lush. “Let’s get on with it. First I would like to ask the question that everyone wants to know: How did you actually get into the book of Jane Eyre in the first place?”

“That’s easily explained,” I began. “You see, my uncle Mycroft invented a device called a Prose Portal—”

Flanker coughed. I could sense what he was going to say and I cursed myself for being so foolish as to believe The Adrian Lush Show would be uncensored. I was SpecOps, after all.

“Ms. Next,” began Flanker, “perhaps you don’t know it but your uncle is still the subject of a secrecy certificate dating back to 1934. It might be prudent if you didn’t mention him—or the Prose Portal.”

The floor manager yelled, “We’ve cut!” again and Lush thought for a moment.

“Can we talk about how Hades stole the manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit?”

“Let me think,” replied Flanker, then after a tiny pause, said: “No.”

“It’s not something we want the citizenry to think is—” said Marat so suddenly that quite a few people jumped. Up until that moment he hadn’t said a word.

“Sorry?” asked Flanker.

“Nothing,” said the ChronoGuard operative, who was now in his mid-sixties. “I’m just getting a touch proleptic in my old age.”

“Can we talk about the successful return of Jane to her book?” I asked wearily.

“I refer you to my previous answer,” growled Flanker.

“How about the time my partner Bowden and I drove through a patch of bad time on the motorway?”

“It’s not something we want the citizenry to think is easy,” said Marat—who was now in his early twenties—with renewed enthusiasm. “If the public think that ChronoGuard work is straightforward, confidence might well be shaken.”

“Quite correct,” asserted Flanker.

“Perhaps you’d like to do this interview?” I asked him.

“Hey!” said Flanker, standing up and jabbing a finger in my direction. “There’s no need to get snippy with us, Next. You’re here to do a job in your capacity as a serving SpecOps officer. You are not here to tell the truth as you see it!”

Lush looked uneasily at me; I raised my eyebrows and shrugged.

“Now look here,” said Lush in a strident tone, “if I’m going to interview Ms. Next I must ask questions that the public want to hear!”