“It’s true. We call it a tongue twister.”

“Fascinating! There’s nothing like that here, you know. I can say ‘The sixth sheikh’s sixth sheep’s sick’ over and over as many times as I want!”

And he did, three times.

“Now you try.”

I took a deep breath. “The sixth spleeps sics sleeks . . . sick.”

Arnold laughed like a drain. I don’t think he’d come across anything quite so funny in his life. I smiled.

“Do it again!”

“No thanks.4 How do I stop this footnoterphone blabbering inside my skull?”

“Just think Off very strongly.”

I did, and the footnoterphone stopped.

“Better?”

I nodded.

“You’ll get the hang of it.”

He thought for a minute, looked up and down the lake in an overtly innocent manner, then said, “Do you want to buy some verbs? Not any of your rubbish, either. Good, strong, healthy regulars—straight from the Text Sea—I have a friend on a scrawltrawler.”

I smiled. “I don’t think so, Arnold—and I don’t think you should ask me—I’m Jurisfiction.”

“Oh,” said Arnold, looking pale all of a sudden. He bit his lip and gave such an imploring look that I almost laughed.

“Don’t sweat,” I told him, “I won’t report it.”

He sighed a deep sigh of relief, muttered his thanks, remounted his motorbike and drove off in a jerky fashion, narrowly missing the mailboxes at the top of the track.

The interior of the flying boat was lighter and more airy than I had imagined, but it smelt a bit musty. Mary was mistaken; she had not been halfway through the craft’s conversion—it was more like one-tenth. The walls were half-paneled with pine tongue-and-groove, and rock-wool insulation stuck out untidily along with unused electrical cables. There was room for two floors within the boat’s cavernous hull, the downstairs a large, open-plan living room with a couple of old sofas pointing towards a television set. I tried to switch it on but it was dead—there was no TV in the BookWorld unless called for in the narrative. Much of what I could see around me were merely props, necessary for the chapter in which Jack Spratt visits the Sunderland to discuss the case. On the mantelpiece above a small wood-burning stove were pictures of Mary from her days at the police training college, and another from when she was promoted to detective sergeant.