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Chapters (30)
  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. An Introduction to the Introduction to the New Edition
  5. Introduction to the New Edition
  6. Editor’s Note
  7. Introduction
  8. Prologue
  9. Life
  10. The Universe
  11. And Everything
  12. The Salmon Of Doubt
  13. Chapter 1
  14. Chapter 2
  15. Chapter 3
  16. Chapter 4
  17. Chapter 5
  18. Chapter 6
  19. Chapter 7
  20. Chapter 8
  21. Chapter 9
  22. Chapter 10
  23. Chapter 11
  24. Epilogue
  25. Editor’s Acknowledgments
  26. For More Information
  27. Praise
  28. Don't Panic
  29. Also by Douglas Adams
  30. Copyright Page

She tried to wave down one or two of the other cars on the road, but they manoeuvred politely past her. One of them was an open-topped Mustang with the radio playing loudly. I’d love to be able to say that it was tuned to an oldies station and that the words “How does it feeeeel? How does it feeeeeel?” snarled out at this moment, but there are limits even to fiction. It was an oldies station, but the old song it was playing was “Sunday Girl” by Blondie, and so wasn’t even remotely appropriate, seeing as this was a Thursday. What could she do?

Another perfect crime. Another perfect day in the City of Angels. And only one tiny little lie.

Forgive me.

Chapter 9

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Chapter 9
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IF THERE IS an uglier building in England than Ranting Manor, then I haven’t seen it. It must be hiding somewhere and not, like Ranting Manor, squatting in the middle of a hundred acres of rolling parkland. The original estate consisted of many more hundreds of acres that were the pride of Oxfordshire, but generations of syphilitic idiocy and blitheringness have reduced it to its current decrepit state—an ill-kempt bunch of woods, fields, and lawns littered with the results of various failed attempts to raise money by whatever means seemed to someone like a good idea at the time: a godforsaken fun fair, a once quite well-stocked zoo, and, of more recent provenance, a small high-technology business park, current occupant one faltering computer games company, now cast adrift by its American parent and believed to be the only such company in the world making a loss. You could find a billion-barrel oilfield in the grounds of Ranting Manor and you could pretty much guarantee that within a couple of years it would be operating at a loss, and would require the selling of the family tin to keep it going. The family silver has long since gone, of course, along with most of the family. Disease, alcohol, drugs, sexual imbecility, and poorly maintained road vehicles have combined to cut vicious swathes through the ranks of the Rantings and reduced them to almost none.