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1.
Patsy and the Family from Hell
“You gotta spring me fast, Eddy.” Patsy rasped. Orange overalls were not a good look on her. “I can’t hack it in the Big House. Do you know what happens to the pretty ones in prison? They’ll eat me alive, Eddy. They’ll SUCK ME DRY!!!”
“No one’s going to suck you, sweetie,” Edina soothed. She glanced around the cell (small and dirty) before her gaze settled on the guard (large and clean). His natty red cap reassuringly indicated that someone around here understood about Matching Their Colours. “How exactly did you end up in military jail?”
Patsy’s pout would have been visible from orbit. “The bitch Jackie.”
“Your sister?”
“No. Not my sister. That’s the point.”
“I’ve lost you, sweetie.”
“Shame she bloody didn’t. ‘Did you know I was actually adopted, Patsy?’ Well, it was a relief to find that out, obviously. Sheltering under the same family tree as the cat-fancier was always a curse. But then she started waving around this kitschy little pocket-watch that the orphanage had just sent her. And when she opened it,” Patsy tried, from force of habit, to inhale on an imaginary cigarette, “that’s when things got weird.”
Edina shrugged. “Jackie’s been weird for years, sweetie.”
“True. But she used to be just ‘Unhealthy interest in manky moggies’-weird. Not ‘ let’s strap Patsy to an operating table and go Frankenstein on her arse’- weird.” Patsy shuddered. “There were Instruments, Eddy. You don’t want to know about the Instruments.”
“Did she say why she was doing it?”
“Beats me. Kept babbling on about ‘the Time War’...”
“The world of American news-magazine publishing is pretty cutthroat, darling.”
Patsy was not really listening. “.... and then she decided that she wanted my DNA to build super-soldiers. Apparently, my cell structure showed a unique resistance to all the toxins she could throw at it.”
“That is weird.”
“Jackie said that an army grown from me would make the Horde of Travesties look like the Care Bears.” Patsy’s tone suggested that she was rather proud of this bit.
“Bizarre. What stopped her, then?”
“I’m not sure. Something exploded, and there was a lot of shouting. Vague memories of some guy in a brown suit and trainers dashing around, then everything went black. I came to just in time to have my collar felt by these Fascists.”
“Who are they?”
“Call themselves UNIT, of all things. Like I told the man in charge: ‘they get thirty of those into a vodka bottle; why should I care what you think?’ Then he arrested me. Arse-hole.”
The cell door opened. Another soldier, wearing a swankier uniform crested with an expression of acute embarrassment, shuffled in and cleared his throat.
“You are free to go, Ms. Stone. The Chief Scientific Advisor has vouched for your complete innocence in this matter. Please accept UNIT’s apologies.”
“I should jolly well think so.” Even in the most trying circumstances, Patsy could still clear an impressive height of hauteur from a standing start. “UNIT will be hearing from my lawyer, once I find him, and get him to sober up. Let’s split, Eddy.”
Patsy, never one to forget a grudge, was gratified, some time later, when UNIT found itself embroiled in that peculiar scandal about handing a tenth of the world’s children over to global terrorists.
“I could have told you that would happen. Giving away other people’s sprogs? Bloody disgrace.”
“Er, you do remember that you once sold Saffy into slavery, don’t you, sweetie?”
“Exactly. ‘Sold’.” Patsy took a pull at her cigarette, and puffed out the smoke with relish. “What kind of an idiot gives the little bastards away?”
2.
Saffy and the Disappearing Geek
“Where’s Saffron today, dear?” asked Mother.
“In Wales. Looking for Titicaca.”
“Gracious.” Mother was floating around the kitchen with the vague, yet purposive air of an iceberg that had just spotted a cruise-liner. Eddy watched as she scrutinized a jar of salad dressing, before consigning it to the depths of her handbag. “Isn’t Titicaca in Bolivia, dear?”
“Not that Titicaca. Don’t you remember the pint-sized nerdette who used to follow Saffy around all the time?”
“Oh, yes. Sarah.”
“Her real name was ‘Toshiko’, apparently. She only called herself ‘Sarah’ to piss off her parents. It’s so embarrassing when people change their names like that. It’s naïf, darling. Naif.”
“Isn’t it just, Edwina?”
Eddy decided to change the subject.
“Anyway, Saffy lost touch with Geekorama after that whole Emma Bunton thing. Which was very naughty of my little budgerigar – very naughty indeed. It’s like I’ve always said to her: ‘You have to keep your friends close, darling. Especially the ones that make you look tall.’ But she never listens. Are you going out?”
Mother continued to clamber into her coat. “Yes, dear. I’m off to do some star-gazing. At the allotment.”
This came as a surprise to Eddy, who was pretty sure that the Old Woman had no interest in astronomy, and certain that she did not have an allotment. Eddy decided not to make a big issue of this, however. There was always the chance that a gaze fixed firmly on the heavens might not notice a big hole in the ground, or an oncoming bendy bus. She pressed on:
“So, without Saffy to look up to, Saratotiticashko, or whatever her name is, went off the rails. How you go downhill from stalking Spice Girls is a mystery to me, darling, but somehow the geek managed it. And then she disappeared. Saffy only just got a ‘lead’ (that’s what they call it in the movies, isn’t it? A ‘lead’?) on where she’s been.”
“And now Saffron’s gone off alone to find her?” Mother picked up an umbrella and paused on the threshold.” Isn’t that a little dangerous, dear?”
“I tried to talk her out of it. But you know there’s no point in arguing with Saffy once she gets her Intrepid Girl Reporter Face on.”
“I suppose not, dear.” Mother bustled off. “Don’t wait up!”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Saffron was found sitting quietly the next morning in Cardiff Central Station, dreamy of eye and dishevelled of clothes. There were several odd gaps in her memory of the preceding twenty-four hours, she admitted later. But the important stuff still stood out very clearly.
“So what was Cardiff like, sweetie?” asked Edina.
“Innovative,” said Saffron. And blushed.
Eddy had never been so proud of her little girl.
3.
Eddy and the Man who Would Be King
“There’s something really suspicious about all this, Mum.” Saffron was frowning. Like that was a surprise to anyone.
“I don’t know what you mean, sweetie. Why shouldn’t a rising star in politics hire a top-flight consultant like moi to handle his PR?”
“Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? This man is the toast of Whitehall. Your firm is the toast you get half-burnt for breakfast in The Happy Cook.” Saffron scowled thoughtfully into the middle distance. “It’s almost as though he thinks that a PR firm is something he ought to have, but that one which actually did anything would get in his way.”
Eddy considered this theory to be utterly ridiculous, as she was careful to point out to her new client when she told him. She was relieved that he was such a good sport about it.
“Quite the conspiracy theorist, your daughter. What did you say her name was, again? Saffron, wasn’t it?”
Eddy nodded, mutely. He had very manly lips, she thought. The lips of a Leader.
“Saffron.” The leaderly lips whisked out the fricatives with gusto. “Oh yes. I can see I’m going to have to keep an eye on her. Wouldn’t want her ruining my Evil Master-Plan now, would I?”
He laughed heartily. It was so nice, Eddy thought, to find a politician with a sense of humour. And sexy collarbones. Bad Eddy. She forced herself to concentrate on what he was saying.
“I love your style suggestions for my office, Edina. But I’m starting to see that this little room is too small a canvas for your obvious talents. Have you ever considered redesigning something bigger? I’m thinking... Jersey.”
Edina frowned. “The sweaters?”
“The island.”
“Huh? Oh. You’re joking, of course.” Edina chuckled.
Harold Saxon smiled disarmingly. “Of course.”
4.
Mother and the Punch-Drunk Boxing Day
Christmas 2009 was a difficult time for Eddy. It was, of course, traditional that she blacked out for a period of several hours at some point during the festive season. But that had previously tended to take place after the alcohol. The discovery that something very similar had happened simultaneously to everyone else on the planet was only marginally reassuring. Eddy decided to combat the existential angst which this entailed by spending most of Boxing Day in bed with a whisky bottle. When she did manage to shuffle downstairs , she met with another unpleasant surprise.
“Good afternoon, dear,” Mother chirped, as she continued to dust the... thing which now occupied most of the kitchen. “Who’s been a sleepy-head, then?”
Eddy squinted blearily at the technological monstrosity in front of her. She had become accustomed, down the years, to the ways in which the Old Woman’s kleptomaniac zeal for disconcertingly large objects sometimes introduced odd grace notes to the house’s ensemble: Chippendale cabinets; grandfather clocks; the occasional Harley. This, however, was definitely a departure. “What the hell is that thing?”
“It’s an Immortality Gate, dear.” Mother executed a deft, final flick with her feather-duster, and stood back to admire her handiwork. “My friends and I decided that we should put it where it couldn’t cause any more botheration.”
Eddy opened her mouth, but was interrupted by the ringing of the door-bell. Mother beamed, and reached for her coat.
“That will be for me, dear. Can I leave you to hold down the fort?”
Eddy gave up. “Fine.”
“I’m going to the allotment.” Mother said over her shoulder as she headed for the front door.
“Great.”
“There’ll be star-gazing.”
“Super.”
“And then I’m going to let Wilf ravish me next to the compost.”
“Fantas... hang on a minute.” Eddy frowned. “What did you just say?”
The thud of the shutting door was the sole reply.
FINIS