Doctor Who: Keeping Up With the Joneses by Nick Harkaway Page B

amazement was so palpable that she dismissed the poker for the moment, and carried on speaking. ‘I said, “Excuse me”,’ she said, still stern but allowing for the possibility that it was all a comical misunderstanding. Perhaps she’d left the front door open after going to the grocer – the latch was a little soft – and he’d come in here to wait for her return. Or something. There were explanations, thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Numbers larger than that, numbers you’d need new ways of writing down…
    He said ‘What?’ again.
    ‘This is my house,’ she said, feeling a little guilty now at having given him such a shock. ‘My Reading Room. What can I do for you?’
    ‘Your house?’
    ‘Yes. My house.’ She hoped he wasn’t going to say surely it was her husband’s house. She might have to go for the poker after all, and claim he’d made an inappropriate advance.
    ‘Your house!’ he said instead, in the tones of one coming to terms with the idea.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Your house!’ No doubt about it. The light had dawned. He smiled. Beamed, even. ‘Your house. Of course it is. Where are my manners? I’m with The Library, we’re just looking for lost books.’ He produced a wallet, showed her a piece of paper. ‘And there’s one. They get everywhere, don’t they, books? Little scamps.’ He nodded to himself, gathered up the manual he had been reading and shoved it in his pocket.
    She peered at the paper. She said, blankly, ‘It’s blank.’
    He stared at her again, looked at it. ‘So it is! Wrong wallet, my mistake. Must have left the card in my other trousers. Lovely house. Lovely library. Really amazing. Oooh, look, there’s a copy of
Great Expectations
up there, I’ve never read that one, I hear it’s awful. “Do a comedy,” I told him. “Everyone loves
Christmas Carol
.”’
    She didn’t bother to comment on this ridiculous statement; she just waited with what her husband had called her organist’s look, because he said church organists always knew how to silence wayward young men and so did she. It worked. He wilted a bit.
    ‘This is my library,’ she said. ‘In my house. So for the last time: what are you doing here?’
    He stroked his chin. It was a fine chin, she thought. No doubt many young women – and, yes, some not so young – had made fools of themselves over this man. Simon had been dead for three years and more. It wasn’t a crime to notice.
    She stamped hard on that thought, and waited.
    ‘Paying guest,’ he suggested.
    ‘Fifty pounds a week, in advance, plus breakfast. How long will you be here?’
    ‘Indefinitely. Hang on, fifty quid?’
    ‘Plus breakfast!’
    ‘That’s a bit steep, even for…’ He stopped. ‘Where are we, anyway?’
    Fifty pounds was fifty pounds, even if the customer was a lunatic. ‘Wales,’ she told him staunchly.
    He sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course. In all the universe, space and time, it turns out however far you go there’s mostly Wales.’
    He stared off into space – literally into space, she was fairly sure, his gaze seemed to fix on a horizon so far beyond her damasked wall that she was almost a little envious – and when the silence became a little awkward she asked for his name, for the visitor’s book. She was fairly sure he was about to say ‘Smith’ when something stopped him. His mouth – a good mouth, lean and twitching upwards at the corners – started to form the letter ‘S’, but then a shadow crossed his face and he changed his mind. ‘J… Jer- Jah- Juh- Jo… J-J-oooones,’ he said. ‘Definitely. Jones. John Jones. With a “J”. My name,’ in case it hadn’t been clear enough that it wasn’t, ‘is John J-ones.’
    ‘Well,’ she replied, ‘you’ll fit right in, then,’ and took his hand because he had it stuck out there for her to shake and if she didn’t she would seem rude. ‘Welcome to Jonestown.’
    ‘Jonestown,’ he repeated. ‘Of course. Very nice!’
    She