Christmas Pie by Jodi Taylor

Author:Jodi Taylor [Taylor, Jodi]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2023-12-25T06:00:00+00:00

For some reason, everyone had gone – which was just typical, wasn’t it? I stared around. Yep, still in the porch on the bench looking out at the fog, so things hadn’t got any better. Worryingly, I wasn’t feeling any pain – but then, you don’t in dreams, do you? White river mist swirled past the entrance. The whole effect was rather pretty. Swirly. I leaned back, all the better to enjoy it. And because I really was feeling a bit odd.

A tall, robed shape appeared silently in the entrance, giving me a very nasty shock, I can tell you. The Angel of Death had turned up to collect me in person. I wasn’t sure whether this was a Good or a Bad Thing.

‘My brother, are you hurt?’

‘I’m absolutely fine,’ I said bravely, because that’s what we always say, even when facing death itself.

He seemed puzzled by my response. Great – a puzzled Angel of Death. I pulled myself together and became less modern.

‘I have hurt my head,’ I said, by way of an explanation.

‘May I see?’

The next moment he was sitting beside me. Ah – not the Angel of Death. Not this time, anyway. A Benedictine monk. Very gently, he parted my hair, saying, ‘Yes, I see.’

Opening the scrip hanging from his belt, he pulled out a cloth, folded it carefully into a pad and very gently applied it to the back of my head. ‘This will ease your pain, my brother.’

I didn’t see how but I thanked him anyway. It was only later I realised it wasn’t the pain in my head he’d been talking about.

I leaned back against the cold stone wall. ‘Thank you.’

We sat for a while. I couldn’t see his face – it was hidden in the dark shadow under his hood.

‘You are happy?’

I was quite surprised by the question, but this was a dream, after all. Any moment now I’d discover I was naked and had forgotten an important meeting with Dr Bairstow, the location of which I couldn’t quite remember. However, standards must be maintained, even in dreams.

‘Yes, I am,’ I said. ‘Apart from this, of course.’ I touched my head.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘To be happy was always in your nature.’

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that so I said nothing. Because it was my dream and I didn’t have to talk if I didn’t want to. Besides, someone would be along in a moment to give me a hand and then I could go home.

‘I feared we had lost you to the river,’ he said, which didn’t make a lot of sense because the river was all the way over there but, you know, long day . . . head not working properly . . . dream . . .

‘No,’ I said. ‘Even I couldn’t fall into the Thames from here. Although I suspect Max will give it a jolly good try.’

I thought he’d get up and go – job well done and all that – but he stayed where he was, sitting next to me, his hands resting on his knees.

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