When Did You Last See Your Father?

Book : Part of: Chronicles of St. Mary's

by Jodi Taylor

Genres: Time Travel; Science Fiction

Synopsis

A Chronicles of St Mary's short story that is sure to entertain. If you love Jasper Fforde or Ben Aaronovitch, you won't be able to resist Jodi Taylor.

Includes bonus St Mary's escapades 'Desiccated Water' and 'Markham and the Anal Probing' — never before heard in audio — and original introductions read by the author herself

'Max, your father is here. He's come to take Matthew away.'

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Max's husband met Max's father? What would Leon do?

They're normally a fairly amiable bunch, but this is the story of what to expect if St Mary's doesn't like someone. As in, really doesn't like someone. Warning: contains a unit-wide criminal enterprise, a great deal of illegal activity and a sad misuse of public resources. All the things a father will do to protect his family.

It is also a story of revenge. Because this is payback - St Mary's style.

Bonus Stories:

'Desiccated Water' — Professor Rapson breaks astonishing new ground with his latest feat of scientific invention.

'Markham and the Anal Probing' — When Markham disappears in the middle of nowhere, Max jumps to the only logical conclusion: alien abduction.

Release date: September 5, 2019

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 48

Sample

I don’t know how I came to write this. I know when I came to write it. That’s easy. I was climbing into bed one night, accompanied by all the usual paraphernalia – laptop, Kindle, box of tissues for my early morning nose – my nose will kill me one day – notebook and a couple of pens – because they all run out together – and a Terry Pratchett novel. The great man is probably most alarmed to find that death has not released him from the burden of having me take him to bed every night.

Anyway, it was a night just like any other. I arranged everything nicely, wandered off for the usual bathroom pit stop and threw my dressing gown on the floor just where I’ll trip over it when I lurch, crusty-eyed and wild-haired, on my way back to the bathroom the next morning.

I’m going to digress. I know bed hair is fashionable these days, but I have real bed hair. REAL bed hair, not the namby-pamby, girlie stuff you get from a jar. I’ve learned to perform my early morning ablutions with my eyes closed. Getting a brush through it is a waste of time – I just have to wait for gravity to kick in, which is normally around three in the ­afternoon.

I’ve lost the thread again. Bed. Yes. I was just at that stage where I was drifting off nicely and that’s when the idea hit me. And it wouldn’t go away. There was a really weird compulsion to write this one. I sat up and switched on the light, because there was no chance of sleep, and got stuck in. I only meant to make a few notes – just so I didn’t forget anything – but I had half the story down that night. I finished the whole thing in about a week and then made myself put it away for a while because it was a story I needed to read again from a distance.

And the idea?

What would happen if Max’s husband ever met Max’s father?

I knew what he’d want to do but what would he actually do? What could he do? Without making things even worse for Max or littering the place with corpses, I mean. Protecting Max would be his first instinct. And then I thought – would it? Because suppose it wasn’t Max her father wanted? Suppose it was Matthew. And after everything that’s happened to him, the last thing he needs is to meet his grandad.

So, there’s Leon – he lost his first family under tragic circumstances and now it looks as if it’s going to happen all over again. Leon’s family means everything to him.

What would he do?



I never knew my father. As far as I know he’s never seen me and I’m almost certain I’ve never seen him. I don’t know who he was, what he was, or what he’d done. I do remember a group of men – if there were women present I don’t remember them – sitting behind a long table, asking, ‘When did you last see your father?’ I was about three or four years old, I think, and they’d had to stand me on a box so I could see over the table.

I said nothing. There was nothing I could say. They asked the same question in a number of different ways. I said nothing in exactly the same way to all of them.

Eventually they went away. There were no threats or violence. No one ransacked the house. My mother was more angry than frightened. I never asked what it had been about and she never volunteered the information. They never came back and slowly the memory faded.

In fact, Maman never spoke of my father at all. I don’t know if it was because he died and she loved him so much that talking about him was too painful, or whether he was someone she was glad to be rid of and wasn’t going to pollute the rest of her life by thinking about him.

Maman was English and so am I. Her name was Grace and it suited her. Her height gave her an elegance even among the elegant Frenchwomen. We weren’t well off, but she always looked smart. In fact, I thought she always looked beautiful. It was only later I realised just how poor we had been. It didn’t take me long to realise that everything I asked for – new toys, new books and so on – must have entailed considerable sacrifice on her part. I made sure I didn’t ask for much.

My life these days is good. If I have any regrets at all, it’s that she didn’t live long enough for my happy ending. I have no idea what she would have made of Max – or Max of her. I like to think there’s a place somewhere, where she knows everything turned out well and that I’m grateful for what she did for me.

One day, every year, I go away somewhere quiet – so nowhere near St Mary’s, then – to a place I found some time ago. It was a mis-jump. They happen occasionally. All you can do is return to St Mary’s, re-check the coordinates and have another go.

On this occasion, I opened the door on to a landscape without colour. Blue-grey clouds bulged with rain, hanging so low they seemed to suck all sound and movement from the landscape. Blue-grey mountains rose up around me, jagged and steep, encircling an expanse of sullen, motionless water, which, in its turn, reflected the blue-grey sky.

I stared around.

Utter silence. Perfect peace. Nothing moved. No birds sang. There were no ripples in the water. A soundless, timeless landscape that had remained unchanged over the centuries. Moisture hung heavily in the still, warm air.

After everything that had happened to me, it was hard to believe this was part of the same world. That a place like this could exist in the world that had taken my family from me. A world in which Stevie’s pain-wracked sobs still echoed inside my head.

I hardly dared move, not wanting to disturb the peace of this strange place. Because there was something special about it. . . .