Frozen in Crime

Chapter 13 Restless in Pitkirtly

Amaryllis was very fond of Jemima and Dave, but she really didn't want to spend Christmas with them. She had a feeling of impending doom even about the few hours on Christmas Day when she and Christopher were due to go round to Jemima's house for tea and cake. She spent the morning wishing she could go down with some acute but not life-threatening illness that would mean hibernating for a few days and then resuming what passed for her social life just before the Queen of Scots Hogmanay party. If she and Christopher were even welcome at the Queen of Scots again after wrecking the landlord's Range Rover.

She expressed this last point to Christopher as they made their way over to Jemima's.

'It's all right,' he said. 'I've let him know the worst and promised to get it back to him in a reasonable state before the middle of the week. If the weather doesn't get any worse, that is. Otherwise I've offered to lend him Dave's truck if he needs transport.'

'Very organised,' said Amaryllis. She hoped he didn't sense any criticism in her tone. It would have been more fun to wind the landlord up a bit, have a shouting match with him and then produce the Range Rover at the eleventh hour. She sighed.

'Still feeling restless?' he said.

'Restless isn't the right word,' she said, frowning. 'Dissatisfied, maybe.'

'Dissatisfaction's all right,' he said. 'That's what makes people do something to improve things.'

'I suppose so.'

'You could always use this time to work out what to do about it,' he said. 'Do some brainstorming, mind-mapping, maybe a SWOT analysis...'

She glanced sideways at him. 'Have you been on one of these management training courses again?'

'Not for a while,' he said defensively. 'OK, well, two weeks ago.'

'Where would we be if the hobbits had waited to do a SWOT analysis before they set off on their journey?' she said.

'That's fiction, Amaryllis! Fantasy fiction, at that. For goodness' sake don't try and emulate it.'

'I know it's fiction, you idiot! I was joking!'

They stood glaring at each other, and Amaryllis suddenly realised they had reached Jemima's doorstep. The door opened and Jemima looked at them quizzically.

'Merry Christmas,' she said.

Of course it was nice and homely being at Jemima and Dave's for a few hours, sitting by a coal fire, eating great big chunks of home-made cake and drinking several too many cups of tea. Jemima offered sherry instead at one point, but they all turned it down in favour of tea, having sampled Jemima's sherry before. The wind was getting up again and the lights kept flickering. Dave wanted to watch something on television, but the picture was terrible, and when Jemima tried the phone it wasn't working at all.

'I hear you want to go on an epic quest,' said Jemima to Amaryllis.

'Where on earth did you get that idea?' said Amaryllis. 'I might go somewhere exciting for a holiday. Thailand - Indonesia - Korea.'

'Haven't you been to all these places before?' said Christopher.

'That was work,' said Amaryllis. 'It was quite different.'

Yes, she thought, different in the sense that she had infiltrated a drugs ring that was helping to fund terrorism in Indonesia, she had followed a CIA agent into North Korea to see if he would lead her to the head of the secret government propaganda organisation, and she had waited in Thailand for the signal that would send her to rendezvous with a double agent in Beijing.