When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

use it. She was working her way through the 'a's so it fitted in well with the drive to improve her vocabulary.
    Lately, Reggie had got into the habit ofstaying longer and longer at the Hunters' house while Mr Hunter seemed to be out of the house more and more. 'He's setting something up, a new venture,' Dr Hunter said brightly. Dr Hunter seemed glad that Reggie was there so much. She would suddenly look out of the window and say, 'Heavens, Reggie, it's dark, you must be getting home,' but then she would say, 'I hate this horrid weather so. Shall we have another cup oftea?' Or 'Stay and have some supper, Reggie, and then I'll give you a lift home.' Reggie hoped that one day soon Dr Hunter might say, 'Why go home, Reggie? Why not move in here?' and then they would be a proper family -Dr Hunter, Reggie and the baby and the dog. ('Neil' didn't really figure in Reggie's daydream of family life.)
    On one of these evenings, apropos of nothing ('apropos' was another new word), when Dr Hunter and Reggie were giving the baby a bath, Dr Hunter turned to Reggie and said, 'You know there are no rules,' and Reggie said, 'Really?' because she could think of a lot of rules, like cutting grapes in half and wearing a cap when you went swimming, not to mention separating all the rubbish for the recycling bins. Unlike Ms MacDonald, recycling was something that Dr Hunter was very keen on. She said, 'No, not those kinds ofthings, I mean the way we live our lives . T here isn't a template, a pattern that we're supposed to follow. There's no one watching us to see ifwe're doing it properly, there is no properly, we just make it up as we go along.'
    Reggie wasn't entirely sure that she knew what Dr Hunter was talking about. The baby was distracting her, squawking and splashing like a mad sea-creature.
    'What you have to remember, Reggie, is that the only important thing is love. Do you undt:rstand?'
    That sounded OK to Reggie, a bit Richard Curtis, but OK.
    'Loud and clear, Dr H.,' she said, taking a towel from the radiator where it had been warming. Dr Hunter lifted the baby out of the water, he was slipperier than a fish, and Reggie wrapped him in the towel.
    'Knowing that when light is gone, Love remains for shining,' Dr Hunter said. 'Isn't that lovely? Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote it for her dog.'
    'Flush,' Reggie said. 'Virginia Woolf wrote a book about him. I've read around the subj ect.'
    'When everything else has gone, love still remains,' Dr Hunter said.
    'Totally,' Reggie said. But what good did it do you? None at all.
    Ad Augusta per Angust a THIS WOULD BE THE SCENIC ROUTE THEN. HE WAS TAKING THE LONG way round. Jackson tipped a metaphorical hat in the direction of the Dixie Chicks.
    For reasons best known to itself the GPS stopped working five miles after leaving the village. At some point they had obviously taken a wrong turning because Jackson found himself on a one-track road that wound its leisurely way up through a deserted dale. There was no signal on his phone and the radio had given out nothing but crackle and hiss for some time now. The CD player contained one disc accidentally left over from the previous rental and Jackson wondered in what circumstances he would feel so desperate for the sound of another voice that he would listen to Enya's.
    He should have brought his iPod, he could have been listening to songs of heartache and redemption and redneck righteousness. And it had obviously been a really bad idea to leave that OS map behind, although he wasn't convinced that the roads around here actually conformed to any map. If it hadn't been for a signpost a mile back reassuring him that they were heading for the right destination he would have turned round by now. (Although should he put so much faith in signs?)
    Bleak in its beauty, the landscape was beginning to bring out the mournful streak in Jackson that he was usually better off keeping at bay. Hello, darkness, myoId friend. Life was easier if you were an unimaginative