The Mummy Diaries [antikvár]

We were all in the kitchen; I was clearing up after the children's supper, and my husband came home early. He hugged all the children in turn, reserving his most lingering embrace for the puppy, then turnéd to me with a strange light in his eyes - as if scanning a distant savannah for migrating wildebeest. Tm going to Africa,' he said. 'For work,' he added rapidly, as if I would otherwise assume that he and Iman were off on an undercover expedition to find the source of the Blue Nile or the fleshpots of Zanzibar. 'Are you?' I said, because I had by this stage cleared up supper, and was supervising the children's homework while threading a new pair of Persil-white shoelaces into my daughter's grubby trainers. 'Great! When?' I continued, after a prolonged pause during which I kept trying and failing to push the lace through the mud-caked síit in the nylon. 'Tomorrow,' he said. Tm afraid I'm going to miss half-term.' The children's faces feli, and I tried to summon the spirit of the Blitz for their sakes. 'It's all right, children, we'll have a lovely time on Exmoor - Granddaddy and Jenny will be there and all the Johnson cousins are coming,' I rallied them. 'When will you be back?' I aimed, in more direct tones, at my husband. 'Not for a couple of months, I'm afraid,' he said. That news, I have to confess, did absorb my attention for a