In the way of this dismal age for the young, my son, Louis Norman, has been restored to his childhood home for some 16 months.
This is less by choice than through economic necessity. No one within 17 postcodes of sanity, let alone a close relative, would wish to cohabit with me.
For all that, I think he finds it almost tolerable. He and his partner have turned the previously condemnable top floor of the house into a pleasant apartment. And while he naturally finds his old man a loud and narcissistic nuisance, there are occasional beacons of amusement to light the path.
Often, these revolve round the mishandling of food. He christened one of my creations ‘blood pork’, for example, after a self-inflicted knife wound liberally seasoned the batch of potsticker dumplings soon to be served to an unknowing and appreciative table of guests. ‘Floor beans’ was his designation for another signature dish.
The moment he rang from two storeys above the other day, it was plain that a fresh eccentricity had been noted. This one involved no culinary breakthrough.
‘Oh yup, yup, yup,’ he began, that being his preferred prologue to the announcement of an oddity. ‘I was looking out of the window onto the road just now, and feel I should report what I saw.’
‘A drive-by shooting?’ I asked anxiously. Long ago, when he was tiny, drive-by shootings were a regular feature of life on our elegant Shepherd’s Bush thoroughfare. Often, his mother and I would relish the aftermath from our bathroom window.
But the influx of migrants from the Levant has massively improved the area, and that innocent pleasure has long been denied us.
‘No, not that – something more novel,’ explained Louis. ‘A woman just cycled up to your car, put a pair of glasses on the bonnet, and cycled off the way she’d come.’
Now this, you will agree, was intriguing. In the late-Victorian era, relating that a ginger woman had deposited spectacles on a car bonnet (or, rather, on the mane of a hansom cab-pulling horse) and cycled away was exactly how the first-time visitor to 221B Baker Street would introduce a new case.
‘What?’ I ejaculated, picking up the imaginary pipe and filling it with fictitious shag from a non-existent Persian slipper. ‘I mean, in the name of sweet Lord Jesus, WHAT?’
‘A. Woman. Has. Just. Cycled…’ said Louis, in the slow and over-deliberate manner of a young A&E doctor addressing a suspected-stroke victim.
‘I heard what you said,’ I interrupted sharply. ‘I just don’t understand it. I mean, who was she?’
‘Oddly enough, she didn’t introduce herself,’ said Louis. ‘All I can tell you is that she had red hair in a ponytail, and was wearing a hi-vis yellow jacket.’
‘Are the glasses still there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I suppose I’d better retrieve them.’
‘That,’ said Louis, ‘would seem the obvious next move.’
And there, perched insouciantly on the bonnet, as advertised, were the glasses – specifically, an over-the-counter pair bought a while back during one of those familiar periods when the prescription pair had elected to go AWOL.
Among the curiosities here is that I had no recollection of using them that morning. I had been out and may have put them on to read a sign showing the butcher’s Christmas opening times.
But since I’d been home for a good hour when Louis filed his most singular report, she could hardly have tracked me from the butcher’s on the scintillating tour that took in a fishmonger, a chemist, a bookie and a convenience store.
Besides, none of these outlets could have known where I live. And in none, at any time, was a redhead present.
Nor could she have known me by my address; if she had, she’d have rung the bell or posted them through the letter box.
We must assume, then, that she recognised the car. But, even if she had, how on earth could she have made the connection between a filthy old Audi and a cheap pair of glasses?
I have been pondering this mystery round the clock for some days (admittedly without thus far self-injecting with a seven-per-cent cocaine solution), and remain both wildly unnerved and entirely bemused.
In which event, my dear Watsons, I have no option but to beg for your help.
Are you a red-haired female cyclist with a yellow Day-Glo jacket and either (a) a philanthropic penchant for returning lost eyewear by leaving it on car bonnets, or (b) a grudge that led you to seek vengeance by gaslighting me in so impressively original a way?
If not, do you know of such a person currently operating in London W12? A relative, possibly, or a patient recently discharged, perhaps too soon, from a psychiatric facility?
The reward for information leading to the identification of the mystery bicycling redhead is a pair of plastic spectacles, worth much less than the £8 initially paid for them, but with a sentimental value far beyond measure.
