Instructions For Living Someone Else's Life - the book.
MR MILLINGTON's fourth book in his series of unrelated books that have been described by critics.
Now read this mystery-plot-preserving extract. Is the gargling mumble a vital code? Will it all turn out in a surprise ending to be a dream of Strange Woman's? We haven't the slightest idea.
He pirouetted rapidly and unsteadily to see if he could spot where his own clothes had been cast down. No part of his body thanked him for this manoeuvre; worse, not only didn't it reveal what he was searching for, it also caused him to topple sideways across the room. Trying to regain his balance, he performed that peculiar arms swinging, legs crossing dance that music hall entertainers liked to use to work their way off the stage; he'd have needed only a cane, a straw boater and a peppy rendition of "Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road" from the orchestra to have secured a week of matinees at the Alhambra on the strength of it. Except, rather than ending in appreciative applause, it ended with his crashing into the bedroom door with the top of his skull. The noise this made inside his head could not be measured using human science; it was something like the level of sound you'd hear if you chewed on a hydrogen bomb. Unfortunately, even outside his head, it generated what was, objectively speaking, an awful bloody racket. He bounced back from the woodwork and pluckily wrestled with man's ancient enemy, gravity, in a bid to steady himself.
A few feet away, Strange Woman stirred from her sleep and asked, "Mmmmeeerrrum-m-m-m?"
Chris would swear on anything you cared to name that, at this point, he actually felt his testicles freeze, constrict, and then flee upwards into his abdomen.
