Jessica's Life Journey (1) - Illusions and Realities

I have reached the ripe old age of 22 and must soon make a decision about my future.

My friend Will has been an almost permanent feature in my life since we met while I was trying my hand at becoming a spy.

He is a boffin in the Secret Service though I don't actually know what his role is. He keeps his ears to the ground and knows what goes on inside the corridors of power. 

I don't know if he was hinting that we ought to develop our friendship into a stable relationship when he winked and said

“Are you going to make an honest man out of me, Jessica?”

“That was a trick that I never mastered, my dear”, I replied in a light vein.

He knows that in my youthful days I used to entertain the public by performing illusion, sleight-of-hand routines, card tricks and telepathy. 

“You should be in the diplomatic service”, he laughed.

That may have also been an allusion at another aspiration of mine, to join the ranks of M5, that didn't come to fruition.

Ir wasn't that I lacked the ability or the necessary skills; unforeseen circumstances, such as Covid 19, intervened.

The pandemic and the consequent lockdown had a reverberating effect; ties had to be temporarily suspended and activities curtailed.

Ms. Hilary Moneypound, the acting Chief of the Secret Intelligence,
had been badly affected, by it, I was told, and all covert operations had been put on the back burner.

(Although my application to join them had been declined, I still kept an eye on their activities, unofficially).

Will and I had been tested when the infection started to spread and knew that we were clear of the dreaded virus but, as a precaution, were vaccinated with a booster jab.

The government had decreed that the only way that people could be together during isolation was through support bubbles.

Will and found it expedient that he should be at my place for the duration of the restrictions.

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Reading about the penalty notices that have been issued by the police for infringements of lockdown regulations I wonder if we too broke the law as we weren't actually related and what's more, we didn't change our behaviour.

Anyway, it doesn't matter now that the restrictions have been lifted.

What really bothers me is that while cohabitation was convenient and pleasurable, it may have influenced Will to think that proposing marriage was a serious possibility. On the other hand, he was possibly testing the water.

He is eight years older than me and perhaps feels that it's time to settle down, which I'm not.

I am a girl of means and don't need to work for a living but I like to test myself with new challenges.

There must be more to life than being tied into a placid but unadventurous existence.

Uncle Jeremy, my putative father, would argue that it isn't necessarily so and that one can be blissfully married, like him and aunt Lottie, and still paint the town red.

Except that he derives his enjoyment not from riotous living but from visiting exotic locations and historic places.

At the moment, with Lottie away visting relatives in Switzerland, he is in his London pad listening to classical music but itching for her return so that they can take a trip to the Yucatan that had to be postponed for nearly two years.

He and Will get on well and he would not be averse to us tying the knot.

“Not so fast, uncle”, I tell him, “all in good time”.

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I have decided that I shall sit down with my suitor and, paraphrasing Lewis Carroll's Walrus, say:

“The time has come to talk of many things”.

© Luigi Pagano 2022