Dying Flames by Robert Barnard Page A

dead.”
    He kicked back his chair and ran from the restaurant, withholding his tears till he was outside and the door well shut, but then breaking out as if his heart were broken. The restaurant had fallen silent in the last minute or two, and the tears penetrated inside.
    â€œOh, the silly boy,” said Peggy. “Don’t let him spoil our evening. He’s still only a child, and he’s not used to the idea of his new, wonderful brother.”
    â€œSomeone should go to him,” Graham whispered to Ted and Christa.
    â€œHis sister would be best,” said Ted. “I’m afraid I’ve never really understood the boy.”
    â€œI’ll go,” said Christa, wiping her mouth. “I’ll give him a minute or two and then I’ll go.”
    â€œTell him living on the streets is out of the question,” said Graham. “He can bunk down at my house while he sorts himself out. Christa, you both can, at any time. You must remember that.”
    Christa nodded and smiled absently, as if the offer had always been assumed by her. The waiters, possibly with earlier experience of Peggy’s celebrations going awry, had hurried the sweets trolley away from a distant table and began a gabble through the alternatives to cover the awkwardness, which in any case was apparently not perceptible to Peggy, who was giggling with Terry in a way that could only be described as flirtatious.
    â€œI’ll have the strawberry shortcake, or the tiramisu—whatever,” said Christa, and slipped away from the table and out through the door to the street. This left Graham feeling still more marooned in company that was indifferent or positively hostile to him. And with a public revelation by Peggy, delivered in the most cringe-making style and English, still in prospect.
    Peggy had chosen a concoction that was mostly artificial cream, and the plate looked as if all the ingredients had been delivered by cannon. Terry was looking at it and laughing, and Peggy, still in a giggly mood, was forcing a piled-up spoonful into his mouth. Graham was possessed of an almost irresistible urge to push back his chair and go out to join the hunt for Adam, who suddenly seemed to him the most appealing person at the table, because he was possessed of real emotion.
    Peggy, however, self-regarding as she generally was, had a sympathetic understanding when confronted by an emotion that related to herself. She sensed what Graham, hardly seen for twenty-five years, felt about the scene that was being enacted. She tore herself from Terry’s seduction of her and fixed Graham with a smile that was not in any way come-hither. Indeed, it was almost basilisk, paralyzing his will.
    â€œThere’s one more thing,” she said.
    The table went quiet. Had they all been expecting this? All eyes were on Peggy, but Graham somehow got the impression that the Halliburtons were desperately trying not to look at him. Egotism, he told himself.
    â€œ Just one more, then Peggy will shut up and let you all relax and enjoy yourselves. You know how honored we all feel that we have with us tonight Graham Broadbent, one of the most talented of that wonderful generation of English novelists that emerged in the eighties and nineties.” Of whom Peggy, Graham suspected, could have named no other. “Graham and I go way back, he to his last year in Grammar School, me to my last months living in those parts—living with my dear old dad here, and Mum, who’s no longer with us. We met in a school play—my first starring role—but we really met a few weeks later, in a churchyard. Graham was wondering whether to go to London University, and I was expecting to do my last year at school, and perhaps be in another play with Colchester Grammar Boys. And we met. It wasn’t love at first sight, or anything like that, but it was attraction, and I know I suspected then what a distinguished figure Graham was to