Out of the Sun by Robert Goddard Page A

What matters is whether you'll give me the time I need."
    "I'll do nothing until I've heard from you. Nothing without..." She paused a long while before using the word that somehow dignified their pact. "Without consulting you first. Good enough?"
    Harry nodded. "Good enough."
    They parted in the gateway leading from the museum forecourt into Great Russell Street, where Harry proposed to wait until Iris had set off by cab for Marylebone before sliding into the pub on the other side of the road. But Iris hung back, as if there were still something to be said.
    "I have a present for you," she said, delving into her handbag. "I wasn't sure if ... But I think you should have it ... It's not much, but .. . Like what we're doing, I suppose. Better than nothing." She handed him a small brown envelope, its flap unsealed, its contents thin to the touch. "It's a photograph of David. The most recent I have. Taken at Edale. We went there for a walk when he came up to see us last month. Just the two of us. David used to love the Peaks, you know. Anyway, I got a duplicate for you in case .. . Well, in case you wanted it."
    Thanks, Iris. I appreciate this. I really do."
    "It's only a snapshot. And .. . Well, you'll see." She turned and hailed a cab. One pulled in immediately. As she opened the door, she looked back and said: "Be in touch soon, Harry."
    "I will be."
    The door slammed, the cab pulled away and Harry slid the photograph out of its envelope. David, tousle-haired in jeans and a skiing jacket, was pictured leaning against a dry-stone wall with some slab of Pennine scenery behind him, bathed in watery sunlight. It was, as Iris had implied, an unremarkable snapshot. But the event it had preceded by only a few days gave it a patina of un attainability a quality of longing as well as loss. And something else struck Harry at once. Something he knew must have made Iris wonder in the end whether she should hand it over after all. David was smiling. Broadly and affectionately. As a son would at his mother. Or his father.
    FIFTEEN
    Rain spat at the window of room E318. Beyond the glass lay a wet and windy London night. Harry stared glumly out at the refracted lights of the city red and white, green and amber -then turned back to the bed and looked down at David, his unmoving unknowing son, to whom all weathers were one, all changing moods and variations a single grey shapelessness. Did he dream? Harry wondered. Did his mind stray where his body could not? Was there really, was there truly, nothing to retrieve?
    "I'll be off soon," said Harry, slumping down into the bedside chair. "Got to be at Victoria by ten. Think of me, bucketing across the Channel, while you're tucked up here, all snug and warm. It's my own fault, of course. If I'd taken up your mother's offer, I could probably have flown to Copenhagen in about an hour and a half. Instead of which, it'll be this time tomorrow night before I arrive. Assuming the ferry makes it to Ostend, of course. In this weather, you can't take that for granted. Still, I once came back to London from Athens by train and that took two and a half days, so twenty-two hours to Copenhagen shouldn't kill me, should it? Of course, I was younger then. Well, a bit younger. Lately, I've been getting too set in my ways. Perhaps this trip will do me good.
    "But I'll have to watch the pennies. Or the kroner. I won't have a job to come back to, you see. Crowther turned down my request for time off. Said it wasn't "convenient". Said if I insisted on going he'd "look on it as a resignation". Well, I insisted. So apparently I've resigned. Can't say I'm sorry. I'll miss old Shafiq, but that's about it. I think he'll miss me too. We went for a farewell drink, but it wasn't an uproarious send-off, not with Shafiq sticking to orange juice and muttering about the gloomy employment prospects for a man of my age.
    "We'll have to see about that, won't we? First I have to find your friend Torben Hammelgaard. Maybe Donna Trangam