The Cilla Rose Affair by Winona Kent

other hand, maintain an extensive collection of obscure Underground paraphernalia. Tea?”
    “As long as it’s something normal, Ant, and not some boiled homeopathic cure for haemorrhoids and gout.”
    Anthony disappeared, and Ian abandoned the bathroom for his brother’s bedroom. He stood in the doorway, surveying the scattered devastation of Anthony’s day-to-day existence.
    The bed was unmade. Abandoned clothes—a black t-shirt, an abused denim jacket, socks, jeans—had been flung over the upturned prongs of a bamboo hatrack, and across a brass-cornered steamer chest in the corner.
    There were more maps in here, and a life-sized poster of a red London call box, and on top of some overcrammed bookshelves, a lava lamp.
    There were also two VCR’s in the room, and a television, a tape player.
    Anthony wasn’t quite as Bohemian as he liked to let on.
    “What was that one about Sunset and Vine and Doheny?” his brother said, rummaging through the kitchen cupboards, moving aside boxes and packets and crinkly paper packages, humming what he thought was the tune.
    “ Dead Man’s Curve ,” Ian answered, absently. “That’s not obscure. That’s Jan and Dean.”
    He ventured all the way into Anthony’s bedroom.
    “Thanks very much for helping Evan out the other day. You have no idea how useful your information on Potter Maynard was to us.”
    “Made the world safe for democracy yet again, did I?” his brother replied. “It would have been nice if he’d been that concerned about me when I was growing up.”
    “Get over it, Ant. It wasn’t that bad.” They’d had this conversation before.
    “You’re five years older than me. You have different memories.”
    There was no point in arguing. Ian’s eye had caught a small bookcase beside the bed. Curiously, he bent down to investigate. “Anyway, you can’t accuse him of ignoring you now. At least give him credit for trying. It’s a well-known fact that people who’re starved for love only make it worse by running away from anybody who tries to show them any kind of affection.”
    “I don’t run away,” Anthony said, from the kitchen, but he didn’t sound all that confident about it.
    “Next time Evan asks you for a favour,” Ian suggested, “don’t be so quick to assume it’s all completely work-related. We could have tracked Potter Maynard down ourselves. It just would have taken us a bit longer.” He pulled a book out of the case: All About the Pop Pirates , price 5 shillings, published in 1966. “Asking you to help might have been the only way Evan could think of to keep you talking to him.”
    There was no comment from the kitchen.
    Ian sat down on the bed. The book was a pirate’s encyclopedia, crammed with pictures and chat, and prominently featured on Pages 42 and 43 were Simon Darrow and Mark Braden—the latter stretched out on his cot in his cabin aboard the Cilla Rose , giving the camera a cheeky salute.
    Anthony appeared in the doorway. “That’s not very original of Evan.”
    “No, you’re right, it isn’t. We ought to expect more from the great actor who once incited shopping centres full of screaming teenaged girls to run riot just by showing up to sign autographs.” Ian looked at him. “He’s only human, Ant. Misapprehensions, weaknesses, the whole bit. He’s probably as frightened of you as you are of him.”
    His brother didn’t say anything. He disappeared, and then returned with a flower-patterned tin.
    “Licorice,” he said, holding it out.
    Ian picked out something hard and black, and put it in his mouth. He replaced the little paperback in the bookcase, and took out another: a tattered volume with a faded blue cover, the title embossed on its spine in tarnished gold , Muirhead’s Short Blue Guide to London .
    He went back to the bed. “I didn’t know you had this.”
    “What?”
    “This guidebook.”
    “I’ve had it since I was three,” Anthony said.
    Something very peculiar was going on in Ian’s mouth.