Junction X by Erastes (digital ebook reader .TXT) 📗

England, and that rather than travel down from London and pay for hotels, I had decided that a rented apartment would be more economical. I wouldn’t be constrained by a hotel shutting its front door at midnight, for example. It took me several drafts before I was happy with the thing. Then I smugly put it into my inside pocket to post from London, muddying the waters still further.

I had been living and planning for the next Wednesday, arranging client meetings out of town so that I had an excuse to use the Bentley, even though I hadn’t arranged anything with Alex. Valerie brought me down to earth when she reminded me—and I could never understand how she carried all this information around in her head—that it was half-term the next week and that, consequently, none of the children would be at school.

My disappointment was so internally violent it surprised me. I felt like a child being taken home from a party where he was winning all the prizes. So I scouted around for compensation and a replacement.

Inspiration struck me as I overheard the children discussing Bonfire Night.

“How about we have a fireworks party here?” I asked. On previous years we had gone to the organised “do” at Woodlands, but my resignation from the club gave me a good excuse to not to go there.

“Really, darling?” Valerie looked up from her magazine. “You’ve never shown any interest before.”

“The children are older,” I said. Oh, the lies came so easily now. “Less likely to stick sparklers in each other’s eyes.”

“Accidentally, at least,” Mrs. Tudor called darkly, from the kitchen. We both laughed at that.

“I suppose we could put a bonfire at the very end, by the wall,” Valerie mused. I could see her mind working; she hadn’t really built the garden with bonfires in mind.

“A smallish one.”

“We could ask Tyler to build it.”

I bristled at that. “I’m quite sure I’m capable of building a bonfire.” I am a bloody engineer, I wanted to say.

“If you insist.” She waved an airy hand. “I’ll leave it to you, shall I?”

After she put the twins to bed, we sat and watched the television and discussed who to invite to the bonfire party. We to and fro-ed as to whether to invite Phil or Claire. Valerie had brought it up and I was reluctant to have Phil at the house.

“We can’t invite both of them,” I’d said. “If we invite Claire we’ll have to invite the starving artist, and if we invite the starving artist…”

“His name is Fred.”

“Fred?” I roared with laughter. “How naff! Not Fabian, or Sebastian? Fred. Well, if we invite Fred, we can’t invite Phil.”

“Obviously,” she sighed. “It’s awkward.”

“It would be easier not to invite either of them.”

“I think it’s best,” she said, to my enormous relief. “But I do hate losing touch with people.”

“I know,” I said, giving her a sympathetic smile, “But we’ll invite Albert and Sheila, of course.”

“And Alec.”

“He might not want to come, a load of adults…” I kept my eyes on the screen, but my heart was pounding.

“Well, I’ll include him anyway. He might like to help the twins with the Guy.”

“All right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I’ll do that now,” she said, “in case they were thinking of doing their own.”

“Good idea.” I felt Machiavellian, but good. “Ask Alec if he wants to bring a friend.” I was careful, always careful, to keep his real name to myself.

She turned to look at me as she pulled open the door to the hall. “What is the matter with you recently?”

The euphoria and smug satisfaction at my own cleverness sank back into fear. “What?”

“Bonfires, inviting strange people over you don’t know…it’s like you’ve got a new lease of life, or something.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s just that the children are more interesting now that they are older.”

She rolled her eyes and went to invite Alex’s parents.

+ + +

I hadn’t seen Alex in private for what seemed like years, although it was less than two weeks. We’d not even been able to say more than a formal ‘hello’ to each other since our brief tryst in the car, and the less I saw him, the stronger my obsession grew. I found myself secretly looking out of the windows in the hope that he’d be in the garden, but as the weather worsened that week, my hope weakened. Then the rain set in, threatening the bonfire night completely.

A day or so before the fireworks party, I was draining the commute from my soul with a whisky and the evening paper when the phone rang. Valerie answered it and my ears immediately went into alert when I heard her talking.

“Oh, hello Alec, dear. Yes. Yes. Oh, no! Oh, yes, I can see from here—how awful! Yes, of course he will. He’s got a box in case it ever happens to us. What time will they be back? Why don’t you come over…? Oh, I see. Don’t worry. I’ll send him over right away. Goodbye, Alec. Yes, don’t worry.”

I forced myself to remain motionless, my arm casually draped along the back of the settee as she pulled open the dividing door and came in, but my heart was thudding hard as my blood pressure rose. “Who was that?”

“It was Alec from next door,” she said. Alec from next door. Were there any other Alecs in the world? “He thinks the train-set has done something drastic to the lights. He turned on the…duplex?”

“Dublo?”

“That was it. And the house went dark. He asked if you will go over and look at the fusebox.”

I tried to look irritated. After all, it was how I would have reacted if Claire had done the same thing when she’d been living there. “Where’s his father?”

“His parents are out somewhere, and aren’t expected back for a while. You will go, darling? I said you would. I asked him to come here and wait, but I think he’s worried about not being there in case they phone or something.”

I gave