Read Junction X for Free Online Page B

a sweet smile, which I returned, “is that he plays every chance he can. Why is it, Sheila, that women are capable of appreciating many things, and yet men get obsessed with one?”
    Sheila let me refill her glass and smiled. “I do know what you mean. Luckily, Alfred is not like that, but Alec…”
    “Mum…” he said quietly.
    “With him, it’s all trains.”
    I looked up, interested. “Really?”
    “Oh yes, ever since he was small, nothing interested him but trains. His dad had a pre-war Hornby that we set up for him, and since then it’s grown and grown so much it was taking over the house. Apart from the benefit of being near St. Peter’s, the nice thing about the new house is the big room at the top. He can play up there to his heart’s content.”
    I glanced at him with more interest and saw that his fringe had fallen over his eyes. He couldn’t have got his head any further down without actually sticking it into the stroganoff. I felt sorry for him. I estimated he was seventeen, perhaps eighteen, and no one that age likes to be accused of playing.
    “It’s that big, then?” I asked. “The layout?”
    Alfred nodded, swallowing. “It’ll take more than a day or so for us to set it all up, but when we have, I hope you’ll come over and see it. It’s something to see, isn’t it, son?” Alex nodded but didn’t speak again that night.
    My talented wife gently steered the dinner conversation away from the masculinity of model trains. The remainder of the evening, however, has been blurred in time. We spent a lot of evenings with Alex’s parents and this one doesn’t stand out in my mind, unlike some of the others. After we shut the door after them, Valerie surprised me by turning to me and drifting into my arms.
    “They are nice,” she said. “I liked them.” She tipped her face up to be kissed and I did so, chastely, on her forehead.
    “The boy’s a bit old to get on with the twins, though,” I said, switching off the porch light.
    “Mmm,” she said, and I remembered too late the tiger trap I’d just stepped into—the reason I’d spent the night in the spare room the night before. Valerie wanted another child, and I was running out of excuses. But she didn’t bite, to my enormous relief. She kissed me on the cheek and disappeared to clear up.
    In the sitting room, I debated between Ella Fitzgerald and Rachmaninov . The classical music won and I threw myself onto the settee and stretched out, remembering guiltily and a little too late, to toe off my shoes. Phil weighed heavy on my mind. For ten minutes or so, all I did was lie there and think of him. I tried to put him into two boxes, the way he did. Phil the mate, whom I missed. Missed playing golf with, missed down the pub and missed laughing with. I hadn’t realised that his move would affect us so much and that he would find new friends, but then, him being Phil, I should have realised he would. Then there was the other Phil. The one with the dark and wicked voice, the one with the teasing fingers.
    It was easy enough to separate them out like that. All I needed to decide was did I want Phil One or Phil Two? Or did I want them both? Though they seemed to be separate entities, I had come to realise that I couldn’t have one of them without taking the other, and that I was going to have to deal with that.
    I smoked two cigarettes on the trot, while the music poured over me. Then, when the first movement ended, I strode into the hall and dialled Phil’s number.
    “Hello?”
    “Oh. Phil? It’s Ed.”
    “Eddie!” His voice was the same, hail-fellow-well-met. “You do realise this is the first time you’ve rung me?” I smarted that he could put me on the back foot so easily. He was right, of course—I hadn’t. “What’s up?”
    I took a deep breath. “I want you to get me into The Sands.”
    He exhaled, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, old boy. This is sudden, isn’t it?