Read Out of the Sun for Free Online

afternoon, asked as confidently as he could for Mrs. Brancaster and was rewarded with confirmation that she was indeed a guest there. Unfortunately, she was also out.
    "Can I take a message for her, sir? Or would you prefer to wait?"
    "Weller .. ."
    "Oh, actually, there's no need." The concierge glanced over Harry's shoulder. "Here's the lady now."
    Harry turned to see Hope Brancaster making an eye-catching entrance in wide-brimmed hat, flared raincoat and high-heeled bootees. A porter was bringing up the rear with two Bond Street carrier bags in either hand and a fifth looped over his shoulder.
    "This gentleman's been asking for you, Mrs. Brancaster," said the concierge as he held out her key.
    "And you are?" said Hope in a Californian drawl. She was close enough to Harry for the headiness of her perfume and the flawlessness of her complexion to be abundantly apparent.
    "Harry Yenning," he replied at once, smiling earnestly. Noticing a flicker of doubt in Hope's eyes, he added: "David's uncle." The lie had been planned to get him as far as Hope's room. Now, committed to using it face to face, he wondered if she might know for a fact that David had no such uncle. If so, he could be about to make a forced and ignominious exit.
    But his luck was in. Luck and something else he could never have anticipated. "You've got his smile. You know that?"
    "You think so?"
    "To the life. But it's odd. I don't recall David ever mentioning you."
    "I've been out of touch with the family for quite a while. Doing my best now ... to rally round."
    "Yeh, right." She rattled the key in her hand as if to signal his time was nearly up. "So, what can I do for you?"
    "I was hoping to talk to you .. . about David."
    That could be kinda difficult." She glanced ostentatiously at her watch. "I'm on a tight schedule."
    "It really is rather important."
    She hesitated for a moment, then said: "OK. But I need to freshen up. I'll meet you in the bar in ten minutes."
    Half an hour had passed, during which Harry had finished one extravagantly priced lager and started another, when Hope Brancaster deigned to join him. Her schedule, it seemed, was nothing like as tight as the PVC jeans she had somehow managed to wriggle into in the interim. There was a faint squeak as she descended into the chair opposite Harry, who could not suppress a pang of disappointment at how well her loose-fitting T-shirt camouflaged those remarkable breasts he remembered from the newspaper photograph. She ordered a Virgin Mary and cast a hostile glare at the ashtray, where smoke was still curling up from the remnants of a Karelia Sertika cigarette.
    "You smoke those things?" she enquired with no hint of irony. "Or cure fish with them?"
    "Sorry," he said with a shrug.
    "Not as sorry as you should be. I dislike liars every bit as much as nicotine addicts."
    That's all right, then. I'm neither."
    "Cut the bull. I gave Iris a call. She recognized your description. But not your name."
    "Ah."
    "Advised me to throw you out. Without listening to a word."
    "Did she?"
    "Which is what I would do .. ."
    "Except?"
    "You really do remind me of David. Weird, I'd say, if you're no kind of relative. Which Iris assures me you're not."
    "I'm his father."
    "Your death was just an ugly rumour, right?"
    "Iris and I ... had a brief affair .. . the summer before David was born."
    "Well, well. Did you now?"
    "David never mentioned this to you?"
    "He never even hinted at it."
    "I see."
    "Well, I don't. Haven't you left it awful late to play the paternal card?"
    "I only found out about it myself a few days ago."
    "Iris looking for an ally, was she?"
    "How d'you mean?"
    "She's in a minority of one in wanting to keep David alive. I'm guessing she thought you might back her up. But the way she talked about you makes me suspect you disagreed with her. Am I right?"
    "You think he should be allowed to die?"
    "It's not for me to say, is it? David and I are ex in every way. But I went to see him in the hospital for old