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past.
20 JULY: 0420: HEATHROW AIRPORT
    The check-in clerk saw father and son as two entries on a bar graph: side by side, one shorter than the other but wearing similar clothes (white top, dark trousers), connected and somehow absolutely relevant to each other.
    “I’m very sorry,” she said, “but we do sometimes get this overbooking problem. It does say on your ticket to arrive at the airport early, at least two hours before flight time.”
    She wondered what they would do next. She’d been trained to deal with all eventualities short of a homicidal attack with malice aforethought, and she liked to think she knew how individual passengers were going to react to the news that, thanks to her employer’s greed and indifference, they had been bumped. So it surprised her when Colin Raleigh said, “I’m afraid we got caught up in traffic, miss. I wonder, is there anything you can do to help us?”
    For he, too, knew a lot about people. He understood that the satisfactions of letters to the chairman, perhaps even a county court action, lay far in the future. What mattered now was getting them both seats.
    “You see,” he went on, “I’m a law tutor and I’ve been invited to Kuala Lumpur by some of their senior academics to give a talk. Look.”
    He produced a letter from his friends in K.L., putting his hand over the lower half and keeping up the patter while the clerk’s eyes flickered between him and the paper.
    “This is my son; he’s fourteen and he’s never flown before; they’re meeting the flight, bit of a delegation, actually"—winsome smile, self-deprecating gesture—"so it would be rather embarrassing if the British Council bod and the Dean of the Law School and so on all piled up at K.L. airport and I didn’t.”
    “But you’re on the flight, Mr. Raleigh.”
    “Ah, but I could hardly travel without my son. The house is locked up, we’ve nowhere to go and stay; I mean, what’s he supposed to do, check into a hotel for the next eight weeks?”
    “There might be a seat for him at the weekend—”
    “No, I’m sorry. Both or neither.”
    She gnawed her lip. Colin continued to smile at her in a way she appreciated.
She
knew that
he
knew none of this was her fault. “Let me have a quick word with my supervisor,” she said, slipping off her stool.
    Colin looked at his son.
Colin
knew that
Robbie
knew he was to blame for everything.
    “Don’t worry,” he said, laying a hand on Robbie’s shoulder. “They’ll sort something out.” Robbie shook off the hand, going to lean against an adjacent unmanned check-in desk so Colin couldn’t see his face.
    “Mr. Raleigh"—the clerk had come back and was leaning forward to invite confidential discussion—"I’d be awfully grateful if you’d keep this under your hat,” she said, “but we’re going to give one of you a seat in business class.”
    Colin nodded gravely, wondering if this girl knew of the irony whereby he’d cashed in his own business class ticket just so Robbie could fly. “Thank you, miss. You’ve been so helpful. Do you think I could have a note of your name?”
    “Patsy.” But by now she was in a hurry; it took her less than a minute to check their bags through to Kuala Lumpur before sliding two boarding passes face down across the counter as if they were dirty photographs and she wanted to be rid of them.
    Once in the duty-free shop Colin dithered over what brand of malt to buy for the Fadillahs, their hosts in Malaysia.
    “Honestly, what is it about you and these big decisions, Dad? First the roundabout, now the scotch.”
    “Yes, terrible. Deciding to have you was much easier—though that wasn’t so important, I suppose.”
    “Oh, you!” Robbie raised his fist shoulder high and brought it down on Colin’s forearm. Then he realized what he was being offered and quickly said, “Did you and Mother really decide to have me, or was it, just … you know?”
    “I think … the Glenlivet. Just a quick poke on a dark