Dying to Know Read Online Free PDF Page A

suggested.
    â€˜It was just an accident,’ he insisted. He glanced over at Percy Bailey as he said this and suddenly I was wondering if this was a prudent place to be discussing the affair.
    â€˜Come on, let’s get you home. Max and I have to work in the morning, unlike others.’
    Max said at once, ‘Don’t be horrible, Lance. Your poor father has been through a terrible ordeal. I think a bit more sympathy would be more appropriate.’
    I noticed that Dad seemed suddenly to find something to approve of in Max as he nodded and made the sad face of a disillusioned father who has just discovered that his only son is a bit of a swine.
    I asked her, ‘What do you suggest?’
    â€˜Perhaps you should take your father home with you tonight, rather than leaving him alone.’
    My father watched me, his face expressionless apart from the eyes that were filled with something I suspected was amusement, as I mentally waved goodbye to sharing my bed with Max for the rest of the night. This would have been a small consolation for the ruin of the evening, but it seemed that even that was not to be mine. I took a deep breath. ‘Very well, then. Would you like to come home with me?’
    He made a play of deep thought during which Max put in, ‘You could drop me off on the way there.’ Max had a house in Green Lane on the east side of Norbury Park.
    Thanks, Max.
    Dad eventually decided. He announced in a voice that implied he was being supremely magnanimous, ‘Very well, then. I will.’
    When we had dropped Max off and I was driving home, I asked, ‘Why don’t you like Max?’
    â€˜Who said I didn’t?’
    â€˜You did.’ He opened his mouth to protest but I carried on: ‘Not with words, but then you don’t need such mundane things.’
    He had turned to me, but now looked away. ‘She’s not right for you, Lance.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜She’s too young, for a start.’
    â€˜Age isn’t everything.’
    He said at once, ‘Yes, it is. Believe me, I know.’
    â€˜She’s only thirteen years younger than me.’ Even as I was hearing these words I was thinking that they didn’t help my cause. Dad said nothing, but then he didn’t need to and I was left to fill in. ‘She’s incredibly bright. Gold medal in veterinary school, excellent academic career, then straight into a job . . .’
    All he said was, ‘I can see that.’
    â€˜She’s kind, attentive . . . look how she was worried about you.’
    â€˜Oh, absolutely,’ he agreed and somehow managed to leave me with a feeling of dissatisfaction.
    â€˜Well, then . . .’
    Whenever I drove him anywhere, he was normally a bad passenger. He liked to tell me how he had been driving for fifty years and had only ever had one accident (which, of course, was not his fault). I had a slightly different perspective, though. In my opinion he drove erratically, with scant regard for other road users, even less for pedestrians; he never used his rear-view mirror, never stopped at pedestrian crossings, never let other cars in ahead of him, and never thanked those who let him in. It seemed to me that he paid more attention to the road and what was going on around him when he sat in my passenger seat than he ever did when he was in nominal control of the car.
    Tonight, though, he was uncharacteristically subdued; I assumed that the events of the night had taken more out of him than he cared to admit. For a few moments there was only the sound of the engine and the tyres on the road, when he said, ‘I can see that she’s a very attractive, very bright, very kind girl, Lance. It’s just that I don’t think you and she are right together.’
    I wanted to argue, to point out all the holes in his view, that he was being unreasonable and frankly old , but I didn’t. I wasn’t sure why, but