Sunstroke and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

told you? There was a flicker of solicitousness in his expression, in case she minded.
    —Someone who knows Laura. Poor Laura.
    Laura had been Alan’s first wife, the one he was married to all through his affair with Christine, those long years ago. Laura had always made Thomas welcome in her home, even after Alan strayed a second time, and then a third, and then stayed away permanently. Thomas was close to his half-brothers and -sisters, and managed gracefully a whole complex of loyalties.
    —I think Laura’s OK, Thomas said. —I think she’s pretty indifferent these days to what Dad’s up to.
    This wasn’t what the person at the dinner party had told Christine.
    —I hear the girl he’s marrying is young enough to be his daughter.
    Thomas couldn’t help his grin: spreading, conspiratorial. He was easily entertained. —You know what he’s like.
    —Have you met her?
    —She’s OK. I reckon she knows what she’s getting into.But put it this way: I don’t think it was her intellectual qualities he fell for. I thought that you might be in college today, he added. —I only came here on the off chance.
    —Thursdays I usually work at home. Why aren’t you in the office?
    —I phoned and told them I was ill. I haven’t pulled a sickie for ages. I’ve got a lot of stuff going round in my head and I wanted some time out to really think about it. And I thought I might stop by to have a bit of a chat about something that’s cropped up.
    Christine was touched: he rarely came to her to talk about his problems. In fact, there had been almost no problems. He was an affable, sociable boy whose directness was of the easy and not the exacting kind. Thomas heaved himself upright in the chair, so that his knees were jackknifed in front of his face; he stirred two spoons of sugar into his coffee and ate chocolate biscuits.
    —Is it about your dad and this wedding?
    —God, no. That honestly isn’t a big deal. I’m glad for him.
    —Work?
    He made a face. —And other stuff.
    Thomas had finished at Oxford the year before and had been working as an assistant to a Labour MP, a woman, no one very special. All he did was photocopy and file and send standard answers to constituents’ letters, but the idea was that this could lead to bigger and better things, some kind of political career. It was only an idea, being tested. Thomas didn’t know whether a political career was what he really wanted. Christine thought he might be too finely constituted, too conscientious for it. On the other hand she was proud of his realism, and that he was thinking unsentimentally about ways to get power and change things.
    —I’ve got myself in a bit of a mess, Thomas said. —With Anna.
    —Oh?
    He fished his tobacco and rolling papers out of a pocket and used the flat tops of his knees as a table.
    —I seem to have got involved with somebody else.
    —Oh, Thomas.
    He told her about a girl he had met at work. He said that he hadn’t liked her at first – he’d thought she was too full of herself. But then they’d had to work on some assignment together and he’d got to know her a lot better. He could talk to her in a way he’d never talked to anyone else. She was very bright. She wasn’t good-looking in the way Anna was good-looking.
    —She’s quite big, he said. —Not fat. Curvy. With this sort of messy black hair. Long.
    Thomas’s own hair was hanging down across his face as he rolled his cigarette, so Christine couldn’t see his expression. She could hear, though, his voice thick with an excitement that she recognised as belonging to the first phase of infatuation, when even speaking about your lover, saying ordinary things about him or her, is a part of desire.
    —The worst thing is, he said, shaking his hair back and looking frankly at her.—Well, not the worst thing. But they both have the same name. Not quite the same. She’s called Annie.
    Christine couldn’t help a puff of laughter.
    —I know, he said. —Shite,