Dying Flames Read Online Free

there, noted the address of the reverend gentleman or lady. Presumably it was not necessary: surely Christa would have told him if her mother was a minister of religion?
    He pondered this last thought, though. Christa was, in his judgment, a tease. It was one of the things he found delightful about her. She had told him what it suited her to tell him at that point in their relationship. And no more. Even the Theresa he had had to remember for himself. She had told him nothing about her own life—whether she was employed, unemployed, a student, in a relationship, still living at home, straight, gay—nothing. He felt sure it was her intention to pursue the matter. Pursue him. She could even find his address without too much trouble: it appeared in an American directory of contemporary novelists, and now for the first time (because fans had not come in droves to bang on his door) he regretted giving them permission.
    Or did he regret it?
    He found that in the car on the way home he was weighing up in his mind the best time to drive to Romford. If he was to drive around the streets hoping for a glimpse of Christa or her mother (but would he recognize her?), when would be the best time of day to do it?
    He was conscious that there was no conditional tense in his deliberations: not “should he decide to go,” but a mental stance of “granted that he had decided to go.” His caution, his rationality, had been thrown to the winds. His urge had taken him over. He regretted his caution and rationality, but felt excitement at their overthrow. It occurred to him that they, and indeed the whole shape of his personality, were a consequence of what had happened in the summer of the year 1979. The summer following the school production of St. Joan.
    By the time he arrived back in Hepton Magna he had decided that the early morning was the best time to visit Romford. And that it had better be done while the determination was in him. He watched the headlines on the ten o’clock news, then turned in for an early night, setting the Teasmaid for 6 a.m.
    Driving through the streets of Romford was not a spirit-elevating experience. He had found Milton Terrace from a London A to Z he had bought when writing his novel The New Prufrock (long-listed but not short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1997). He made the street his center of operations and drove around noting shopping streets and office blocks where Christa might be employed and places of education where she might study. Milton Terrace itself was a street of “nice little semidetacheds,” exactly as the girl had said (Graham clocked it up as the first verified truth he had heard from her lips). It was surrounded by many others, some slightly better, some slightly worse. In the property market of his youth, the differences would have meant a thousand or two either way on the market price. In today’s mad world of London’s and near-London’s house prices, the difference was probably near fifty thousand either way.
    Graham groaned at the modern world. He knew about it, but did not understand it. His books more and more were getting set in the recent past. By the time he died he’d be writing historicals.
    Then he saw her.
    She was five minutes away from her home, in a little group with three other girls. They were talking and laughing and now and then exchanging greetings or badinage with some boy or other. Young men, he should say. They were part of a larger group, almost all young people, and he felt sure they were all on their way to the Jeremy Bentham College, which he had noted on his drive around. He could not go as slowly as they were walking so he drew to the side of the road. As they went beyond his field of vision, he drove forward again and was just in time to see the little group turning in through the college gates and toward the main building.
    He drew to the side of the road again. What did he do now? The obvious thing was to return