In a Dry Season Read Online Free Page B

little plastic holders around their necks in case it rained. Some hope. Banks said hello, remarked on the good weather and got into the Cavalier. The upholstery was so hot he almost jumped out again.
    Well, he thought, fumbling for a cassette to play, Brian was old enough to make his own decisions. If he wanted to chuck everything in for a shot at fame and fortune, that was up to him, wasn’t it?
    At least Banks had a real job to do. Jimmy Riddle had made a mistake this time. No doubt he believed he had given Banks a filthy, dead-end job, full of opportunities for cock-ups; no doubt the dice were loaded against him; but anything was better than sitting in his office. Riddle had overlooked the one overriding characteristic Banks possessed, even at his lowest ebb: curiosity .
    Feeling, for a moment, like a grounded pilot suddenly given permission to fly again, Banks slipped Love’s Forever Changes into the cassette-player and drove off, spraying gravel.

    The book-signing started at half past six, but Vivian Elmsley had told her publicist, Wendi, that she liked to arrive early, get familiar with the place and have a chat with the staff.
    There was already a crowd at quarter past. Still, it was only to be expected. All of a sudden, after twenty novels in as many years, Vivian Elmsley was a success .
    Though her reputation and her sales had grown steadily over the years, her Detective Inspector Niven series, which accounted for fifteen of the twenty books, had recently made it to the small screen with a handsome lead actor, glossy production values and a big budget. The first three episodes had been shown, to great critical acclaim— especially given how bored many television critics had grown with police dramas recently—and as a result Vivian had become, over the past month or so, about as familiar a face to the general public as a writer ever is.
    She had been on the cover of Night & Day and had been interviewed by Melvyn Bragg on the “South Bank Show” and featured prominently in Woman’s Own magazine. After all, becoming an “overnight success” in one’s seventies was quite newsworthy. Some people even recognized her in the street.
    Adrian, the event organizer, gave her a glass of red wine, while Thalia arranged the books on the low table in front of the settee. At half past six on the dot, Adrian introduced her by saying that she needed no introduction, and to a smattering of applause she picked up her copy of the latest Inspector Niven story, Traces of Sin , and began to read from the opening section.
    About five minutes was enough, Vivian reckoned. Anything less made her look as if she couldn’t wait to get away; anything more risked losing the audience’s attention. The settee was so soft and deep that it seemed to enfold her as she read. She wondered how she would ever get out of it. She was hardly a spry young thing any more.
    After the reading, people formed an orderly queue, and Vivian signed their books, pausing to chat briefly with everyone, asking if they wanted any specific sort of dedication and making sure she spelled their names right. It was all very well if someone said he was called “John,” but how were you to know it wasn’t spelled “Jon”? Then there were the more complex variations: “Donna,” or “Dawna”? “Janice” or “Janis”?
    Vivian looked down at her hand as she signed. Talon-like, she thought, almost skeletal, dotted with liver spots, skin shrivelled and wrinkled over the knuckle joints, puffs of flesh around the wedding ring she could never remove even if she wanted to.
    Her hands were the first to go, she thought. The rest of her was remarkably well preserved. For a start, she had remained tall and lean. She hadn’t shrunk or run to fat like so many elderly women, or generated that thick, hard, matronly carapace.
    Steel-grey hair pulled back tightly and fastened at the back created a