Free Coincidence by David Ambrose Page A

Then I feel a hand on my arm, and I
     stop and turn. And I find myself looking at this very attractive young woman. Darkish blonde hair, smart business suit, kind
     of sparkly eyes, and this big mouth. I’ve always gone for women with big mouths. I’m not trying to be crude, but it’s a fact.
     They turn me on.
    “Anyway, I must have been looking kind of blank or something, because she says, like she’s jogging my memory, ‘Nadia Shelley.
     From the agency. Last week. You remember me?’
    “Now, I have never seen this girl in my life before, but I am not about to let an opportunity like this go to waste. But I
     swear I only meant to play her along for a little while, then make some joke and let her off the hook. Naturally, I thought,
     who knows, maybe I’ll get her phone number and we’ll have a date some time. So we carry on walking, and she’s saying, ‘I was
     going to call you and ask you to come to the office, but if you have time you could step up right now. As you know, we’re
     just around the corner.’
    “So now I’m wondering, Is this a pick-up or some kind of a scam? Looking at her, it’s hard to believe, so I look at my watch
     and say something vague about maybe having a couple of minutes. She gives a big smile. Oh, that mouth!
    “I’m letting her lead the way. We turn a corner, catch a light, and cross the street. As though just making conversation,
     but in reality trying to find out something of what’s going on here, I say, ‘And what exactly was it you were going to call
     me about, Miss Shelley?’
    “She looks at me, kind of surprised, and says, ‘About that inquiry you hired us to undertake, Mr. Daly. Tracing that English
     couple, those actors you were interested in—Jeffrey Hart and Lauren Paige.’
    “I don’t know what kind of expression was on my face at that moment, because she frowned and said, ‘You know, I believe you
     really
didn ‘t
recognize me just now, did you? You were just being polite.’
    “’No, I recognized you,’ I said quickly. I didn’t want to blow it now. ‘Of course I did. It’s just that my mind was elsewhere,
     that’s all.’
    “She flashed me that big smile again. But this time it didn’t do anything for me. Because suddenly my thoughts really
were
somewhere else.
    “The two names she’d just mentioned—Jeffrey Hart and Lauren Paige—were my parents.”
    The way Larry told the story, I knew I would have done the same thing he did at that point. I would have jettisoned all my
     good intentions about letting Nadia Shelley off the hook and telling her she had made a mistake. Just as Larry did, I would
     have followed her into the respectable-looking suite of offices, I would have met the same junior partner whom I, George,
     had spoken with the previous week, and I would have continued to let him labor under the misapprehension that he knew me.
     I would have wanted, just as Larry did, to learn everything I possibly could about this Alice-in-Wonderland situation that
     I seemed to have stumbled into.
    Larry listened. He hoped that the other two in the room with him, Nadia Shelley and the junior partner, would take his stunned
     silence for interest and would not ask any questions or expect him to comment just yet. He was not ready to speak for the
     moment. He just checked every fact as it emerged against his memory. There was an absolute correspondence every time.
    Why were these people telling him the story of his life? He listened to the familiar and painful story of how his parents’
     lives had gone from the glamour of their early success in the West End theater, when they had briefly been stars and their
     future looked assured, to the dismal end they had both endured. The sixties had wiped out their style of acting, singing,
     and dancing at a stroke. Everything they were and did was suddenly old hat. Overnight they were has-beens. They struggled
     on as long as they could, with provincial tours and summer seasons around the