Free The Cilla Rose Affair by Winona Kent Page B

together like those soft spots at the tops of babies’ heads.
    He drained the contents of the soda tin and, taking studied aim, consigned it to a nearby wire basket filled with similar remains.
    For years he’d blamed his father for not crossing the vast, unclaimed territory that stretched between them, that rugged desert that was filled with treacherous chasms and cold, exposed ridges, unresolved anger and lost feelings.
    They could meet on their common ground—acting—and they could hold civilized conversations that never once deteriorated into the kind of animosity that often plagued children of other broken marriages.
    But loving one another was too frightening a thought, and the threat of it caused him to push away, hard.
    He’d almost said no to his father’s request. Do your own footwork—look in your computers. It’s nothing to do with me .
    He gazed down at the panorama of London spread before him, and then stood up, fingering the slip of paper in his trousers pocket upon which his father’s telephone number was written, along with the name of the tiny alternative theatre in Wimbledon Potter Maynard had last been known to inhabit.
    The club, dimly lit, and in deepest, darkest Soho, was nasty. The carpet was worn, and it smelled of stale spirits and cigarette smoke, and the front door, downstairs, was guarded by a large, evil-looking man in a shiny dinner jacket. It was the stuff of Rank and British Gaumont, Mona Lisa and Minder .
    “Potter,” Evan said, extending his hand. “It’s been years.”
    “Good Lord.” Emerging from his booth, Potter Maynard ignored the hand, and instead embraced the entire man. “I wouldn’t have recognized you. Evan bloody Harris. What have you done with your hair?”
    Evan considered his most visible feature. “It is a bit on the fiery side, isn’t it?”
    “A bit.” Potter looked around, borrowed a chair from an adjacent table, and dragged both back to his booth. “When I knew you in California, you were dark.”
    “I invested in a supply of black hair dye, Potter. The powers at large didn’t think that a red-headed hero would wash with the American viewing public. You’re somewhat grey in that area yourself.”
    “Also bottled,” the actor replied, confidentially. “Imparts the ambience of notability and great distinction, don’t you think? Do join us.”
    Potter’s table was furnished with a dingy cloth and a flickering candle inside a cheap ruby glass, and two women—neither of whom seemed remotely interested in the company of their host.
    “Ladies,” Potter said. “I give you Evan Harris, distinguished actor, old friend.”
    “Delighted,” one of the women replied, not sounding very delighted at all, and Evan sat down. One of the legs belonging to his chair was missing its bottom half-inch; he planted his foot on the floor, to correct the wobble.
    On a too-small stage at the front of the room, a stripper who looked as though she would rather have been hoovering her floors was going through the motions, accompanied by a solitary saxophonist on a stool.
    “Wine…?” Potter inquired, giving a bottle of dubious vintage a poke across the table.
    “No,” said Evan. “Thank you.”
    “We’re celebrating the demise of the alternative to alternative theatre,” Potter said, topping up his own glass. “We opened—and closed—in record time.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” Evan said.
    “Nothing to be sorry about,” Potter answered, philosophically. “It was positively atrocious. I haven’t witnessed anything quite so ghastly since my old amateur dramatic society decided to mount a musical adaptation of Norman Simpson’s Resounding Tinkle .”
    One of the women snickered, and her not-delighted companion decided to seek solace in a cigarette. Her disposable lighter was being stubborn. Evan had no matches; he proffered the candle instead, and it was accepted with indifference.
    The snickering woman, whose hair had no doubt begun the evening