Free Damascus by Richard Beard Page A

phone somewhere safe, where I don’t even have to see it.’
    Back in the entrance hall, William was still standing opposite the front door, staring at it. This time he must have heard Spencer coming.
    â€˜I'm going to go outside,’ he said, ‘if it’s the last thing I do.’
    Spencer put Hazel’s phone on top of the junk mail on the telephone table, where he was fairly sure not to forget it. William immediately picked it up and tried out various buttons.
    â€˜She’s a rich teacher then?’
    â€˜She has to be available.’
    William pretended to make a call.
    â€˜Hello,’ he said. ‘Is there anybody out there?’
    Hazel was right, he did look a bit like Fellini, but in altogether better health. He seemed in no hurry to go outside, so Spencer decided it was safe to leave him on his own for a while.
    In the dining room, while she’d been waiting, Hazel had pushed away her book and shimmied the skirt of her sweater-dress above her knees. When Spencer came back she let her hand drift over the cushion beside her. Spencer preferred the chair.
    â€˜Fine,’ she said. She crossed her hands in her lap, and was surprised by how much teacher now crept into her voice:
    â€˜Would you mind telling me what’s going on?’
    â€˜How’s Sir John?’
    â€˜Sorry?’
    In the book. 
Sir John Magill's Last Journey.’
    â€˜It’s his last journey. Come on, Spencer, we ought to be doing better than this.’
    He did that incredibly annoying thing where he looked away, as if something somewhere else had urgently caught his attention. Hazel told him to stop it. They were alone, she said, in the same place for a change and together at last. They could actually try to enjoy it.
    â€˜We have the whole day,’ she said firmly. ‘So stop worrying. Or at least tell me what you’re worried about.’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ Spencer said, changing chairs. 'I can never relax when people are coming to look at the house.’
    â€˜If there’s something wrong you should tell me. We shouldn’t have any secrets.’
    â€˜It’s not a secret. It’s just. Look. Imagine the worst possible scenario.’
    â€˜Of what?’
    â€˜Of us.’
    Hazel breathed in, closed her eyes, and imagined more than one Spencer Kelly. This one in the dining room, although he looked something like the Spencer Kelly she’d been expecting, was in fact a completely different Spencer Kelly. He actually owned this house and his father wasn’t a warehouseman. Instead he was a senior politician who’d made his fortune preaching fundamentalist sermons against sex before marriage. When he found out about Hazel’s familiarity with Spencer’s bed, he would automatically suspect an evil connection with Hazel’s father’s sales trips to Iran or Pakistan or Israel. In a fit of rage the father of the fake Spencer Kelly would then exploit his masonic contacts in the military to initiate pre-emptive air-strikes against any of the above-named countries, who would all retaliate instantly with various weapons of mass destruction. Total nuclear war would follow, resulting in the destruction of everything and the death of the planet.
    And then Hazel Burns would never meet the real Spencer Kelly, for whom she may well have been destined in love.
    â€˜Well it’s not that bad,’ Spencer said.
    â€˜How bad is it?’
    Spencer stared intently at a loose thread behind a button on his suit jacket. Hazel snapped her fingers. He told her that when he’d been in the library he’d asked about the moming-after pill.
    â€˜Well hello romance,’ Hazel said.
    Spencer looked up at her, embarrassed but still hopeful, as if she was contemporary art. She wished he wouldn’t do that. It was almost as bad as when he looked away, and not for the first time in her life Hazel wished she believed in a romantic love like