Junction X

yes,” Sheila said. “He’s mechanically minded like his Dad, but—well, we both of us don’t really know where he got his brains from. He was at the Grammar School, of course, but his teachers there warned us he’d need to get into a good Prep school like St. Peter’s to really get noticed.”
Alfred took up the narrative. “He’s got ten O Levels.” Alex gave a sigh of exasperation at this. “They gave him such a glowing reference for his maths and physics that St. Peter’s let him in for his final year to take his A’s—we are both very proud.”
I looked at Alex properly for the first time and found he was blushing, his ears and cheeks flaming, his mouth in a straight line. All he said was “Mum…” in a warning voice. His mother took no notice and continued to talk about him. With a shrug, he returned to staring at the garden and the busy bird table.
Valerie, who had been floating in and out whilst we were talking, stuck her head through the door and said, “Do come through to the dining room.”
“Take your drinks through,” I said. “I’ll get some wine.” I didn’t even watch Alex pass by. I don’t think I ever told him that, and I wish I had. When I look back to that first night, I find it hard to believe that I was more interested in finding a mediocre Beaujolais than I was in learning more about him. But then—we were both different people. We were all of us different people.

Chapter 4
“You won’t have heard of me,” my wife said. “Of course, I wasn’t Valerie Johnson back then; I was Valerie Sutton.”
“Oh but we have! Fancy! Valerie Sutton!” Sheila exclaimed, tackling the stroganoff with something that looked like trepidation. “We follow the tennis, have done for years. We’ve never liked football much.”
“Not football, no,” added Alfred. “I don’t mind cricket. But always been very fond of tennis. Been up to Wimbledon once or twice, when Alec was younger.”
“You were very good.”
“No, not really,” Valerie said.
“Good enough to get on the circuit, and there’s not many young ladies who can do that,” Alfred said. “Mind you, it’s all Russians and Bulgarians now.”
Valerie turned to Alex while I opened another bottle. “And do you play tennis, Alec?”
He shook his head, and Alfred continued. “He’s not a great one for games, I’m afraid. Your wife tells me that you play golf?”
“When I can,” I said. “Sheila, may I top you up?”
“When he can,” echoed Valerie. “What he means by that,” she gave me a sweet smile, which I returned, “is that he plays every chance he can. Why is it, Sheila, that women are capable of appreciating many things, and yet men get obsessed with one?”
Sheila let me refill her glass and smiled. “I do know what you mean. Luckily, Alfred is not like that, but Alec…”
“Mum…” he said quietly.
“With him, it’s all trains.”
I looked up, interested. “Really?”
“Oh yes, ever since he was small, nothing interested him but trains. His dad had a pre-war Hornby that we set up for him, and since then it’s grown and grown so much it was taking over the house. Apart from the benefit of being near St. Peter’s, the nice thing about the new house is the big room at the top. He can play up there to his heart’s content.”
I glanced at him with more interest and saw that his fringe had fallen over his eyes. He couldn’t have got his head any further down without actually sticking it into the stroganoff. I felt sorry for him. I estimated he was seventeen, perhaps eighteen, and no one that age likes to be accused of playing.
“It’s that big, then?” I asked. “The layout?”
Alfred nodded, swallowing. “It’ll take more than a day or so for us to set it all up, but when we have, I hope you’ll come over and see it. It’s something to see, isn’t it, son?” Alex nodded but didn’t speak again that night.
My talented wife gently steered the dinner conversation away from the masculinity of model trains. The remainder of the evening, however, has been blurred in time. We spent a lot of evenings with Alex’s parents and this one doesn’t stand out in my mind, unlike some of the others. After we shut the door after them, Valerie surprised me by turning to me and drifting into my arms.
“They are nice,” she said. “I liked them.” She tipped her face up to be kissed and I did so, chastely, on her forehead.
“The boy’s a bit old to get on with the twins, though,” I said, switching off the porch light.
“Mmm,” she said, and I remembered too late the tiger trap I’d just stepped into—the reason I’d spent the night in the spare room the night before. Valerie wanted another child, and I was running out of excuses. But she didn’t bite, to my enormous relief. She kissed me on the cheek and disappeared to clear up.
In the sitting room, I debated between Ella Fitzgerald and Rachmaninov. The classical music won and I threw myself onto the settee and stretched out, remembering guiltily and a little too late, to toe off my shoes. Phil weighed heavy on my mind. For ten minutes or so, all I did was lie there and think of him. I tried to put him into two boxes, the way he did. Phil the mate, whom I missed. Missed playing golf with, missed down the pub and missed laughing with. I hadn’t realised that his move would affect us so much and that he would find new friends, but then, him being Phil, I should have realised he would. Then there was the other Phil. The one with the dark and wicked voice, the one with the teasing fingers.
It was easy enough to separate them out like that. All I needed to decide was did I want Phil One or Phil Two? Or did I want them