Dead in Time

Chapter Eighteen

Leon was as good as his word. Or Damon’s word. Hard to be sure which. Either way, the following Monday morning I boarded a transatlantic flight, business class, and he sat next to me, reading through Mum’s scrapbook as I tried to concentrate on us not falling out of the sky. We talked for part of the flight like we’d done at my flat; him not really listening to me, hedging around the enormity of his own incredulity, yet somehow managing to comfort me all the same. I liked the solidity of Leon’s presence, his expansiveness, and that faint hint of vetivert. I liked the way those expensive clothes hung off a kid who, after all these years, still couldn’t believe he got paid to do what he loved best in the whole world.

“Your mom was some kinda fan, huh?”

He’d flicked back to the early pages, brightening himself up after the pale, quiet moments of ‘Death House Horror’.

I nodded. “She was. Well, all three of them were.”

“They ever…? I mean, I don’t recall—”

I smiled. “She was never a groupie.”

“Oh.” Leon looked relieved. “Right.”

I turned my laughter to the window and watched the darkness stream past.

The flight wasn’t that bad, not counting the recycled air and my general distrust of all forms of communal transport, but I could have done without the six-hour stopover in Minneapolis. I hated the hanging around, the altered time zones, and the way everything seemed to catch up with me like a brick wall travelling at speed. Leon remained irritatingly unruffled, even smiling graciously when the first of several well-preserved women d’une certain âge shimmied over in her biscuit-coloured business suit and asked if he was really Leon Fielding. He chatted her up for five minutes, gave her an autograph, and nodded like he really cared what she’d thought of the gig she’d caught in Illinois six weeks ago. Perhaps he did. I melted into the background and inspected the toes of my shoes until she buggered off.

Leon shot me an embarrassed grin. “Sorry.”

“Oh, no. Must be nice.”

“Drives Toby crazy,” he confided, and I noticed how he seemed a little tighter wound than he had done. Paternal anticipation?

I didn’t get chance to probe; there were more autograph hunters.

Early evening, local time, we stumbled into the arrivals lounge at Sacramento Metropolitan with me feeling—and probably looking—a complete wreck. The fruit of my companion’s loins arrived to pick us up, eschewing any notion we could simply have caught the shuttle to the hotel. Leon grinned and waved, and I stared at the figure bearing down upon us through the gushing sunshine and the square, white corners of everything. Talk about your mirror of years.

“Dad! You have a good flight? Great. Yeah, I’m fine. You’re Miss Ross, right? Toby Fielding. Hi.”

Broad voice, broad accent, broad palm: virtually Leon’s carbon copy. Same cheekbones, same nose, same chin. Same hair—or as Leon’s had once been, anyway. Toby wore his short and fashionably tousled, and he had a slightly different build. Taller, longer, and lankier than his father, with a narrower jaw line and, I assumed, his mother’s blue eyes. Great dentistry, though. He pumped my hand and smiled Leon’s smile at me, asked how the flight had been, were we ready to go to the hotel, did we want to grab a bite to eat first… he even sounded like Leon, albeit without the mangled Anglo-American vowels.

“Um. Thanks,” I said, a pale and vaguely English response.

Leon grinned and dripped with pride, his hand on Toby’s shoulder as we walked to his Toyota hybrid, making the small talk of people unaccustomed to each other, but too polite to show it.