“If she’d done it on purpose, his balls would be in the burns unit by now!” Siobhan said raucously as Ian winced.

Lindsay cautiously worked her way through a slice of toast, discovering that if she sucked it before chewing, the noise was just about bearable. Ian sipped his tea in silence, absorbed once more in his newspaper. Siobhan shovelled a cooked English breakfast down her neck, eyes swivelling constantly round the room in search of potential prey.

At five to nine, Ian glanced at his watch, folded his paper and got to his feet. “I’ll see you two at the Winter Gardens in a bit,” he said. “I’ve got to pop to the shops. I promised my sister’s kids I’d bring them back a present from the seaside. Somebody told me there’s a really good toy shop up the back of the town, so I’m going to take a drive up there.”

“I wish he’d said a bit sooner,” Siobhan grumped as Ian strode off. “I was relying on him to give us a lift. Now we’re going to be late.”

Lindsay and Siobhan slipped into their chairs at twenty past nine. The hall was less than half-full, which was more than could be said for the platform. A man with a hoarse voice was proposing a motion which appeared to have something to do with child care. Lindsay shoved her voting card at Siobhan, made a pillow of her forearms on the table and carefully lowered her head. She was drifting in the comfortable half-world between sleep and wakefulness when Siobhan dug her in the ribs and announced in a voice loud enough to turn heads three tables away, “That’s him, Lindsay! That’s the man I was with last night!”

Siobhan’s urgent revelation caused enough stir to ripple forward to the platform. The young man at the podium was thrown off his stride mid-sentence as he struggled to see what was going on. He clearly couldn’t believe it was the power of his oratory that had caused the commotion. It took only moments for him to realize who was at the center of it. Even at that distance, Lindsay could see him flush. A slow ripple of mirth began in the corner of the hall.

Overcome with confusion, he gabbled, “Support the amendment,” turned tail and fled. By then, the ripple had become a wave of laughter. The noise around their table was so loud that Lindsay could scarcely make out the words of Paul Horne, who arrived at the delegation table pale and sweating.

“Say again?” she said.

Paul’s lips trembled as he struggled for his rapidly disintegrating self-control. “It’s Ian. He’s dead.”

Chapter 4

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