He drove back to his hotel and with the spirit of Einstein, started the process that leads to drunkenness. Made the resolve in the light of the possibility of looming death to avenge his father and fell asleep. The next morning, he checked out of the hotel, and also made the decision to get himself checked after the dreaded incubation period that the virus required to take hold.

Three weeks, he researched, was the time frame.

He started the drive back to Los Angeles.

His reason for the journey to Palm Springs on his arrival in California, apart from astrological advice, had been to play a round of golf at the Monterey Country Club in Palm Desert in honour and memory of his father. The round of golf that had never got beyond that first tear-soaked tee. They had played there from when Ever was an eight-year-old and they were the moments he treasured the most. His father taught him everything he knew about the game, Ever was a scratch player by the time he was sixteen. He was saddened that he hadn’t managed to fulfil the tribute.

But it was not to be, and now he was pulling into the gas station to be aided by the friendly South Asian man before the drive back to the business end of his journey.

And Interstate 10.

Chapter Eleven

Ever had been born in Los Angeles.

Well Santa Monica to be precise, at St John’s Hospital. His life was a yo-yo, a peripatetic existence, back and forth to Los Angeles and the shocking gloom of the West Midlands. This depended on the whim of his father and the mental state of his mother.

His father was born in the Midlands and had a small house there, that looked like the original design for a Barratt Home. An easy construction to replicate, like the typical child’s drawing, front door in the middle, windows up and down either side, and a garage, for the emerging popularity of the car in the 1950s, on the side.

Ever always thought it was out of proportion, that there was too much space for the car. He worked it out one day, pacing, and was disturbed to realise that the car had more room than he did to sleep.

Ever’s father had been left the house by his father, and as an artist he was grateful, to have a base, at least.

A free base.

His mother and father separated when he was fourteen, his mother taking the house in England where he followed, for his education, leaving his father in Los Angeles, and Ever then made the frequent trips, typical of the child of divorce, back and forth. It was not a bad way, Ever soon realised, to spend your teenage years.