Rotten Gods by Greg Barron

settles into the departure lounge to wait. The phone display shows no new messages. On impulse he punches out a new text and sends it to Isabella’s regular number, along with an older phone that she often carries around, the spare that Frances sometimes uses. No reply comes through, even when he watches the display, waiting for the tone to sound, a snippet from a pop song that Frances programmed for him last time they were together. Was it two weeks ago? A few days snatched in Paris while Isabella flew to Helsinki.
    Sitting there on the soft upholstery, Simon holds the images of the girls in his mind, studying them like dolls in his hands. They are polite kids. Sweet. So much like their mother but with elements of his own DNA that both frighten and thrill him. So different: Frances with her placid, sweet face and blonde hair almost to her waist; Hannah tall for her age, thinner, more spontaneous. Aching deep in his heart, he tries not to think of the various scenarios that might have overwhelmed one grown nanny and two smart kids. At how something must have forced Isabella to leave them.
    The boarding announcement comes over the loudspeakers in Arabic, then English. Simon joins the fifty or so passengers streaming down through the tube and into the aircraft.
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    Simon dozes on the flight, head lolling, waking often, gasping for breath; a heavy acidic sweat on his neck and cheeks.
    If only I could talk to her … to them.
    He has told and embellished the story of his and Isabella’s firstmeeting so many times that he can no longer distinguish the facts from the frills.
    He does know that they met at his Great Aunt Delilah’s funeral, crammed into the pews at Ewhurst Parish Church in Surrey. To Simon, a senior at nearby Cranleigh School, the lucky seating coincidence was the only bright spot on a day that saw him miss opening the batting with the First XI, the elite school cricket team he had been trying to crack for two years.
    When Isabella settled into the pew beside him, she turned and smiled, leaving him too stunned to respond. Her eyes, he decided, were as green as summer grass, her body slim but full in the right places. During the entrance hymn and the homily they shared a number of stolen glances. After the return from communion she was just a little closer. Their thighs touched.
    This brief contact was a charge of high voltage current that widened Simon’s eyes and caused a twinge in his groin that necessitated an adjustment, achieved under cover of the funeral program produced and printed by his mother on the family Apple Mac.
    As the service scudded to its conclusion, Simon dropped his arm on the seat beside him, and the backs of his knuckles were close enough to brush her leg. Again that flash of excitement. As the pall bearers carried their burden down the aisle, Simon was able to study her for the first time, blonde hair pulled back tight, a few tantalising wisps still free. Her skin was as smooth and perfect as a petal, her face structured like that of a model, or an actress. Breasts too. Oh God, what breasts. By leaning forwards he could see patches of white bra and skin between the buttons of her blouse. It seemed to Simon that he had never seen a girl as pretty as her. He almost sighed aloud when she, catching him staring, turned again and smiled.
    Exiting the church, he loitered among the post-funeral chatterers and tried to get past Uncle Alan and his dull jokes to the patch of concrete where she stood with her parents. By the time he emerged from the crowd, ready with a smile and a line, she was already walking away.
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    The wake was held at a family friend’s country house, a solid old residence built of Bargate stone, apparently once constructed as a woodsman’s cottage, with white-framed windows and doors, surrounded by an acre of hedges, ponds and garden beds. Silver trays lined the dining room table. Scones with cream, devilled eggs, and cucumber sandwiches occupied