Blood Rules by John Trenhaile Page A

followed, Colin became aware of engine noise for the first time and wondered how he could have failed to notice it earlier.
    Thorneycroft winked at Colin and nodded renewed thanks before returning to the cockpit. His intervention seemed to have silenced Van Tonder, at least for the moment, for when Colin rose to visit the toilet he saw the South African fast asleep, a frown crumpling his face. His spectacles had slipped from his nose and were lying in his lap. He was snoring, offensive to his neighbors even in repose; but Colin, looking down at him, felt a sudden stab of irrational sympathy. Something had made Van Tonder the way he was: not the kind of something the man would have chosen for himself.
    The rest of the flight to Bahrain passed uneventfully. Afternoon sunlight cast shadows across a hilly, maroon-colored landscape, which stretched as far as the eye could see. Then the engine pitch changed, Colin’s ears told him of the pressure change as they descended, and he could make out distant gas flares over the sands, where Arabs in truth had money to burn. He watched, fascinated, until the sight of those scattered torches from the rigs eventually inspired him to think of his son. Robbie was fourteen now. Soon there would be girls. In love as in life, Robbie must navigate the desert between flares, somehow avoiding the Leila Hanifs of this world on the way.
    At first the thought amused him; after awhile it became unsettling and he went aft to find out how the object of his musings was getting on.
    “There you are.” The flight attendant gave Robbie a plastic cup and a miniature bottle of Johnny Walker. “Are you really eighteen?”
    “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
    When Tim Campbell choked out a smothered laugh Robbie dug him in the ribs. “You must excuse my friend, he’s not accustomed to the high life. Joke, geddit?”
    The girl smiled. He
might
have been eighteen….
    “Are you going all the way?” she asked.
    “I will if you will.”
    More suppressed grunting from Tim Campbell, but Robbie’s gaze was disturbingly direct.
    “To Manila, silly!” Eighteen—twenty-eight, more like!
    “K.L.,” Robbie said. “Then on to Australia. Dad’s teaching there. I’m going to meet my great-grandmother. She’s, like, grossly antique. Seventy-something.” He began to count off on his fingers. “There’s Celestine, that’s my great-grandmother; then there’s her son, Feisal, he’s fifty-six; then—” he colored; his fingering faltered for a second—"then there’s my mum, she’s thirty-six; then me. I forget how old everyone is exactly, but I know if you add all of us together it comes to a hundred and eighty-two.”
    “Are your mum and dad traveling with you?”
    Robbie’s cheeks boasted two high points of color that pulsated in time with his heart. “No,” he said to the seat in front of him. “Dad’s traveling business class; Mum, she’s, they’re … they’re divorced.”
    “Mine too,” the flight attendant said after a pause. “It’s rotten at first, isn’t it.”
    Robbie nodded.
    “How long ago did they split?”
    “Two years.”
    “Same as mine.”
    He looked up at her, and now there was nothing cheeky about his expression. “How was it for you?” he asked, in a small voice, and it never even crossed the girl’s mind that this could be more of the sexual tease he’d tried earlier.
    She made a face. “Not so bad, really. At least we got some peace in the house. You?”
    Robbie lowered his gaze. How to answer that question rationally? Tell her about the day he’d slit up the sofa cushions with a carving knife? No. The tears? She’d know about all that. Anger, then; should he tell her how much it enraged him that his mother had buggered off without a word?
    “It was okay,” he said firmly. “You get used to it pretty quick, actually.”
    He cast around for some witty remark with which to smother the hissing tangle of emotions inside him. He composed his face and looked