DEAD CENTRE
Judith Merril
I
They gave him sweet ices, and kissed him all round, and the Important People who had come to dinner all smiled in a special way as his mother took him from the living room and led him down the hall to his own bedroom.
“Great kid you got there,” they said to Jock, his father, and “Serious little bugger, isn’t he?” Jock didn’t say anything, but Toby knew he would be grinning, looking pleased and embarrassed. Then their voices changed, and that meant they had begun to talk about the important events for which the important people had come.
In his own room, Toby wriggled his toes between crisp sheets, and breathed in the powder-and-perfume smell of his mother as she bent over him for a last hurried goodnight kiss. There was no use asking for a story tonight. Toby lay still and waited while she closed the door behind her and went off to the party, click-tap, tip-clack, hurrying on her high silver heels. She had heard the voices change back there too, and she didn’t want to miss anything. Toby got up and opened his door just a crack, and set himself down in back of it, and listened.
. . .
