‘Did you know this Lalique well?’ he asked her.
‘Never met him. Simeon was in touch with him a lot over the last year or so, something to do with the book, I think. I don’t really know.’ She tried to smile. ‘Let’s not talk about this any more. It’s so good to see you again, Ben. Isn’t it strange, the two of us walking along together, after all these years?’
‘It’s certainly been a long time,’ he said.
‘We were so young then, weren’t we?’
‘Nineteen.’
She chuckled. ‘You were wild then.’
Memories of college days flashed through Ben’s mind. Most of them were unwanted: hazy and unpleasant recollections of drinking and recklessness. Picking, then winning fights with town toughs in pubs. Throwing a TV from a window. Skipping classes, generally acting crazy. A lot of things he’d done that he’d rather forget.
‘That was a difficult time,’ he said.
‘You never talked about your troubles.’
He still didn’t talk about them now. ‘I’m sorry if I hurt you,’ he said.
‘I really loved you,’ she answered after a beat, glancing at him. ‘But I knew you didn’t feel the same way about me. How long did we last together? Seven weeks? Six? If that?’
‘You ended up with a much better man.’
Michaela made no reply. They walked on a while through the trees, dead leaves crunching underfoot, the dog racing on ahead of them. ‘I remember the first time I took you to meet my parents,’ Michaela said after a few moments’ silence.
‘The one and only time,’ Ben said, casting his mind far back to a hot summer’s afternoon in Surrey. ‘The posh garden party.’
Michaela chuckled. ‘They still talk about it. You completely scandalised everyone. You must have drunk a gallon of whisky that day. And that was even before you’d started arguing politics with my father.’
Ben rolled his eyes, wishing she’d stop it. ‘Please.’
‘As for my cousin Eddie, I think you traumatised him for life.’
Ben hadn’t forgotten that one either. The instant dislike he’d taken to Eddie had been shared by Michaela’s Pekingese, Hamlet. Nobody but Ben had seen Eddie slip Hamlet a sly kick to the head when he thought no-one was watching. Moments later, Eddie had been taking an unplanned nose-dive, fully clothed, into the deep end of the swimming pool in front of eighty guests. The real fun began when it transpired that Eddie couldn’t swim. Four more guests had suffered a dunking before Eddie could be rescued. At that point, the party had been more or less ruined.
‘You dumped me soon afterwards,’ Ben said.
‘I was awful to you.’
‘No, you were right. I was bad medicine. I’m sure your family approved of Simeon slightly more than they did me.’
‘Mum and Dad positively idolise him. But we don’t see so much of them now that they’ve moved to Antigua. Couldn’t stand the British weather any more.’ She started laughing.
‘What’s funny?’
‘I just remembered another time. That night in Oxford when you took on that gang of bikers up Cowley Road? Lord, there must have been eight of them. I can still recall how they scattered in all directions.’
Ben remembered. It had been more like ten. He and Michaela had been walking past when one of them had made a lewd comment about her. ‘Are you done tormenting me?’ he said.
They walked up a grassy slope to higher ground, where the winding country road to Little Denton was visible through the line of naked beech trees that skirted the meadow.
‘So after Oxford you just upped and joined the army?’ Michaela asked.
‘Pretty much,’ Ben said. ‘Thirteen years’ service.’
‘Has there been anyone … since Leigh?’
‘Yes,’ he ventured. ‘There is someone. Or was. I don’t have much talent in that department. Perhaps it’s fate or something.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. Touched his arm. ‘You’re a better man than you realise, Ben Hope. You always were.’
‘Sometimes I’ve thought that I went off in completely the wrong direction,’ Ben confessed. ‘When I look at Simeon, and the life the two of you have here …’
‘You’d have been great in the church. Once you’d settled down a bit.’
‘There’s the rub,’ he laughed.
‘It’s never too late.’
‘I already tried once, a while back. To go back and finish my studies.’
‘Really?’
‘It didn’t work out,’ he said. He didn’t want to say any more, and decided to change the subject radically. ‘It’s a shame I won’t get to meet your son Jude.’
Michaela shrugged. ‘Some other time, I’m sure you will.’
‘Was it a very serious quarrel? Between him and Simeon?’
‘I suppose it’s just typical family stuff,’ she said. ‘Jude would rebel against his own shadow. Always full of his own ideas about what he wants to do with his life. It’ll all come right in the end, I’m sure. Oh, I think I hear the car.’
Ben had heard it too, and spotted the sleek crimson shape of the Lotus darting along beyond the trees in the distance, returning home.
‘Let’s walk up to the house and meet him,’ Michaela said.
Back at the vicarage, Ben thought that Simeon looked even more grim and strained than the night before, although he was obviously struggling hard not to show it as he sipped his coffee and gave Ben the rundown on that morning’s radio interview on the topic ‘Is there still room for Jesus in the Facebook Age?’
‘My secret admirer popped up again during the phone-in at the end,’ Simeon said to Michaela. ‘As charming as ever. Called me a filthy cockroach and said I’d rot with all the others.’
‘I can’t understand why they allow that kind of thing on air,’ Michaela sniffed. ‘“Filthy cockroach”. That’s disgusting.’
‘Do you get a lot of that?’ Ben asked.
‘Oh, I have many enemies,’ Simeon told him. He was smiling, but Ben thought he could see something behind the smile, an edge of seriousness.
Michaela was obviously keen to change the subject. ‘Ben’s car still isn’t working properly,’ she said, topping up their coffees. ‘Darling, do you think Bertie would have a look at it?’ She turned to Ben and explained, ‘He’s the local mechanic, in Greater Denton, just a few minutes’ drive away.’
‘Marvellous idea,’ Simeon said. ‘Bertie will have the old girl right as rain in no time. Sorted out the carbs on the Lotus. And he’s cheap as chips.’
‘Why don’t you call him now?’ Michaela said. ‘If he’s fixed it by this evening, we can pick it up on the way.’
‘On the way where?’ Simeon asked.
‘I thought we could have dinner at the Old Windmill tonight, as we have a special guest.’
‘There’s no need …’ Ben began.
‘Sounds like a fine plan to me,’ Simeon said. ‘I’ll