‘I read it.’
‘Not in one of Mother Hildegard’s books, I hope.’
She laughed. ‘No, it was in one of Helga’s magazines.’
‘Helga?’
‘My sitter. Daddy likes her, I think.’
The eggs were ready. Ben spooned one out into an egg-cup and put it down on the wooden platter in front of her. ‘Anyway, little lady, I think you think too much.’ He smiled. ‘Now shut up and eat.’
‘That’s what Daddy says, too.’ Clara shrugged and cracked the top of her egg.
Leigh emerged from her room half an hour later to the smell of coffee, toast and eggs. There was animated talking and laughter coming from downstairs. Peeping down the narrow stairway, she could see Ben and Clara sitting at the table together building a house out of cards. Ben was delicately putting the last card on the top. He took his hand away tentatively. The house wobbled slightly, but remained standing. Clara watched it, entranced, then her cheeks puffed out and she blew it down. Cards scattered across the table.
‘Hey, that’s cheating,’ Ben said. Clara giggled and rocked in her chair.
Leigh stood quietly at the top of the stairs. She watched Ben play with the child. For a man who had never settled down and would probably never be a father himself, he had an amazingly easy way with kids. Clara obviously liked him a lot. That hardness Leigh had seen in him was completely gone. Suddenly, she was looking at the Ben she’d known from years ago.
Clara saw Leigh coming down the stairs and smiled shyly. ‘I think Daddy’s awake too,’ she said, cocking her head at the clump of footsteps above. ‘Leigh, you’d better get off the stairs.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if Daddy’s getting up, Max will get up too. And when he runs down the stairs he won’t stop for anyone, and he’ll send you flying. He does it all the time.’ Her eyes filled with delight as the dog came thundering down like a huge black cannonball. ‘Here he comes!’
Leigh quickly stepped aside to avoid being bowled over. Clara jumped down from her chair and ran out of the room with the dog. ‘Come on, Maxy. I’ll get Sister Agnes to fix your breakfast.’ The door banged and she was gone. The cottage was suddenly much quieter.
‘Nice kid,’ Leigh said.
‘She’s great.’
‘She likes you.’
‘I like her.’
‘You never wanted kids, Ben?’
‘Wrong life,’ he said.
He made her coffee. Last night’s tension was gone, and she was smiling and relaxed. They sat and drank the hot coffee. They could hear Kinski thumping about upstairs.
‘Are you and he leaving today?’ Leigh asked.
Ben nodded. ‘Later, maybe in the evening.’
‘It’s going to seem strange without you around.’
‘It’s better this way.’
Leigh sipped her coffee. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘First port of call, the Meyer family.’
‘You think they’ll talk to you?’
‘I can only try. Hey, look at that,’ he said suddenly, looking up above the door. ‘I didn’t notice it before.’ A wooden rack over the low doorway cradled an old double-barrelled shotgun. He went over and lifted it down. ‘Nice,’ he said.
‘Looks old.’
‘Probably a hundred years. Good condition, though.’ He ran his eye along the elegant lines, the hand- checkering on the stock and the hammers. Modern weapons were brutish and functional. They did their job efficiently, but they lacked grace. This had been crafted with loving artistry and skill. Hand-finished wood and engraved steel, not hard black rubber and polymer plastic.
‘I wonder if it still works,’ Leigh said.
‘These things were built to last forever,’ he replied. ‘The old groundsman here probably used it to pot a rabbit now and then.’ He tested the action. The hammers clicked back with a sound like winding up an old clock. Three loud clicks. They locked back solid. There were two triggers, one set behind the other. He tried each one in turn. They had a light, crisp let-off, a little under two pounds. The action was well-oiled and the twin bores were smooth, unpitted and clean. He flipped the gun over in his hands. ‘I have to have a go,’ he said. He searched around, and soon found a box of cartridges in a drawer.
The sun was shining bright on the snow outside. ‘Mind if I come too?’ she asked.
‘Be my guest.’
Ben carried the gun over his shoulder as they trudged away from the convent in their snow-boots. The sky was clear and blue and the air smelled fresh. When the convent was sinking out of sight behind a snowy ridge, he looked back. ‘We should be OK here. I don’t want to give the nuns heart attacks.’ He looked up at the mountains in the distance. ‘I don’t think we’re going to start any avalanches.’ He propped the shotgun against the trunk of a pine tree. ‘Here, help me.’
‘To do what?’
‘Make a snowman.’ He crouched down and started gathering up armfuls of snow, heaping it in a pile. She joined him, clapping handfuls of snow onto the heap. ‘I haven’t done anything like this for years,’ she said, laughing. ‘I remember when Olly and I were kids and we used to lark about in the snow. But it always ended up with him shoving a load of it down my back and me clobbering him with the spade.’
Ben smiled and gathered up more snow.
Leigh watched him with a curious look. He saw her face. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘I still find it hard to believe,’ she said.
‘Find what hard to believe?’
‘You and Theology.’
He paused, rubbing snow off his hands. ‘Really?’
‘You studied it where?’
‘Oxford.’
‘Impressive. What were your intentions?’
He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. ‘You mean was I going to make a career out of it?’ He smiled. ‘Maybe. At the time, I thought about it.’
‘You were seriously going to become a clergyman?’
He clapped another handful of snow onto the growing snowman. ‘It was a long time ago, Leigh. Before I knew you.’
‘How come you never told me?’
‘That part of my life was already over. It didn’t seem relevant.’
‘Did Oliver know about it?’
‘Why should he?’
Leigh shook her head. ‘You, in a white dog-collar, living in a little ivy-fronted vicarage somewhere in the south of England, shepherding your flock. The Reverend Benedict Hope. What made you change your mind?’
‘Life happened,’ he said. ‘I drifted away from it.’
‘An angel,’ she said.
He laughed. ‘What?’
‘You didn’t drift that far,’ she said. ‘You just found a different path to do the same thing. You became an angel. You’re the guy who comes down and saves people, looks after the weak.’
Ben didn’t reply.
