Michaela went quiet and looked pensive for a while as they finished clearing up. She glanced out of the window and forced a smile. ‘Shame to be stuck indoors when it’s a lovely day outside. Would you like to go for a walk?’
Ben said he would love to. They stepped out into the crisp sunny winter’s morning and walked down the long, sloping garden with Scruffy running rings around them, a stick in his mouth. Ben was wearing a pair of Simeon’s wellingtons that crunched on the frosty grass.
‘Isn’t the air wonderful?’ Michaela said. ‘Maybe we’re in for a nice, cold, dry spell, after all the rain we’ve had. I’m praying for a white Christmas.’
‘That would be nice,’ Ben said, a little insincerely. Snow mainly just meant a big clearing headache for him.
A gate at the bottom of the garden led to a little patch of woods. Crows cawed in the cold air. The sunlight sparkled on the fast-flowing river through the gaps in the trees.
Ben pointed at the dog, who was running on ahead of them with a world of rabbits to flush out and chase. ‘I like him.’
Michaela seemed pleased. ‘He’s a real character, isn’t he? Turned up here out of the blue, about a year ago. No telling where he came from or who his former owners were. We took him in. I think he’s about three or four. I love him to bits.’
Michaela threw the stick for the dog a few times, and Ben watched her, noticing the way that her look of contentment had faded to a frown as they walked on.
‘You know, I’m really worried about Simeon,’ she said suddenly. ‘He’s got so much on his mind, and sometimes I’m afraid he’s going to burn himself out or make himself ill. He works far too hard, and what with all the quarrelling between him and Jude, not to mention this awful business with Fabrice Lalique…’
‘The man who committed suicide?’
She nodded. ‘He was a Catholic priest. Simeon met him a couple of years ago in France while visiting a church restoration project, and they became friends.’ She shook her head. ‘I still can’t believe it. What a shock. And the worst of it are the revelations that came afterwards.’
‘Revelations?’
‘A day or two after his death, his home was raided by police, acting on a tip-off. They seized his computer and found… how can I put it?’ Michaela paused uncomfortably. ‘Certain material. Very unpleasant and explicit material. Pictures of children. You can guess what kind of pictures I’m talking about.’
‘I can guess,’ Ben said, with a stab of revulsion.
‘It was the reason he killed himself,’ Michaela said. ‘Out of guilt, or shame, or perhaps just because he knew what would happen if he was caught. Before he did it, he sent an email to everyone he knew, confessing his sins and asking for forgiveness. Then he threw himself off the highest bridge in France.’
‘That’ll certainly do it,’ Ben said, without the least trace of pity in his voice.
Michaela turned towards him, shading her eyes from the low sun with her hand. ‘Do you think it’s possible to forgive someone for something so horrible, even if they’ve repented? I struggle with that, I have to admit.’
Ben paused. He thought of paedophiles he’d blown away at point-blank range with a shotgun. Come to think of it, he’d never stopped to ask them if they’d repented. With a sawn-off pointed at them, they probably would have dropped to their knees and started chanting the Lord’s Prayer if they’d thought it could help. It probably wouldn’t have.
‘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.’
