stopped and smiled. ‘Hi,’ he said warmly. ‘You must be Ben, right?’
Ben eyed the stranger uncertainly.
‘I’ve seen your photo,’ said the man. ‘Brooke had it on her desk.’
Ben noticed his use of the past tense.
‘I’m Amal,’ the man said, and as if he’d read Ben’s thoughts he added quickly, ‘Brooke’s neighbour. I have the flat above.’
‘You’re the writer,’ Ben said, remembering. Brooke had sometimes mentioned the aspiring playwright upstairs who somehow managed to pay the extortionate rent despite having no apparent form of income.
‘ Trying to be a writer,’ Amal grinned.
‘Do you know where Brooke is?’ Ben asked him.
Amal’s grin turned into a grimace. ‘She’s not here, I’m afraid. Gone to Vienna with her friend Sam.’
Sam, Ben thought. Right.
He paused a few beats. ‘I had a present for her,’ he said, looking down at the package in his hand.
‘I can take that, if you want. I’ll make sure she gets it.’
‘I’d appreciate that.’
Amal glanced up at the sky. The sleet was coming down more heavily, haloed in the amber streetlight. ‘You want to come inside for a coffee? It’s bloody freezing out here.’
Ben shook his head. ‘I’d better get going.’ As he was walking out of the gate, Amal called back, ‘Ben?’
Ben turned.
‘Sam is short for Samantha,’ Amal said with a significant look. ‘Just in case you didn’t… still, you know what I mean.’
Ben nodded. ‘Thanks for letting me know. Happy Christmas, Amal.’
‘You too. Take care, all right?’
Chapter Four
Ben was awake long before sunrise the next day, got out of bed and pumped out five quick sets of twenty press-ups on the carpet of his little room in the farmhouse bed and breakfast. He showered and watched the dawn crack over the rural Oxfordshire skyline with a mug of strong black coffee in his hand. He hadn’t slept well, his mind constantly turning over, switching back and forth from one thing to another and keeping him in a state of tension that only his long-established self-discipline prevented him from soothing with a gulp from his whisky flask.
Some time later, he shrugged on his leather jacket and went downstairs to be met by the smell of bacon, sausages and fried eggs cooked up by the proprietor, Mrs Bold, who looked as though she’d gobbled down a few too many of her own full English breakfasts. Ben politely declined her insistent offer of a coronary on a plate and stepped out into the crisp, cold morning air. Yesterday’s dark clouds and sleet had given way to a clear sky. Pale sunshine filtered through the bare branches of the oaks and beeches and glittered on the frosty lawn.
He swung himself into the cab of the Land Rover. The engine spluttered on starting, and for a moment or two he thought, ‘Oh-oh’; then it fired up with an anaemic-sounding rasp and he went crunching over the gravel of the long drive.
The cemetery was just a few fields away from Langton Hall, in the grounds of a sixteenth-century church ringed by a mossy dry-stone wall. Ben knelt by the grave and delicately brushed away a few dead leaves. The inscription on the granite headstone was simple and plain, as she’d have wanted it to be. Just her name; the year of her birth; that of her death.
She was just thirty-two.
Ben was alone in the graveyard. He said a few words, felt his throat tighten up and then sat silently for a long time with his head bowed. He laid a single white rose on the grave. Then he stood up and walked slowly back to the car.
*
In the end, the speech went better than he’d expected. Ben hadn’t worn a tuxedo since his trip to Egypt some years earlier, and the collar felt stiff around his neck, but he’d felt composed and his initial nerves at seeing the large crowd filling every seat of Langton Hall’s new auditorium had settled the moment he’d stepped up to the podium and launched into his opening line. The things he said about Leigh were from the heart; judging by the length of the applause he received at the end, they must have touched those of many of the audience too.
Relieved that his moment in the limelight was over, Ben had shaken a few hands, knocked back a glass of champagne and then taken his seat for the opening act of the opera. He was glad the trustees had voted for The Barber of Seville over something too tragedy-laden and depressing. Too many opera composers seemed to him to revel in making their characters come to sticky ends, but the Rossini was lightweight and rousing, with jolly arias guaranteed to leave the audience humming their tunes afterwards. Ben felt Leigh would have approved of the choice, as well as of the polished performances of the singers.
He’d never been much of an opera fan himself, though, and it wasn’t too long before he started getting lost in the twists and turns of the romantic intrigue between Count Almaviva and the beautiful Rosina. The last scene of Act One, with the appearance of the drunken soldier, perplexed him: who was this guy, and what did he want? Was he actually the Count in disguise, and how could this Dr Bartolo fellow be taken in by this obvious ploy to seduce his daughter? Or was she his daughter? Oh, what the hell. Ben was restless and frustrated by the end of the act, and when the applause began he made a bee-line for the bar.
He was getting started on a measure of scotch when he felt a touch on his shoulder and turned round to see a man and a woman standing there, both dressed for the opera, both smiling broadly at him. For a moment he didn’t recognise them — then he realised he was looking at two faces he hadn’t seen for twenty years.
‘Simeon? Michaela?’
‘Fine speech, Benedict.’ Simeon Arundel was around Ben’s height, sporty and trim at just a shade under six feet. His dark hair was as thick and glossy as it had been back in student days, and he’d aged remarkably well except for the tired, rather drawn look to his face.
Michaela wore her fair hair a little shorter now, and might have gained a few pounds, but the brilliance of her smile took Ben straight back to his youth; a faraway time that often seemed to him like another life, when they’d all been students together at Christ Church, Oxford. Like Ben, Simeon had been a Theologian, only a couple of years older and just beginning his postgraduate studies. Michaela Ward had been in the year below Ben, reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics, or PPE as it was termed at Oxford.
‘What a wonderful surprise to meet like this,’ Simeon said. ‘We had no idea you’d be here. Then suddenly there you are on the stage. I said to Michaela, “Lord, that’s Benedict Hope!”’
‘It’s just Ben these days,’ Ben said with a smile.
‘It’s fantastic to see you again, Ben,’ said Michaela. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’
‘I hope I’ve changed in some ways,’ Ben said. He could see something that definitely had: the identical gold wedding rings that Simeon and Michaela were wearing. ‘I should have known you two would have ended up getting married,’ he said.
‘Just a little while after you… after you left the college,’ Michaela said. She seemed about to say more, then held it back. The circumstances of Ben’s leaving college weren’t a topic for small talk.
‘I suppose I should offer my belated congratulations, then,’ Ben said.
They laughed, and then Simeon’s expression suddenly grew serious. ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your wife. I had no idea.’
Ben nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he muttered.
‘Are you enjoying the opera?’ Michaela asked him, changing the subject.
‘Honestly? I’d sooner be at a jazz gig.’
‘Please don’t tell me you live around here,’ she said. ‘It would be awful to think we’d been near neighbours all this time without ever realising it.’
‘No, I live in Normandy these days. I run a business there. What about you two?’ he added, always quick to deflect the inevitable questions about the kind of work that went on at Le Val.
‘We have the vicarage at Little Denton,’ Simeon said. ‘It’s just a few miles from here.’
