The Coffin Trail

‘I want to do something different.’

‘It’s the same thing.’

Daniel shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

‘The truth is, that you blame yourself, isn’t that right?’ Theo’s voice was barely audible now, but Daniel had never known it sound so harsh. ‘Be honest, admit it. All this nonsense about recharging batteries may fool your new girl, but it doesn’t fool me. This is all about you and Aimee and your ridiculous guilty conscience.’

‘I’ve never known a place as quiet as this,’ Miranda said.

‘Can’t I hear someone drilling in the background?’ Daniel said into his mobile. He was draped over an armchair in his college room, on the top floor of staircase fourteen. Below in the Great Quadrangle, a lawnmower roared. In his mind he pictured the grounds of Tarn Cottage, untamed and yet oddly suggestive of an elaborate and long-forgotten design.

‘Too right. The builders are working upstairs and any minute now, I expect them to smash through the bedroom wall. I should have bought ear-muffs. At least the electrician has sorted the wiring now and the shower’s working too. I must have sluiced myself under the jet for a quarter of an hour this morning. It was just like washing away my old life. But — you should have been here last night.’

‘Wish I had been.’

She giggled. ‘It was as silent as — well, a graveyard. In the evening, I went out for a walk, just a ramble around the tarn. It was so eerie, with an owl hooting and twigs cracking. This sounds silly, but I felt nervous, knowing there wasn’t another person within a mile of the cottage.’

‘Sounds like heaven. Remember when the woman in the flat upstairs from you was burgled? And the boy stabbed by the racists while you went out to the kebab house?’

‘Of course you’re right,’ she said. ‘Funny thing is, I’ve never felt as alone as I did last night.’

‘You won’t be alone for long,’ he said. ‘The sooner I pack up here the better. Theo’s cutting up rough and I can’t really blame him. I didn’t make a good job of explaining myself to him.’

‘Maybe you should have been cryptic,’ she said. ‘It worked for me.’

He laughed. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

When Miranda had announced that she was leaving the job, Tamzin had jumped to the conclusion that she was planning to bring a claim for sexual harassment. Without any prompting, the company offered a severance payment, ‘in full and final settlement.’ Her response didn’t mask her contempt, and senior management, in panic mode, increased the golden handshake by fifty per cent. Better than winning the lottery. ‘Anyway, I’ll have said my last goodbyes by the time you get back here.’

‘I can’t wait to see you again,’ she said softly. ‘This really is a different world, you don’t realise until you spend a few days here. It’s not just that you can’t drive fast down the lanes and that the hills mess up the TV reception. I keep thinking I’m a different person. When I called the plumber on the phone, I was tempted to make up a new name for myself. A new identity for a new life.’

‘Please don’t change,’ he said. ‘It’s you I want, no one else.’

During a break from the tedium of packing books, he glanced through the Oxford Mail and an article about people-smugglers caught his eye. It was so easy these days to buy a new identity. With a few keystrokes, an internet surfer could acquire a fake driver’s licence, eulogistic job references, a sheaf of utility bills for a false address. Miranda’s fantasy had lodged in his brain. What would it be like, to take on a different name? How did it affect the way you felt inside, pretending to be someone that you were not?

He was jerked out of his reverie by a fierce knocking at the door. The caller strode in without awaiting a response. Gwynfor Ellis seemed to fill the poky room. No one could doubt that his hefty frame and battered features belonged to a veteran rugby player. Few who did not know him would guess at his unrivalled knowledge of Celtic history or at the delicacy with which he pored over ancient texts.

‘Thought I’d better come and see for myself,’ he said, nodding at the boxes of books piled high on either side of the window. ‘See whether you’d change your mind before you succumb forever to the embrace of Satan, masquerading as The Good Life. I was looking out from the library window and saw you leaving Theo’s. He’s pissed off with you, that’s for sure.’

Daniel spread his arms. ‘He thinks I’ve let him down. Possibly he’s right and I should have hung around longer. I owe him a lot, no question.’

‘I’d say you’ve repaid the debt over the years. Of course, opinion in the SCR is divided. You’ve replaced the new building programme as the hot topic in college. It’s just as well you’ve been lying low. Most of the fogies think you’ve lost your marbles, giving up your fellowship in return for a lifetime’s servitude of doing-it-yourself.’

Daniel groaned. The scions of the Senior Common Room loved nothing better than trashing the reputations of absent friends over tea and scones. Whenever he thought of them — which wasn’t often — he not only remembered that Lewis Carroll had been an Oxford don, but also guessed what inspired the Mad Hatter’s tea party.

‘What they don’t realise is that Miranda loves nothing better than slapping paint on walls. She’s in her element already, organising the tradesmen. With any luck, the makeover will be half-finished by the time I move up there.’

‘You’ll be lucky. It took Debbie and me six months to get one small bathroom sorted.’ Gwynfor hesitated. ‘Tell me it’s none of my business, but…is Miranda running away from something — or someone?’

‘Of course, it’s none of your business,’ Daniel said calmly. ‘Listen, she was in a relationship for a few years. He was married with three kids. Eventually his wife found out and gave him a her-or-me ultimatum. He chose to stay married. My lucky break, but it shattered Miranda’s confidence for a while. I understand what you’re thinking. But you’re wrong.’

‘Question is, do you really need to make a complete break? Why can’t you leave yourself a bit of wriggle room?’

‘Sorry, it’s like a Mills and Boon romance, but we want to make a commitment to this.’

Gwynfor stared. ‘Commitment? Daniel Kind? Am I hearing right?’

Daniel grinned. ‘Past performance is no guide to the future, as the investment folk say. Wriggling’s off the agenda. Miranda had enough of that with the married man and all the reasons why the time was never right for him to pack his bags and leave his family.’

‘But in case things don’t work out up north?’

‘Cumbria isn’t on the other side of the globe.’

‘It’s further away than you think. And I’m not talking miles on the clock.’

‘I suppose you’re right. But it’s something I have to do.’

‘Well, Miranda is a gorgeous lady.’

‘Yes,’ Daniel said. ‘She is.’

‘Think of all those disappointed fans of yours. The porters were complaining they couldn’t cram all the mail into your pigeon-hole. And what will the two of you do for money?’

‘I’ll start writing again, when I’m ready. A proper book, not a TV script. And I’ve sold the house in Summertown for twice the price that the two of us are paying for this cottage. Miranda’s flat is still on the market, but we haven’t even needed a huge loan. So the cash won’t run out in a hurry. It’s not as if I earn a fortune as a college fellow.’

‘Tell me about it. All the same, you’re committed and she isn’t?’

Daniel shook his head. ‘You’re wrong. We’re going into this together, the cottage is ours in equal shares. She’s passionate about Brackdale, the move was her idea. I tried to talk her out of it.’

‘But you’ve changed your mind.’

‘The more I think about it, this isn’t so much getting away from it all. It’s more like going back home.’

Gwynfor stabbed a thick index finger at the wall posters advertising a musical at the Playhouse, a performance of The Real Inspector Hound in the Newman Rooms, a Balliol concert. Daniel had taken Aimee to each of them.

‘This is where you belong. Oxford gets inside you, there’s no resisting it. You’re part of the place and it’s part of you.’

‘That’s what I used to think,’ Daniel said. ‘But now I’m breaking free.’

‘Something I need to tell you,’ Daniel said, switching off the car radio. ‘I should have mentioned it before, but the time never seemed quite right.’

After a final weekend in Oxford, they were caught in a tailback on the Thelwall Viaduct, on the way back to