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man?’
    ‘Christ knows. Some war hero.’
    Jane takes a deep breath, gives Daniel a faint smile.
    ‘Well. We’re in the news again.’
    ‘I’m terribly sorry.’
    ‘I suggested it.’
    Mark shouts back and points to the bank where he stands. Daniel waves. ‘You walk down, Jane. I’ll bring the punt.’
    When he reaches the mouth of the cut, she is standing there between the willows. At her feet stands the unopened bottle of champagne. She pulls a face.
    ‘Sir Andrew Agueprick’s parting gift.’
    He glances back and sees the other punt already a hundred yards away, heading for the far bank to gain protection from the breeze. He tethers his own, then climbs up beside Jane, lighting a cigarette. They sit down facing the main river, their backs to the horror a hundred yards behind; stare out over the water. Another punt comes down opposite them, five or six people, a girl poling inexpertly, a scream, laughter as she nearly loses the pole.
    ‘Did he say how old she was?’
    No.
    She reaches and takes the cigarette from his fingers, takes a puff, then passes it back.
    He says, ‘When I was a kid, helping with the harvest during the war, a rabbit got caught in the mower blades of the reaper.’ But he doesn’t go on.
    She stares out over the river. ‘I know what you mean. Like things in dreams.’
    ‘It’s all I can remember about that day now. The whole summer.’
    She leans back against the willow-stem beside her, turned a little towards him, her head tilted back. She has left her dark glasses in the punt. After a moment she closes her eyes. He glances at her face, those eyelashes, that mouth, the grave girl under the sometimes outrageous one. She murmurs, ‘On the banks of the gentle stream.’
    ‘I know.’
    And silence falls between them. Two more punts pass on their way downstream back towards Oxford. The clouds are thickening, a steep, opaque rain-mountain coming from the west, over the Cunmor Hills. The sunlight disappears. He looks up at the sky.
    ‘Are you cold?’
    She shakes her head, without opening her eyes. Overhead a huge American bomber, a Flying Fortress, roars slowly down westward below the clouds on its way to land at Brize Norton. Perhaps Andrew is right, it carries the murderer: he chews gum, in a baseball hat, watching a panel of instruments, up there. The thing is two miles away, a mere speck, when she speaks.
    ‘Maybe it’s right. That we should have found it.’
    He turns, to see her eyes open, watching him.
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘Just… the way we’ve all lived these last three years. And reality. ‘It’s been the most marvellous three years of my life.’
    ‘And mine.’
    ‘Meeting Nell… and you. Anthony.’ He stares at his feet. ‘All that.’
    ‘But has it been real?’
    He leans back on an elbow, tears off a grass-stalk, bites its end. ‘I thought you and Anthony were very real.’
    She is silent a moment.
    ‘I was revising Rabelais last night. Pals çe que voudras.’
    ‘Since when was that a sin?’
    ‘Perhaps what we want isn’t what is. Or ever could be.’
    ‘But we’ve done what we want. At least part of it.’
    ‘Inside something which is… literary? Like the Abbaie de Théme. Not anything real at all.’
    He cocks a thumb back. ‘If you’re saying that’s reality… honest to God, some Carfax tart who got picked up by’
    ‘Like your rabbit in the reaper?’
    ‘But that’s not us.’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Of course I’m sure.’ He grins drily up. ‘Anthony would be deeply shocked if he heard you talking like this.’
    ‘Perhaps that’s a fault in Anthony.’
    ‘I shall tell him every word you said.’
    She smiles gently, then bends forward, buries her head against her clasped knees; speaks into the peasant skirt.
    ‘I’m just scared that these will have turned out to be the happiest years of our lives. For all four of us. Because we’ve been in love, we’ve grown up, we’ve had such fun. No responsibilities. Playacting.