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said, playing with the grass between his hooked-up feet, ‘no, a ton of police car saw to that on a tight bend one wet morning. I like to think my wife never knew what hit her.’
    She turned to him, her face a mask of pain. ‘Oh, Max, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know.’
    ‘No,’ he shrugged, patting the hand that held his, ‘there’s no reason why you should. What about you? Mr King?’
    ‘Ah, yes.’ She took her hand away and rested her chin on her knees, wrapping her long summer skirt around her ankles. ‘Jeremy. One of life’s gentlefolk, Max. He first hit me on our wedding night. I’d made some silly remark about … God, I can’t remember now – his father, I think. The daft old duffer got over-merry at the wedding. He was harmless and so was whatever I said, but that wasn’t how Jeremy saw it. I’d never actually seen anyone’s colour drain before. He went completely white. And rigid. I thought he was about to have a fit. Or a fainting spell at least. Instead, he hit me.’ She buried her face quickly in her dress, then she was looking at the sea again. ‘He was sorry again in seconds, but that wasn’t the point. He’d broken my cheekbone. I was in hospital for over a week.’
    It was his turn to try to hold her hand, but he couldn’t reach it so he held her arm instead. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
    ‘We’ve both been saying that all day.’ She smiled at him.
    ‘You left Jeremy?’
    She shrugged. ‘We left each other, really,’ she said. ‘But what about you, Max? How did you manage? After your wife, I mean?’
    ‘History,’ Maxwell tried to sum it up, ‘and kids. It’s funny, I buried my wife and child and I buried myself in work. A bit of a cliché, I suppose.’
    ‘Child? Oh, Maxie,’ and she turned to face him, taking both his hands in hers.
    ‘Jenny,’ he said. ‘She was not quite sixteen months. Ah, we had such plans for her.’
    ‘They’d have come true, too,’ Rachel said. ‘I know you, Peter Maxwell. Do you still write poetry, Max?’
    He laughed, throwing back his head. ‘No,’ he told her. ‘I left all that behind years ago. It’s odd, I thought I had so much to say then, when I was actually so comfortable and so cushioned from the world. A staircase at Jesus was hardly a walk on the wild side.’
    ‘Yes,’ she chuckled. ‘I always rather envied Timmy. You remember Timmy?’
    ‘Your ghastly little brother? Yes, I do.’
    ‘He was, wasn’t he?’ she admitted. ‘Ghastly is the only word for him. He grew up into a rather fine man, really, something incredibly big in Anglo-American geology.’
    ‘What? That little shit who wouldn’t go away even when I’d slipped him the odd half-crown?’
    ‘That’s the one. Well, Timmy went to university in ’70, when it was all flower power and beads and barefoot in the park. His girlfriends had daisies between their toes.’
    ‘And grass between their ears,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Yes, I remember. I was in my first teaching post, not all that much older than some of the sixth form.’
    ‘Well, they invented the word “student”, didn’t they?’ she said. ‘Us, well, we were just big schoolboys and girls – or young men and women – depending which side of the fence you were on.’
    ‘Ah, the pre-permissive society,’ Maxwell boomed, eyebrows akimbo. ‘Good days.’
    ‘Strange days,’ she mused, ‘looking back.’
    ‘Looking back,’ he told her, ‘days always are.’
    ‘Yes,’ she smiled at him, ‘I suppose they are.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Shouldn’t we be getting back? Supper at eight, didn’t they say?’
    ‘Supper at eight,’ he said and helped her up. ‘May I have the pleasure?’ and he bent his arm for her.
    She slapped it with her cardigan sleeve. ‘Possibly, you filthy old man, but first you can lead me in to dinner.’
    Sally Greenhow stared up at the Artexed ceiling. For some reason her feet were killing her. She hadn’t learned much from the good Doctor’s