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would have found hundreds of millions of years ago when life was just beginning. I found it exciting to learn about them and imagine that I was a time traveller.’
    ‘What about Orford Ness?’ said Kit, thinking of Brian’s nuclear workplace. ‘It looks pretty desolate from this side of the river.’
    ‘That shingle spit may look desolate, but it’s full of marvels.’ Brian gave a rare smile, ‘The real secrets are plants like the yellow horned poppy with blossoms the size of soup plates – big golden banners waving against all that cold wind and salt spray. And sea pea too, exquisite little mauve flowers clinging on with deep strong roots. Places like Orford Ness and the northern moors are the real England – not the suffocating pampered gardens on the stately homes circuit.’
    Kit began to realise there was more to Brian than the gruff North Country scientist. But it didn’t make Kit like him; it only made him more jealous. ‘Are there animals too?’
    Brian smiled again, ‘Just the MoD security police and their attack dogs. Frightening chaps – all the locals are terrified of them. There’s also a huge colony of hares. They must have swum over and, without lurchers and shotguns to harry them, they’ve multiplied like mad. The security fellows sometimes use the hares for marksmanship practice. I’m not sure I approve, but they always give us one for the pot. I’ve developed quite a taste for saddle of hare. Jennifer, as you know, is a dab hand with game – not squeamish at all, almost like an Englishwoman.’
    ‘She used to go hunting and fishing too. We even used to eat those grey squirrels. Get Jennie to cook you a pair.’
    ‘A brace,’ said Brian, ‘in England we never say a pair of game or game birds – we say a brace.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    ‘Jennie tells me that your fathers were classmates at West Point. That’s the American Sandhurst, isn’t it?’
    ‘Not exactly, it’s a four-year course and you get a degree as well as a commission. In any case, our dads – both being Maryland boys – became friends.’
    ‘And Jennie’s father married your father’s sister.’
    ‘Younger sister, Aunt Janet.’ Kit wondered how much longer the interrogation was going to last. He wanted to know if Jennie had told her husband about Tombstone Frank, a shared ancestor who had made a living digging up bodies from Greenmount Cemetery and selling them to Johns Hopkins Medical School. Frank later improved the freshness of his cadavers by preying on drunken sailors. Kit feared that the psycho gene had been passed on, but not the entrepreneurial one.
    ‘And,’ Brian was still probing for something, ‘you were all brought up as brothers and sisters.’
    ‘Sort of, our house was seven miles away – half an hour’s bike ride or an hour by boat.’
    ‘Sounds idyllic – I wonder why Jennifer never wants to go back.’
    ‘Maybe,’ said Kit, ‘she’s afraid of ghosts.’ Suddenly, there was a rustling sound from the hedge next to the road – and then a long blood-curdling shriek with hisses. ‘Bon appétit,’ said Kit raising his glass. ‘That must have been an owl.’
    ‘Well done. It’s a barn owl. We studied them when we developed radar. The barn owl has asymmetrical ear openings – the opening in one ear is higher than in the other ear. This means they can hunt in conditions too dark even for their wonderful eyes. They pinpoint their prey by the difference in decibels. They know they’re getting closer when the volume in each ear begins to even out. On the way to Orford in the morning, just as the sun is rising, I often see them hunting in the hedgerows. A glorious sight.’
    Kit didn’t know what to say. He knew that Brian was competing – but he wasn’t sure why.
    Brian coughed and cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘about earlier on.’
    ‘About what?’
    ‘I shouldn’t have made those remarks about the USA not coming into the war until it was half over. Americans