Esther suggested the metro, but Marcus insisted on taking her to a nearby taxi rank, a couple of times having to yank her back out of the path of cyclists, belting in herds along the city’s impressive grid of bicycle highways, as lethal as speeding cars. As they crossed a particularly picturesque canal bridge, with a backdrop of tall, quaint shoulder-to-shoulder houses, she asked him to pose for a photo. He agreed, but with reluctance and immediately putting on his sunglasses – a timely and salutary reminder that they were not a ‘proper’ couple but a part-time one.

‘No, I can manage from here,’ she assured him, when he then tried to get into the cab and started waving euro notes. ‘It’s been lovely, and I’ll see you when I see you.’

‘Rock-solid boundaries.’

‘Granite through and through.’

‘Excellent.’ He kissed her lightly and then pulled her against him, whispering, ‘I’ve been meaning to mention – when you were in that chic ghost costume the other day, it was all I could do not to rip all those bloody safety pins off. With my teeth. Just so you know.’ He released her, grinning.

‘How depraved,’ Esther murmured, sliding into the taxi, glad they had found a way back to their easy teasing. ‘Maybe you’ll need locking up after all.’

37

Heidi sat in the hush of the chapel, letting her gaze travel round the faded blue velvet kneelers, the grains in the ancient wooden pews, the gold-corniced ceiling, before arriving at the blazing brightness of the cross embedded in the high alcove behind the altar. It was wrong to feel more holy in an especially beautiful holy place, she told herself, but she always had, right from Sunday mornings in the Lutheran church of her childhood. Over the years, the fervour had subsided, but never died, sitting inside her like a pilot light.

It hadn’t been Heidi’s intention to visit the chapel, confirmed in an email from the Chaplain to Lucas that morning as being at their disposal on Midsummer’s Day the following year. She had been about to set off on a run that would end at Lucas’s flat, when he’d rung with the good news, asking, as he had taken to doing, if she would mind looping past the college to check his pigeonhole for post. It being a Sunday, the college had been quiet. She had taken the couple of papers and envelopes from Lucas’s slot, zipping them into her little backpack, and then stepped out of the lodge just as the choirmaster and a group of students were emerging from the chapel on the far side of the courtyard. A rehearsal for a service, Heidi had guessed, or maybe one of the many Christmas concerts now being advertised all over town.