‘Half-past six, on Tuesday, the third. I shall look forward to that,’ she said.

While they had been making their arrangements, one of the young men had turned from the bar and handed Miss Benson a drink.

‘That’s your one for the road, honey,’ he said. She had taken it, patted his arm and said, ‘Thanks, Davy,’ and stood drinking while Miss Mayfield and Mr Freeman made their date, watching them with amused, half-closed eyes. Mr Freeman, having attained his primary object, turned to her and said, a little doubtfully:

‘If you must go now . . . don’t you think perhaps a sandwich . . . It wouldn’t take a minute.’

‘Blotting paper, you mean? Are you insinuating that Miss Mayfield and I will end in a ditch? Really! Mr Freeman, you’ve hurt my feelings past all repair. If only you were a tailor, instead of a wine merchant, you might have a bit of chalk on you; you could draw me a line and invite me to take a walk. And if we were real teachers, instead of a couple of amateurs, we’d have enough chalk in our fingernails. . . . I’m out with my headmistress, I’d have you to know. And she likes to be driven at exactly forty miles an hour. And so she shall be. That is why we have to go now.’

It was Miss Benson talking, but there was a slight difference, a hint of truculence. The remark about tailors and wine merchants wasn’t exactly polite, and what did she mean by a couple of amateurs? She might be teaching for pin money, but she was properly trained; and Miss Mayfield had been teaching all her life. A little . . . ever so slightly drunk.

Mr Freeman came out with them to the car park and opened and closed the car door for Miss Mayfield.

‘I’ve even remembered the lights!’ Miss Benson called out to him. And she backed the car, neatly and precisely, negotiated the gateway and turned into the street.

Then she said, ‘You’ve hit the old boy for six! But be careful, he’s a dreadful flirt, with more scalps at his belt than any man in Essex – always excepting our own dear Canon, of course.’

‘Canon Thorby never struck me as being flirtatious.’

‘No,’ Miss Benson agreed. ‘There is a difference. He makes no effort. Women just fall for him. And there’s only one woman in his life, sister Isabel. Oh, I don’t mean anything Byronic. It’s just that since she came back from the dead . . .’

‘Since she did what ?’ Miss Mayfield asked sharply.