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in favour of King’s College, London, on the basis that one could only take so much punting and a metropolitan existence was likely to be far more enriching. And indeed it was, for he’d never have met Carola in that city of dreaming spires, with her loathing of anything that smacked of elitism. It was her hair that had attracted him – a wild mass of black, tangled curls that hung down her back. That and the warm, spicy animal scent Mickey felt sure only he could smell, and that now, after years of experience, he could readily identify as desire. They’d done it everywhere, even on the Tube late one night between Tottenham Court Road and Goodge Street, and Carola had talked passionately about her beliefs and her plans to change the world. She was, apparently, an anarchist, forever going on marches and attending rock concerts in support of some oppressed minority or other. Mickey had always listened politely to her rantings but reserved judgement, knowing that he and his family represented much of what she was against. She’d taken his silence for agreement, his two Clash albums for commitment to her cause, and he’d been naive enough to think she wouldn’t hold his duplicity against him.
    When she announced she was pregnant and an abortion was out of the question, Mickey, still intoxicated by the feral creature he’d ensnared, marched her off to the nearest Register Office. Carola, who thrived on being unpredictable, had been so enchanted by the perversity of flouting her lack of convention that she agreed to a wedding. She’d worn a Victorian nightdress so tight across her rapidly expanding breasts that it was a contest as to whether they or the Registrar’s eyes were going to pop out first.
    Before he’d had a chance to tell his parents of his latest folly, they’d been tragically killed in a sailing accident off Salcombe. The plan had been for him to finish his degree, then do a pupillage at a Scottish brewery owned by a friend of his father’s, in order for him to learn the ropes objectively before becoming second in command. That was now out of the question. Mickey had no choice but to take over as managing director straight away.
    Carola had been totally bemused to find the contents of their little bedsit ensconced in Mickey’s school trunk and a black taxi ticking outside the door. Still alarmingly ignorant of her husband’s legacy, she’d demanded what was to become of their education. Mickey had tersely reminded her that as their baby was due in four months, neither of them were likely to be getting a lot of work done. She could finish her degree another time. And he wouldn’t be needing one now.
    More than twenty years later, here he was facing that accusing stare in its next incarnation. He didn’t like to think about what had happened in between: he had too many regrets. Not that he’d ever regretted Patrick – he thought the world of his son – but he was keenly aware that he was no longer a boy, easily fobbed off, and not, despite his lack of academic prowess, a fool either. Mickey raised his flask in an attempt to play for time.
    ‘Drink?’
    ‘No, thanks. I’m driving. As, I presume by your car outside, are you.’
    The remark was pointedly sarcastic. He shouldn’t have to take that. Mickey raised the flask to his lips in a gesture of defiance, then realized it was empty.
    The journey had been trouble free, and Kay smiled as she sped up the familiar narrow road, lined with drystone walls and overhung by ancient oaks. It was enveloped in a soft velvet blackness that a stranger would have found disconcerting but she found alluring, leading as it did to her haven. At last she reached the gates, where the words HONEYCOTE ALES re-affirmed her destination in black, curling wrought iron. The noise of her tyres on the gravel jumped up as she swung into the drive and she wondered if he could hear it too. The luminous green of her digital clock flipped to midnight: perfect timing. They always