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something of a priority nowadays.'
        'That could be a little awkward. You know I have the other colleges, Kingsley and de Montfort.'
        'Yes, but I also know you still have a certain amount of free time available. Surely you could fit in just a few more hours a week for us?'
        How did you explain to someone like Miss Piprelly, who lived and breathed her chosen profession, that the work ethic was not high on his priorities? Not any more. Things had changed within him. Life had changed.
        'An extra afternoon, Mr Childes. Could we say Tuesdays?' Her stern gaze defied refusal.
        'Let me give it some thought,' he replied, and sensed her inner bristling.
        'Very well, but I really must have the first draft curriculum completed by the end of the week.'
        'I'll let you know on Thursday.' He tried a smile, but was annoyed at the apology in his own voice.
        Her short sigh was one of exasperation and sounded like a huff. 'On Thursday then.'
        He was dismissed. No more words, no 'Good day'. He just wasn't there any more. Miss Piprelly was calling to a group of girls who had made the mistake of following his route across the hallowed lawn. He turned away, feeling somehow that he was sloping off, and had to make an effort to put some briskness into his stride.
        Estelle Piprelly, having reproved the errant girls (a task that for her needed very few words and a barely-raised voice), returned her attention to the retreating figure of the peripatetic teacher. He walked with shoulders slightly hunched forward, studying the ground before him as if planning each footfall, a youngish man who sometimes seemed unusually wearied. No, wearied was the wrong word. There was sometimes a shadow behind his eyes that was haunted, an occasional glimpse of some latent anxiety.
        Her brow furrowed - more parallel lines - and her ringers plucked unconsciously at a loose thread on her sleeve.
        Childes disturbed her and she could not reason why. His work was excellent, meticulous, and he appeared to be popular with the pupils, if not a trace too popular with some. His specialist knowledge was a useful addition to the prospectus and without doubt he relieved a partial burden from her overloaded science teachers. Yet, although she had requested extra lessons of him because of the governing body's dictum, something in his presence made her uneasy.
        A long, long time ago, when she herself had been no more than a child and the German forces had occupied the island as a spearhead for their attack on the mainland of England, she had felt a pervading air of destruction around her. Not uncommon in those tragic warring times, but years later she realised that she possessed a higher degree of awareness than most. Nothing dramatic, nothing mediumistic or clairvoyant, just an acute sensing. It had become subdued yet never relinquished with the passing of time, the pragmatism of her chosen career, but in those early days she had seen death in the faces of many of those German soldiers, an unnatural foreboding in their countenance, in their mood.
        In a more confusing way, she sensed it in Childes. Although he was now gone from view, Miss Piprelly shivered.
        

6
        
        As he returned from the hotel bar with the drinks, weaving his way round the garden tables and chairs, Amy was releasing her hair at the back so that it fell into a ponytail, an old style transformed through her into something chic. There was a subtle elegance to Amy that was inborn rather than studied and, not for the first time, Childes thought she looked anything but a schoolteacher - at least not the type who had ever taught him.
        Her skin appeared almost golden in the shadow of the table's canopy, her pale green eyes and lighter wisps of hair curling over her ears heightening the effect. As usual, she wore the minimum of make-up, a proclivity that often made her resemble some of the