‘Helpful. Thanks. Maybe I’ll ask Timbo.’
‘Are you…having second thoughts?’
She nodded again, destroying the poor flowers in her angst, yellow petals raining down from her fingers. ‘I just don’t know. It all seems so…’
‘Pointless?’
‘Unnecessary, yes. I mean, you don’t have a degree, Ben doesn’t, Michael doesn’t, and look at you all!’
‘Well, we are perhaps not the best three for you to base that assessment on. If my grandfather had not…well, studied engineering, amongst other things, none of us would be here.’
‘No, that’s true.’
‘You do not have to decide this, Emilia. It is not something you need to fret over. The world is entirely yours. Go, don’t go. Put it off and decide later.’
‘Defer, you mean?’
‘Yes, is that not what everyone does? A gap year.’
‘I suppose. I’d want to do something…worthwhile.’ She smirked and took his arm, ignoring his expression. ‘I’ve been thinking about Miles. He’ll be on his own at school now.’
‘As opposed to having a sort-of sister there who did not deign to notice him?’
‘I wasn’t quite that bad. It was fully understood: the pecking order. It’s necessary to maintain good discipline. Imagine if the juniors treated us with contempt.’
Aleksey thought this was a pretty good description of his life with Ben, but obviously didn’t point this out to her.
‘So…?’
‘So I was wondering, now he’s going up to the seniors anyway and some of his friends are leaving to go to other schools, would he be happier closer to home? Even…live at home and go daily? To Molly’s school.’
‘You have thought about this a lot.’
‘Not until I saw Enid, no. She’s…I thought it might be nice for Miles to see more of her.’ She faltered but continued, clearly trying to steady her voice, ‘I saw them off for a skiing trip and didn’t go because I wanted to stay with my friends. If I’d known…’
‘Have you mentioned this to Miles?’
‘No, I wanted to see what you thought first.’
‘How old are you again?’
She squeezed his arm. ‘I sometimes think I’m the oldest person alive.’
It was a strange comment, but he only gave her a shove so she fell in the flowers, and that made her laugh and retaliate, and so the seriousness of the conversation was over.
But her thoughts about Miles reflected his own.
Her worries about Enid matched his, too.
* * *
Chapter Seven
Ben returned from his lesson buzzing with information about radio procedure, take-offs and landings, and other things which Aleksey assumed were fairly important for pilots to get right. He liked his instructor, who was the ex-CO of 487 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm. Commander Peter Bennington owned the small flight school, but clearly still preferred flying to being a businessman. Ben could now quote a lot of interesting facts about the F-35 Lightning II single-seater all-weather stealth combat aircraft. Possibly more than anyone in the family needed to know. Aleksey wanted to remind Ben, he really did, that he wasn’tactuallyjoining the Royal Navy, or that he wouldn’tactuallybe Maverick, but as he often got the benefit of these bursts of intense machismo, he obviously didn’t want to dampen the enthusiasm. Besides, if Ben was intent on this mission of his, Aleksey was more than glad to have an ex-military instructor for him. Like most other ex-service people, he assumed, he didn’t rate civilians much for doing anything important. Although he conceded that everything he enjoyed—architecture, books, music, wine, smoking, sex with men, and owning lots of things—hadnotbeen aided much by people in uniform, but that everything he loathed—muck, cold, being shot at, being ordered around, and very early mornings—had.
The only thing Ben didn’t seem to relish about his weekly lesson was doing his homework, and it always amused Aleksey to see him frowning over his books just ashehad once done at his academy in Russia. He thought once more about Emilia’s confusion over going to university. What would he have achieved if he’d stayed in Denmark with his brother? If they’d gone together to Københavns Universitet, Nika studying his beloved politics, and he architecture? He wouldn’t be here with Ben Rider-Mikkelsen, that’s what. ‘Four down: Strips in geography class. Six letters.’
Ben looked up from his studying. Aleksey reckoned it was time Ben put the books away and fed him, and annoying him was a sure way to achieve this objective.
