Madeline spoke again. She’d tuned back into their conversation and had been staring at Aleksey intensely. ‘No. We decided it wasn’t environmentally friendly.’
Aleksey frowned. ‘What? Sex?’
Her eyebrows rose in a quick shiver as if she’d bitten into a lemon. ‘Reproduction. We’reantinatalists.’
Five minutes. Five fucking minutes of trying to be nice and here he was unable to translate and having no fucking clue what anyone was talking about. Why couldn’t you eat fucking almonds? ‘Interesting.’ It was a shorter version of his Chinese philosophy tactic, but usually worked just as well.
Noticing his confusion, however, Madeline helped him out. She was a professor. Aleksey assumed being informative was contagious too. ‘We’re committed to voluntary human extinction. We believe procreation is actually just child abuse— it’s entirely unethical to bring children into a world where they will inevitably suffer. Population growth causes environmental degradation, resource depletion, poverty and inequality.’
‘Uh huh.’ He glanced around, saw Ben was chatting and unlikely to hear him, so countered softly, ‘But also to wonders like Bach, no?’
‘His entire body of work doesn’t even compare to one tiger. We’re working towards changing the future of the planet.’
‘Ah. I heard someone else claim that recently. I helped him out, actually—well, with the human extinction part anyway.’
‘Tim says it’s time to eat.’ Ben had a very firm grasp on his arm. He had apparently been surreptitiously monitoring him. Aleksey turned his winning smile on Sunny Boy and informed him cheerily, ‘I was just going to tell Madeline about your flying lessons, Ben.’ He turned back. ‘Benjamin is becoming a pilot. Then I’m going to buy him a plane.’ He was dragged away before he could mention the off-road Mercedes, the Maserati and Ben’s Monster Diesel. He was extremely annoyed he’d been conned into walking over now and suspected another plot concocted behind his back.
* * *
Chapter Three
At dinner, which was actually just a relaxed supper around Tim’s kitchen table, Aleksey found himself sitting next to a woman who introduced herself as Rachel, a friend of Tim’s from his animal rights days. Her brother, Maxwell, was sitting on the other side of the table, next to Ben. Aleksey didn’t tell Rachel, for obvious reasons, the exact details of how he came to know their mutual acquaintance. He wasn’t too sure what he thought about animals having rights, and decided to consult Radulf on this concept later.
The silence was a little awkward, but he had no particular reason to want to break her resistance, so asked politely, ‘Are you and your brother lecturers too?’
‘Oh, no, we never fancied teaching. Too much like hard work. We both went into research.’
‘Interesting.’ It was such a sure-fire tactic.
‘It has its moments. I did some work on Richard III’s remains last year. That was terribly exciting. Chance of a lifetime.’
‘I had to read that at school. I’m not sure Shakespeare translated all that well. Our tutor seemed as confused as we were.’
‘They think now that the entire play was little more than propaganda for Elizabeth to bolster her family’s Tudor claims by knocking the last of the Plantagenets—that Richard wasn’t a hunchback at all. And most contemporary accounts written in his lifetime seem to bear that out.’
She was asked to pass the wine by the man on the other side of her. She topped up her own first and then they began to discuss the view of the sun setting on the tor, which was a splendid backdrop to the dinner table. Aleksey glanced over to see what Ben was up to. He wasn’t so possessive that he had to monitor Ben’s every move, of course not, that would be immature and suggest insecurity. He was merely curious. He knew Ben knew he was being observed. That’s just the way they were together.
It was actually amusing how strenuously Ben was not catching his eye. Aleksey assumed he was being studiously ignored in punishment for breaking hisdon’t say anythingrules. Ben hadn’t enjoyed being followed to the table and lectured by Madeline on the carbon footprint of his new hobby. Aleksey had been fairly sure Ben had been tempted to mutter, ‘I don’t use my feet,’ and possibly not in jest either. Ben didn’t do deep subjects, and if he did, it wouldn’t be a discussion on fossil fuels. Ben’s need for speed was definitely not electric-friendly. Although Aleksey was amused and pleased in equal measure just how much Ben genuinely enjoyed reading more challenging fiction these days. His subjects of interest were deepening. And he’d also done as Aleksey had hoped he would—he’d begun to foster Molly’s interest in books too.
She could actually read quite well, although she was only three. But like most children, she preferred to be readto. Privately, she admitted she likedhismade-up stories about the secret lives of Radulf and PB best, because he did their voices in funny accents, but they’d mutually agreed to keep this little nugget to themselves. They both thought Ben reading bedtime stories to her on herspecialnight was an excellent idea which should be encouraged.
Maxwell appeared as intense as all Tim’s other guests. He was listening to something Ben was saying, chin on hand, engrossed. It was entirely possible it wasn’t Ben’s topics that were fascinating him.
The subject of the tor now apparently exhausted, Rachel turned back to him, and he reluctantly took his eyes off Ben. ‘Sorry, what were we saying?’
‘Humps—or lack of. Are you a historian? Is that what you were researching?’
‘Oh, no, they had some forensic anthropologists in the team studying the bones for deformities. I was looking at the soil around the body.’
‘Was it nice?’
She smiled. Faintly. ‘I'm a microbiologist. So's Max. And that’s how he met Austin. I study and collect pathogens—that might still be present in places like ancient burial sites.’
‘I thought Richard died of a sword thrust. Or many, I suppose.’
‘Yes, but his remains were found on top of a much older monastery burial pit where they found skeletons of monks who seemed to have died of syphilis—yes, sorry, hardly a topic for dinner, is it? Occupational hazard. And it doesn’t say much for the religious vows. I was on contract to the university for a three-month study. They wanted to find proof that syphilis, rather than travelling from the New World to the Old, was actually taken to the Americas from Europe. So, if they date the find to before Columbus they've got a good chance. It fit in with my own area of study, so I agreed to do it.’
Aleksey had once heard of people who were sewage divers. Literally, they dived into human waste pits with no protective gear to clearblockages. He’d always thought that was the worst job in the world until meeting this woman who apparently dug around in syphilis-infested muck. He moved his mackerel pâté to one side. Rachel saw this, frowned a little and offered to top up his glass. He put his hand over it, so she emptied the remainder of the bottle into hers.
