Emilia narrowed her eyes. ‘I vote we send him to the edge to test his own theory then.’
The food arrived and they all three began to dig in.
* * *
Chapter Twelve
Ben was eyeing up the bar, clearly debating whether to get another round in, when his phone buzzed. He read the text and grunted.
‘School’s closing early. Big snowstorm predicted.’ He glanced up and caught Aleksey mid eye roll.
‘What! We can have decent snow in England! Stop being so bloody Russian!’ Then he leaned back and added with an entirely straight face, ‘You gotstuckin a snowdrift, visiting me at Timbo’s once, remember? I seem to recall it was so life threatening that you had to…stay the night.’
Aleksey could see Emilia’s immediate curiosity and possible wish to explore this. He was puzzling how to defeat Ben’s argument that English snow was just as good as Russian snow, without having to delve into this unfortunate episode in their relationship, when he had a better idea. He smirked back to let Ben know that, yes, he did remember that night vividly and then suggested casually,
‘Text Sarah. Tell herwewill collect them.’
* * *
The school stood high on Dartmoor, once the ancient manor house of the tiny hamlet that stood scattered around it. Over the previous two centuries, it had acquired some additional classrooms and boarding facilities, playing fields and a chapel, but the very youngest in the school were educated in the original house with its stone-flagged corridors, soaring ceilings and mullioned windows. He had heard much of this school from Ben, but for various reasons had not actually visited it himself. He was not entirely unaware of his propensity to stir things up, and whilst he was still seeing this as mostly a good thing, in that there were far fewer evil men now in the world, he did not want to bring his gods of chaos and chance here to Molly’s world. Even by standing in the driveway now he was risking this. Of course, Ben would obviously claim that he just didn’t want to be scrutinised by theyummies,who even now stood clustered together clutching scarves to elegant necks and wrapping expensive coats around too-thin frames, gossiping. Possibly about him. Probably about him and Ben. Most likely about what he and Ben got up to in bed. The how. Or even the why. He clenched his jaw and stood a little straighter, a lone figure in a long cashmere overcoat, silhouetted against lowering skies bulging with menace.
A bell rang somewhere from deep in the old building, not an electric one, but a clear, clarion, sonorous clang from a hand-held brass one, and he smiled, remembering just such a ringing from another school, another life. The vast oak front doors swung open, and a slightly chalky woman came out, wrapping a cardigan around herself, pulling the sleeves down over her hands. When she had checked no one would die in a snowdrift whilst walking across the driveway, she ushered out her charges, a flock of tiny babies dressed in uniform navy duffle coats and hats—caps for the boys and little bowlers for the girls. Molly was halfway down the crocodile, clutching her satchel, shoe bag and some artwork, her tightly bound plaits sticking out either side of her hat. She appeared deep in contemplation of her shoes, although her comrades were excitable, skipping and screaming randomly, the sense of impending death imparted by their teachers upon hearing it might snow obviously affecting them deeply. But when Molly glanced up to locate Sarah or her bodyguards and saw him standing waiting for her instead, she stopped. The tail end of the crocodile parted and swept around her.
It became entirely silent, all the sounds around him suddenly muted. They stared at each other. He’d had similar moments with Ben: the world disappearing and just the two of them left—the entire and whole focus of the other. But now Ben’s daughter was standing there, blinking at him through Ben’s long black lashes and emerald-green eyes. He was stunned by the realisation that he loved someone else other than Ben. Of course helovedother people, all his family, his chosen ones, but this was different. This was some offering of himself that hitherto he had only given to Ben, a chink in his armour that he’d only allowed Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen to penetrate. Now this child was lodged there also.
Molly broke the moment by squealing her delight, and before he knew what he was doing, he’d crouched and she was in his arms and he was rising, grinning as she kissed him and bombarded him with rapid-fire questions about his presence there and demanding he look at her pictures at the same time as telling him that she was going to beDonkey. Clearly, she had not seen the moment quite as he had done, but he suspected she had been aware enough to compartmentalise school as being a non-Papa place, and now her separate worlds had collided, coalesced.
He turned with her in his arms and discovered why it had seemed slightly quieter. All the mothers and nannies were silently watching them. He wondered idly if Ben would be jealous. Obviously, Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen was something of a star in this school world—possibly the best-looking man anyone would ever meet, wealthy, vaguely famous, apparently single, and consequently bravely raising his orphaned daughter on his own…
Ben was leaning against the Bentley, watching them approach, legs crossed casually. He had wanted this man from the first moment he had seen him in an underground bunker in Wales. He had plotted and schemed to have him, keep him, change him, manipulate him, corral him, entrap him—make him want him back. But in all those years of concentrated effort, he had never once allowed himself to picture something as extremely unlikely as this. That after fifteen years they would still be together, and that, far from being trapped, Ben was bound to him by love. By the life they shared. He felt something on his face and thought for one awful moment that he was blinking back tears, but then realised it had begun to snow. Great soft, silent white flakes were falling on them, and he knew that the realisation which had crept upon him the previous night was now entirely cemented—that whenever it snowed in the future, the ethereal beauty of it would no longer be corrupted by memories of pain from frostbite and starvation, but would now contain the feel of this little girl in his arms and the knowledge that Ben was so entirely his that he did not need to fight for him anymore.
* * *
They probably would all have been quiet in the car home if not for Molly. Emilia was texting her friends from the meeting to get their impressions. Miles was doing Molly’s homework for her, and Ben was concentrating on driving in the increasingly tricky Dartmoor conditions. But Molly, clearly thinking no one was taking her donkey announcement with the necessary gravitas it required, was explaining in great detail the import of her becoming this animal. It was her role in the forthcoming class nativity play. Amused that she might be the only girl in the world who didn’t want the obvious part in such an endeavour, Aleksey asked her slyly, ‘Did you not try out to be Mary? So you could hold the baby?’
She undid her seatbelt and stood so she could wrap her arms around his neck. Ben told her to sit back down, but she ignored him. ‘Mary is boring.’
Aleksey snorted quietly. ‘Maybe you could play the baby then.’
‘Papa! Donkey is the most important one!’
He frowned, although he was aware she probably couldn’t see this. Ben murmured under his breath, ‘Don’t ask,’ and then added more forcibly, ‘Sit down.’
Now swinging on the back of the seat, she continued, ‘Donkey carried Mary, didn’t he? To the stable.’
‘Did he?’
‘And Jesus wasn’t even born then! But Donkey still carried him. And then he watched while he was being born!’
Miles, who was head bent, filling in the answer to some sums, pointed out reasonably, ‘I think they had a lot of donkeys in those days. It could have been a different one.’
Molly considered this for a moment. ‘You’re just being silly. They were very poor. How many donkeys could poor people have?’ Miles looked slightly astonished. He’d never been outmanoeuvred by a baby before. With a sigh of triumph she gripped Aleksey’s neck tighter and added, ‘And then Donkey escaped with them, and then he went everywhere with Jesus and even got to see miracles, andthenJesus rode him over things to make Easter. So he’s the most important one in thewholestory!’
‘More important than Jesus?’ This was clearly provocative because although Ben seemed to have recovered from his alarming conversion, and didn’t let anything asserted in that book now affect how he lived his life, he seemed to want his daughter brought up believing in the things it taught—hence Sarah. They’d not really discussed this contradiction, but it was tacitly understood thathewasn’t to upset this cosy applecart with any of his slightly unique views on the subject of gods, Christian ones or otherwise.
But Molly didn’t get his sense of humour yet and certainly didn’t understand that this question had been directed towards her father rather than her, and was asked only to needle Ben to rouse a very different response for when they got home and were alone once more—which seemed to be working nicely if Ben’s smirk was anything to go by.
‘Papa! No one is more important than the baby Jesus, but I think Donkey was an angel in disguise.’
