When they got into the flat, the clutter that Ben had brought into the cosy space was obvious, from the bike in the hallway to the boxes and bags piled up in the spare room’s open doorway. He apologised for it all as they took their shoes off, but Marcie dismissed his worries, telling him to stop fussing as they went through to the kitchen.

Then, as they unpacked the shopping, she said “If you want to know how I honestly feel Ben, it’s like it’s a thousand times better to have you under my roof, sharing my life with you and a bit of clutter, than it is to have the flat to myself and just my own stuff all nice and tidy. I could have every book that I’ve ever read or could wish to read, in first editions and colour coded, with enough tailored clothes to wear something beautiful and different every day of the year, and it would all mean nothing at all. My life would be worthless. But with you, with our shared love, we could live in rags on someone else’s junkyard, and I’d still feel blessed, greeting each new day with joyful hope and wonder at its riches, going to sleep content and sated.”

Marcie was cuddling up to him now, putting her hands around his waist as he closed the fridge on the minced beef and wine. He turned to hold her head in his hands, smiling as he said, “Don’t go too far. You can have your books, and beautiful clothes. And also some days might be dull, or difficult.”

“I know that really,” she said, after she’d let him kiss her briefly, “But I do feel different now that you’re in my life, as if the world has suddenly gone from black and white to colour. Or maybe it’s as if I’ve stopped just looking at someone else’s flat newspaper photograph of an adult lifestyle, and now I’ve started walking around in the real thing instead.”

“Maybe that’s like my new world,” Ben replied, wrapping his arms around her shoulders now as she raised her hands to his back, pulling the two of them together as they clung to each other. “I was being smutty, sexual, when I said Vixen was the portal, that my rebirth, into that secret magical fairyland, was happening through your vulva. But the magic is real, isn’t it? It’s the clean air blowing through the everyday world, making life more hopeful.”

“But you were right, Ben. Sex is part of that too, surely? And it’s not smutty or dirty, you mustn’t think of it like that. We’re grown-ups now, we know what we’re doing, we know how our bodies work, how we both have urges and how it feels to satisfy them. And we’re doing that, expressing our natural sexual impulses, just with each other, in a healthy and kind way. We’re honest with each other too, with sincere mutual respect, and it’s all politely private. Well, mostly,” she corrected herself with a giggle, “Just between the two of us. We can talk about anything, and we’re already doing almost as much as we can imagine. So that just means our bodies are in synch with the rest of us, with our hearts, our thoughts, our senses, our hopes and our inner sense of our true selves too.”

“Right, our whole selves, together, making love,” Ben agreed, tenderly kissing her again.

Marcie gave a contented sigh, rubbing her hands firmly down his back. Then, finding the loose hem of his t-shirt, she put them against his bare skin, stroking her fingertips up his spine to his shoulder blades. For his part, Ben lowered his hands to her sides, running them over her ribs, then brushing the edges of her breasts where they softly pressed against his own chest, warm and yielding under Marcie’s blouse and bra.

They kissed again, in long and deep contentment, Ben parting his legs to push his hips against Marcie’s lower belly, already feeling himself rise for her, and she wriggled herself against him in response. As Marcie kept rubbing her hands over Ben’s well-toned back, he squeezed his hands between them to find the buttons of her blouse, following his instinctual impulse. She held on to him, still kissing, even as she pulled her chest back a little, giving his big hands space to work. He quickly slipped open the first button, then as he moved down to release more, he noticed the exciting sensations of his hands brushing over the heavy mounds of her breasts.

Marcie may have felt some similar stimulation as she gave a kind of shiver, but then she suddenly broke off from their kiss to sigh again, looking up into his eyes sorrowfully as she rested her hands on his waist. “Oh, I’m sorry to be the one to say it, but we can’t carry on with this now, can we? I can feel where this is going, where I want it go, where I want you to go right now specifically, coming up firm inside me on the kitchen top, just you did yesterday. But I’ve got to head off to work soon, and I agreed that I’d help you to make space for you to tidy some of your things away.”

Ben smiled down at her with a calm happiness, cradling her head again, holding the tightly tamed curls of her thick dark hair in his big paws, as he said, “It’s okay.” He looked down from her earnest eyes to her chest, where he could see he’d revealed the deep groove of her cleavage between the lace-trimmed cups of her ivory-tinted bra. He knew that he felt no disappointment, as he’d not genuinely expected their fondling to go any further, but he did feel grateful that Marcie had let things go as far as they had. He’d remembered the hammer that he’d wanted to give her too, imagining it lying between the rising swell of her breasts now, as he said, “I’m glad we’ve had a quick cuddle, to be honest, that you let me sneak something in, a tiny bit of undressing, a peek at your bumps. But it reminds me, there was something specific I hoped you’d make space for.”

Marcie was looking at him with quizzical suspicion now, asking, “What is it? Is this another of your secret desires that you’ve been waiting to share?”

“No, well, kind of, maybe,” Ben admitted, dropping his hands and stepping out of her arms, explaining, “Just let me get it from my bag.”

Marcie followed him through the living room to stand in the hallway as he found the right bag in the spare room, then quickly located the small box he was looking for in the rucksack’s pocket. He was pleased to see that she seemed intrigued, and also that she’d left her blouse gaping open, as he ushered her back to the living room to sit on the sofa next to him.

“It may not be suitable, you may not like it, but I thought this might replace your pendant, the cross I’m wearing, as something for you to have instead, while I’m just borrowing yours. But I want this to be a gift, for you to keep,” Ben tried to explain, “And I saw your other chain, the one with the cross on, which you showed me last night, before we went out. I thought this could go on that.”

“What, Ben? What are you talking about?” Marcie asked in confusion, even as she smiled with eager curiosity.

He opened the box and pulled out the silver hammer on its black cord, holding it out to Marcie in the palm of his hand so she could see its angular but smooth-edged head on its tapering stem, marked by a few star-like diamond shapes pressed into the polished silver. “It’s Mjölnir,” he explained, “The hammer of Thor, the Norse god. I wore this a lot, back when I was really into metal. A friend of my brother made it, from silver. It’s like one found in Lincolnshire, a Viking one, about forty miles from my dad’s farm.”

“Wow! That’s a really special piece,” Marcie said, taking it respectfully to hold in her own palm as he passed it over. As she wound the cord around her other hand, she noted “It’s heavy too. It must be valuable. Are you sure want me to have it?”

“Aye, I’m sure. It’s a gift,” Ben reassured her, adding, “Anyway, I didn’t pay jeweller’s shop prices. Stu sold it to me roughcast, telling me how to buff it up myself.”

Ben was delighted when she put it on straight away, lifting her elbows high to tie the cord behind her neck. He saw how the familiar lump of silver rested on the mole-flecked tan skin of her sternum, not quite falling between her breasts but seeming to lead his gaze down to her cleavage, still exposed by her parted blouse.

“Well thank you, Ben. I really like it, and I’m sure that I’ll wear it often. I’ll try it with the chain too, but the black string is just fine too,” Marcie said, smiling warmly at him as she patted the hammer then grasped both his hands. She rose onto her knees on the sofa as she leaned forwards to give him a tender peck on his lips, and Ben noticed how the pendant swung forwards as she did so, along with her breasts in the satin cups of her bra as her blouse hung open.

“You’ll wear it for work now?” Ben asked, just to confirm his guess as she sat back. He’d already released her hands and was taking the edges of her blouse to button her up now, acting spontaneously to reverse his previous impulsive action.

“Yes,” Marcie confirmed, taking his chin gently in her hands as she smiled, letting him continue with his careful effort to make her modest and decent again, adding, “It will remind me of you, as a little part of your past and your craft that I’ll carry with me against my skin, close to my heart. But you’ve upped the ante now, haven’t you? We’d been pretending that I’d just loaned you my Nanna’s Maltese cross, but I realise now that it’s already yours, isn’t it?”

“No!” Ben protested, “That’s not the deal, that’s not why I gave you the hammer, as a swap. I wanted you to have it, but I can’t take your special charm from you. I’ve just been holding onto it, for good luck while I got better.”

“It’s already decided,” Marcie said with finality, pulling away from Ben and standing up, now that he’d finished restoring her buttons, adjusting the fall of her blouse over her shoulders and the cord of the necklace beneath it. “My Nanna gave it to me at my first communion, and now I’ve given it to you at our initiation into our new relationship.”

“Well, thank you. I don’t think I’d realised, erm, how precious it was, how long you’d had it, until now,” Ben admitted, feeling a little humbled. He looked up and took her hand as he solemnly promised, “I’ll cherish it.”

“And I’ll cherish your Mjölnir too, if that’s what you called it. I hope it doesn’t mean everyone will now think I’m into black metal Rotting Christ or whatever it was though?” she queried with a sly smile.

“No,” Ben reassured her, rising to his feet too, gripping the closed box that still contained his old cufflinks, admitting, “But they might think it’s a neopagan thing, like you follow Ásatrú or something.”

“I’d better look that up then,” Marcie said, lifting the pendant from beneath her blouse to look at it again, saying, “Neopagans believe in a spirituality that’s rooted in the natural world, right? That doesn’t sound too bad, but I don’t want to be carrying a symbol for something I don’t understand. It might be disrespectful.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” Ben said, “I wore it just because I was into metal, those bands from Norway especially, and no one said anything to me. You could mention the Lincolnshire find, like it’s an archaeology thing, if you wanted.”

“Or I could just say it was a gift from my lover,” Marcie said coquettishly as she began moving around, picking up their gym bags.

Following her lead, Ben took his bag from her, popping the clothes that he’d exercised in into the washing machine with hers, filling the detergent’s dosing ball from the bottle under the sink while Marcie looked for more dark laundry. When she came back with a dirty bundle and saw the cupboard under the sink open, she suggested she get rid of her carrier bag collection to make room for his tools under there. Then, once he’d started the machine, he followed her to the living room to look at the bookshelves together. She was quickly sorting through some of the books, moving them between shelves, then taking some off to put into a stack in Ben’s proffered hands.

“There,” she said with satisfaction as she finished working along the shelves, Ben now balancing dozens of paperback books, piled from his cupped hands to his chin, “We can put your ship in front of the little paperbacks left on that shelf, and you’ve got a whole shelf down there for your books and any other bits and pieces. Just stack your CDs on the floor by the stereo for now, and we’ll sort out some space for those tomorrow. Now, can you carry all those to the spare room? We’ll pile them on the desk for the time being, and I’ll see if I can clear a few more shelves in there for your clothes, just until I’ve had a chance to go through my wardrobe properly. Then you can move your stuff into the bedroom, so you can feel more like we’re sharing and it’s your room too.”

Ben was impressed at her systematic approach, moving things around her as she stripped out another great stack of books in the spare room, this one of thicker academic tomes. As the time came around for her to set off for work, she’d doubled the number of free slots in the shelving unit.

“If you get the chance while I’m out, you could put the piles that are on the bedroom floor onto the desk with these,” Marcie suggested, “That will clear some space in there at least, even if it looks like I won’t be working in here for a while.”

“Thank you,” Ben said, aware that he may be repeating himself, “I realise you’re making some big sacrifices to accommodate me, literally I guess.”

“You don’t need to thank me, Ben,” she said tenderly, “We’re building our new shared life together, remember? It seems as if we’re doing that by piling stuff up like Zain and Cal’s Lego bricks right now, but really we’re fusing two personal worlds into one new one, aren’t we? I’m not sorry if it ends up looking different from my old home, because you’re in the picture now, and I feel as if there’s hope and life in that future.”

“I do too, Marcie,” he tried to reassure her, holding out his arms to embrace her to him, “We’ve jumped in at the deep end, haven’t we? But we’re both good swimmers, I think. For me, it’s like I’m ready for this. I’m sorry you’re picking up my pieces, in a way, but it’s just like you say, we’re building something new together now.”

“Hey, it doesn’t feel like that, like I’d scraped you off the floor of the gym because you’d fallen and broken there, like Humpty Dumpty. We’re being lifted up together into the open air, isn’t that right?”

“Aye,” Ben agreed, “On the wings of love.”

“Oh, I really have to be off now,” Marcie said sadly, giving him a squeeze before letting him go, “Thank you too Ben, for being you, for being in my life, for sharing this new love with me. I’ll text when I’m on my way home,” she said as she found her jacket and picked up her satchel, then gathered things into it with Ben following her around, “Once I’m back we’ll have a lovely tea together with a glass of wine, and maybe play some more cosy relaxing games, like the pair of nature-loving mammals that we are, snuggled up together in our den.”

Ben agreed to all that, grinned broadly at her suggestive remarks, as she slipped her shoes on. He thought to ask if she’d be okay walking home on her own after her late shift, and she reassured him that she knew how to keep safe. Then, after a simple peck on the lips, she was out of the door and gone.

Ben suddenly felt bereft as he turned away from the closed door to face the flat on his own. For a moment he thought of putting on his own shoes and chasing after Marcie, just to be in her company a little longer as she walked to work. Then he thought of walking out later, to meet her outside the library when she came off her shift, perhaps making a surprise of it by not texting or phoning to tell her of the change of plan. But he knew there was lots to do in the flat too. He wanted to make things as nice as he could for her return, by cooking their tea, by putting the washing out to dry, on the airer in the bedroom now he guessed, and by tidying his stuff away as far as possible. But he wanted to demonstrate his self-sufficiency too, to prove to Marcie that he wasn’t making himself dependent on her, and that he had fulfilling things to do, independently and on his own in their shared home.

He started by moving those piles of books from the bedroom floor as Marcie had suggested, carefully lifting them around his awkwardly placed bike to put them down in just the same order on the spare room’s desk. He risked moving the pile of Marcie’s papers too, and her laptop, arranging them between the stacks of books so that she could sit at her computer to work, in theory at least, even if the desk was hopelessly overcrowded. He checked that the weeping fig, which had been alone on the desk when he’d first arrived, was still getting the light, and that its soil was moist. Then he set to quickly unpacking his clothes, piling them onto the empty shelves with some kind of order. He arranged his spare boots and shoes under the desk, stuffing the empty bags on top of them, and leaving space to slip his concertina file of precious paperwork under there too.

He felt things were looking better already as he took out the model ship that they’d chosen, lifting it from its nest of cushions in the crate, then carrying it onto the shelf that Marcie had set aside for it. He tossed those cushions onto the sofa too, though they looked a bit cheap next to Marcie’s tastefully embroidered ones. Then he took his own meagre pile of books and folders from their cardboard box to set them up on the living room bookcase, thinking they looked a rather ridiculous and motley collection alongside Marcie’s ordered ranks of novels, chunky travel guides, glossy large format art books and reference hardcovers. He added the book that he’d borrowed from the library and his sketchpad, then made a bookend from a stack of CDs which included the boxed BCC recording that he’d also borrowed, balancing his pencil case and watercolours on top of them. It did all look a bit untidy, he felt, but at least it was out of the plastic crate, which also gave him a reassuring feeling that he had genuinely moved in. That just left his toolbox, shoe cleaning kit and drill, which he swapped for the pile of carrier bags under the sink, just as Marcie had suggested. As he left the crate on the floor in the spare room and swung the door to, he idly wondered if she might want to use it, along with the plastic bags and the empty cardboard box that he’d left in it, to gather some things up for storage, as they’d briefly considered.

He knew he’d already been making himself useful, so he decided to brew a cup of tea and think about starting some kind of independent little project, just as he’d intended. Once in the kitchen though, he saw the short time remaining on the washing machine, remembered the shoe polish he’d just stashed away, and thought to clean Marcie’s boots as he’d promised. It seemed like another useful small task that he could fit in before the machine’s cycle finished.

He remembered her boots were still in the bathroom, where he’d taken them off for her last night. He brought them through to the dining table, setting himself up by laying out some old newspaper that he’d found, then bringing the brushes and polish through with his mug of tea. He unlaced them, then worked conscientiously around their toes, heels, uppers and shafts, firmly brushing a good deal of black polish into the soft leather. The washing machine had beeped and his tea was cooling before he’d even started to buff them up, but he didn’t mind making a thorough job of this. He thought his task felt as if it was, in some small way and at a symbolic level, a demonstration of his respect and commitment to Marcie, as well as something that simply made practical good sense, to take care of what must have been quite pricey leatherwork.

He felt satisfied with his work as he finished up, loosely rethreading the laces, parking the shining boots beside the sofa, then tidying everything up and taking the bits through to the kitchen, along with his empty mug. He washed his hands in the sink, then emptied the washing machine, setting the clothes up dry on the airer in the bedroom. He noted that Marcie had put her darker underwear through the cycle with their gym kit without any special care, including the bras and tights that he’d left out of yesterday’s wash, and he felt that was a small lesson he’d learnt for his future help around the flat right there.

He’d also been looking out over the houseplants and flowers into the backyard as he’d been sat with the boots at the dining room table, and he’d decided to begin experimenting with some kind of design for that neglected space. He took his sketchbook and pencil case from the shelf where he’d just put them, and laid them out on the table, once he’d cleared away the smeared newspaper. Following his intuition, he picked up the book from the library too, before going to his toolbox in the kitchen to find his tape measure. With this in his hand, along with a pencil and a torn-off scrap of paper, he fetched his sandals from the spare room, slipped them on, then opened the back door to begin taking some measurements of the backyard.

He looked up at the late afternoon’s overcast sky as he filled his lungs with the fresh air, hoping it would stay dry for Marcie’s walk home, before he began working his way around the brick walls with his tape measure. He thought he could hear sounds from Ali and Shona’s kitchen, perhaps as they got their early tea ready, but he didn’t try looking up or catching their attention. It took barely a couple of minutes, and then he was back inside, stepping out of his sandals and bolting the back door. Back at the table, he started making a scale sketch of the space with his ruler and pencil, scribbling down the copied figures for the real dimensions. He blocked out one corner of the plan for the shed, guessing at its size as he placed it between their bathroom and the wall onto the back alley, but then he felt a bit stuck for ideas.

He idly opened The Mind Map Book, flicking through it as Marcie had suggested. There seemed to be numerous introductions and so on, but once he’d moved past those, he quickly got to grips with the structure of the chapters, grouped into divisions and interspersed with full-page images. Without even stopping to read anything, he could see lots of numbered lists and diagrams, with bullet lists at the start of each chapter. He still picked up some keywords, as phrases seemed to leap out at him, giving him the impression that things like ‘radiant thinking’ and ‘the power of images’ were important. As he rapidly turned the pages, searching for the sketch of the tree that had first caught his eye, he realised this was just one example of a much simpler type of sketch, the mind map of the title. Even from his quick glance over the words and pictures, Ben got the sense that the authors rated imagery, doodles and highly stylised single words over neat, well structured formal writing, which seemed encouraging.

He set the book aside and began making his own spider’s web of words in the corner of his plan, just as he’d seen in the book’s diagrams. He wrote down ‘backyard’, ‘boys’, ‘tree’ and ‘climbing’, but then thought he’d started going about this in the wrong way. He turned over a fresh piece of paper and, instead of writing the word, made a crude outline of a stylised tree trunk, then added some stick figures up in its branches. Then he thought of the colours in the book, and went to get his paints, along with a brush and a glass of water, picking up one of his books of trees for reference too.

He was pretty sure that he’d wandered off what a mind map was meant to be now, as he’d added sketches of leaves and flowers, as well as different trees’ signature silhouettes and figures to represent everyone living in these two flats. He’d coloured some of the botanical sketches with washes of green, brown and grey, dabbing yellow and pink highlights on the apple and hawthorn blossom, turning the lights on to see better as the daylight faded outside. With almost meaningless words like ‘rough’, ‘weight’, ‘spring’, ‘log’, ‘climb’ and ‘compost’, along with the names of tree species, scattered around the page with doodled embellishments, it was all a bit of a mess. However, Ben figured that did not matter if this was meant to be a process, a way of playing with ideas, rather than a well-composed piece of art to be admired.

Turning the page on its side to use the empty space that was left around his damp little sketches, he tried again to sketch the outline of the backyard. This time he tried making a perspective drawing though, with lines for the back walls of the flats with their windows rising from the tapering L-shaped plot. He tried sketching some espalier trees against a trellis on the neighbour’s wall too, wondering how long it would take to train the right variety of apple trees to grow that way.

Suddenly the flat’s phone started ringing, making Ben jolt in surprise, turning one line into a lightning bolt scribble. Composing himself quickly and wondering if it was Marcie, he picked it up.

“Hello? Ahem. Marcella is in house?” he heard an old woman’s voice say in a thick accent, with the rough throatiness of a lifelong smoker. He guessed straight away who it might be, realising that he felt glad to be able to speak to Marcie’s famous Nanna in person. He hoped her English wasn’t so bad that they’d be unable to communicate.

“No, I’m sorry, she’s not here. She’s at work,” he said, trying to speak slowly and clearly, “May I take a message?”

“No, no message. We talk later. Your name, ahem, Benjamin?”

“Yes, I’m Ben. Has Marcie told you about me?”

“Yes, yes. I Thea, Thea Tabone. I Marcella’s, ahem, big mother, yes?”

“Her grandmother, yes. She’s spoken of very highly of you. She calls you Nanna. I’m pleased to speak to you.”

“You calls Nanna also. I pleased speak also. You, ahem, you be sick?”

“Yes, I’ve been having some troubles with my lungs, with my breathing. I was in hospital. But I’m getting help now. Marcie has been a very big help too. She’s really made it all okay.”

“Sorry, ahem, I talk English sick also. You okay? I prayer.”

“Yes, I’m doing very well really,” he confirmed a little awkwardly, not sure if she was really telling him that she’d been praying for him, nor whether it would be bad manners to thank her if she had, as he’d learnt it was when someone said, “Bless you.” Instead he said, “Your English is very good. I’m sorry I speak no Maltese. I will ask Marcie to teach some to me. She’s just taught me one word so far, ‘Saħħa’,” but then Ben remembered that Marcie had also used the word for good health as a kind of goodbye too. He hoped Nanna Thea didn’t think he was trying to end the call.

“Yes, saħħa! And you holiday Malta, yes? Malta sea, fish, very good.”

“Yes, I’d like to visit Malta with Marcie. I’d love to see the island and eat fish by the sea. I’d very much like to meet you too.”

“Yes, you meet Nanna. Very good. Saħħa!” Ben realised she was indeed ending the call now, and perhaps felt a bit of guilty relief about that too.

“Okay, bye then. Bye, bye, saħħa!”

“Addiju, saħħa!” she repeated, and with that, hung-up.

Ben breathed out a sigh of relief, which also perhaps expressed some kind of awe. He’d actually spoken to the grand old matriarch that Marcie had mentioned so often, who’d chosen the little cross that he wore to give to Marcie when she was still a girl, on her special holy day. As he thought about it, her voice being carried from that small island, maybe closer to Africa than Europe, directly to this phone in northerly Newcastle, it seemed almost as miraculous as her faith in the power of prayer. He touched the cross under his t-shirt that had passed through her hands before Marcie’s, and hoped that he’d be able to fulfil that intention that he’d just shared, to visit Malta and meet her in person.

But the phone had also brought him back to the here and now, as he realised he wasn’t sure how much time had passed or whether he might have missed a message on his own phone. He found it, and though no one had been trying to contact him, it was definitely time to start getting on with the lengthy preparation of his planned cottage pie.

Once he’d propped the back door open and closed the living room door, keeping his phone handy, he began methodically working through the things he needed to do. He peeled and boiled the potatoes, chopped and fried the onions and garlic with the mince, then added tomatoes, herbs and seasoning before relaxing a little, letting the sauce reduce while he waited for the potatoes to cook through for mashing. He found the ovenware dish that Marcie had used for her pasta bake which she’d made on his first night in the flat, hoping it would be large enough. Once he’d mashed the potatoes, spread them over the cooked meat then grated some cheese over the top, he got some cabbage chopped and into a pan of water, then began tidying everything up.

When he was content that the kitchen looked tidy again and the smell of frying had dissipated as much as possible, he closed the back door and went through to the living room to clear his little mind map art design project away, then set the table, keeping an eye on the time. He knew the pie needed to be in the warmed oven even before Marcie’s shift finished, but he still had half an hour before then, so he set an alarm to remind himself.

He decided to put some music on and continue reading Marcie’s precious Narnia book. He selected something from Marcie’s CD collection pretty much at random, choosing an album because the title, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, seemed relevant. He kept the volume low to ensure Shona and Ali’s family weren’t disturbed, even though the music seemed like it had a loud style. Then he relaxed on the sofa as he sank into the story of Lucy, Edmund and the others, struggling a little as he ploughed through the dated and stilted dialogue between the siblings.

However, he felt shocked when Edmund met the unpleasant queen, and hoped he hadn’t offended Marcie by comparing her to the sly and scheming character that Lewis described. Still, he liked the sound of Edmund’s hot, sweet and creamy drink, and he also wondered again at the author’s suggestive mind when the queen told Edmund that her home lay between two hills. He could almost see the tall pale woman with her seductive red lips gesturing to a pair of low round mounds, rising from the landscape, veiled under white snow.

As he read on, he began to realise how mean Edmund’s character was becoming too, yet he found himself strangely sympathetic for the boy. Just as he’d empathised with Lucy’s innocent joy, he felt he could recognise and sympathise with Edmund’s petty frustration and his impulsively spiteful reactions. He was clearly behaving in a selfish and cruel way, but Ben could see that the boy was also cowed by the arrogantly superior Peter and mature, sensible Susan. Ben understood that the boy was trapped by forces that he barely understood, and if he felt fearful or depressed by that, he didn’t see why others should blithely go about enjoying their naive happiness. Ben realised that he felt bad for Edmund rather than just disliking him, and he wondered if that was the author’s cunning intent. He also felt, even as an adult, the force of Lewis’s moral lesson, hoping that he’d not behave like Edmund. He knew how it felt to be resentful of others’ authority, and to badly want something that had been snatched away from him, even as he recognised that others may think worse of him for his desire.

He was interrupted as he read, first by his reminder to put the pie in the oven, then by his phone. He eagerly answered Marcie’s call, though she was just confirming that she was on her way and would be home on time. She asked if he’d been okay on his own, but told him to tell her everything when she got back, assuring him that she could almost smell his pie already. He’d put the book away though, and was just making some instant gravy, when he heard the front door opening, then Marcie calling out her joking, “Hi honey, I’m home!”