Page 22 of Secret Paths

“I thought it was possible.”

“I was thinking about your dick.”

He stops walking.

I take two more steps before I notice, then turn back.

For once, Peter has no answer ready. The wind catches his curls, and his mouth opens slightly before he closes it again.

“Well,” he says at last. “That is considerably clearer.”

“You asked.”

“I did.” He starts walking again, his grin returning slowly. “For the record, my dick is available for a repeat performance.”

“How generous of it.”

“It likes to be useful.”

“Does it?”

“Very much.”

I laugh, because he is ridiculous and because the memory of that night has arrived in far too much detail for the middle of a Ramblers walk.

Peter looks at me, waiting.

I lift one shoulder. “I will bear that in mind.”

“That sounds promising.”

“It was not intended to.”

“Of course not.”

He lets it go then. No push, no expectation, no attempt to turn a joke into an arrangement before I have decided whether I want one.

Which is useful.

It means I can carry on walking beside him and pretend the idea of a repeat has not lodged itself firmly in my head even if it very much has.

By eleven, St Claire has settled into itself.

The last of the Saturday drinkers have gone home, the chairs inside The Running Horse are upside down on the tables, and the only light on the high street comes from the pub windows behind me and the lamps spaced along the pavement. Rain earlier has left everything shining.

Alexandra keeps me for a glass of wine after closing, then another half while we talk about a delivery that has not turned up, a wedding booking that has changed numbers for the third time and Bernard’s apparent belief that sausage rolls are a basic canine right.

Eventually Hunter appears to help Alexandra to close down and I take this as an excuse to leave.

I pull my jacket closer as I pass the churchyard. The village is quiet enough that I can hear my boots on the pavement and the faint rattle of a bin lid somewhere behind a garden wall.

I should be tired. I am tired.

The week has been long, the walk longer than I expect it to be, and I have spent far too much of the day thinking about a man’s dick.

Not just any man’s dick.

Peter’s.