‘Where’s this?’ asked Landen.

‘It’s where we kissed for the first time,’ I replied.

‘No!’ replied Landen. ‘I remember watching the shelling with you but we only talked that evening. I didn’t actually kiss you until the night you drove me out to forward CP and we got stuck in the minefield.’

I laughed out loud.

‘Men have such crap memories when it comes to things like this! We were standing apart like this and desperately wanting to just touch one another. You put your hand on my shoulder to pretend to point something out and I slid my hand into the small of your back like… so. We didn’t say anything but when we held each other it was like… like electricity!’

We did. It was. The shivers went all the way to my feet, bounced back, returned in a spiral up my body and exited my neck as a light sweat.

‘Well,’ replied Landen in a quiet voice a few minutes later, ‘I think I prefer your version. So if we kissed here then the night in the minefield was—’

‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘yes, yes, it was.’

And there we were, sitting outside an armoured personnel carrier in the dead of night two weeks later, marooned in the middle of probably the best-signposted minefield in the area.

‘People will think you did this on purpose,’ I told him as unseen bombers droned overhead, off on a mission to bomb someone to pulp.

‘I got away only with a reprimand as I recall,’ he replied. ‘And anyway, who’s to say that I didn’t?’

‘You drove deliberately into a minefield just for a leg-over?’ I asked, laughing.

‘Not any old leg-over,’ he replied. ‘Besides, there was no risk involved.’

He pulled a hastily drawn map out of his battledress pocket.

‘Captain Bird drew this for me.’

‘You scheming little shitbag!’ I told him, throwing an empty K-ration tin at him. ‘I was terrified!’

‘Ah!’ replied Landen with a grin. ‘So it was terror and not passion that drove you into my arms?’

I shrugged. ‘Well, maybe a bit of both.’

Landen leaned forward, but I had a thought and pressed a fingertip to his mouth.

‘But this wasn’t the best, was it?’

He stopped, smiled and whispered in my ear:

‘At the furniture store?’

‘In your dreams, Land. I’ll give you a clue. You still had a leg and we both had a week’s leave—by lucky coincidence at the same time.’

‘No coincidence,’ said Landen with a smile.

‘Captain Bird again?’

‘Two hundred bars of chocolate but worth every one.’

‘You’re a bit of a rake, y’know, Land—but in the nicest kind of way. Anyhow,’ I continued, ‘we elected to go cycling in the Republic of Wales.’

As I spoke the APC vanished, the night rolled back and we were walking hand in hand through a small wood by the side of a stream. It was summer and the water babbled excitedly among the rocks, the springy moss a warm carpet to our bare feet. The blue sky was devoid of clouds and the sunlight trickled in among the verdant foliage above our heads. We pushed aside low branches and followed the sound of a waterfall. We came across two bicycles leaning up against a tree, the panniers open and the tent half pegged out on the ground. My heart quickened as the memories of that particular summer’s day flooded back. We had started to put the tent up but stopped for a moment, the passion overcoming us both on the warm ground. I squeezed Landen’s hand and he put his arm round my waist. He smiled at me with his funny half-smile.

‘When I was alive I came to this memory a lot,’ he confided to me. ‘It’s one of my favourites, and amazingly your memory seems to have got most things correct.’

‘Is that a fact?’ I asked him as he kissed me gently on my neck. I shivered slightly and ran my fingers down his naked back.

‘Most—plock—definitely.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing—plock-plock—why?’

‘Oh, no! Not now of all times!’

‘What?’ asked Landen.

‘I think I’m about to—’

‘—wake up.’

But I was talking to myself. I was back in my bedroom in Swindon, my memory excursion annoyingly cut short by Pickwick, who was staring at me from the rug, leash in beak and making quiet plock-plock noises. I gave her a baleful stare.

‘Pickers, you are such a pest. Just when I was getting to the good bit.’

She stared at me, little comprehending what she had done.

‘I’m going to drop you round at Mum’s,’ I told her as I sat up and stretched. ‘I’m going to Osaka for a couple of days.’

She cocked her head on one side and stared at me curiously.

‘You and Junior will be in good hands, I promise.’

I got out of bed and trod on something hard and whiskery. I looked at the object and smiled. It was a good sign. Lying on the carpet was an old coconut husk—and better than that, there was still some sand stuck to my feet. My reading of Robinson Crusoe hadn’t been a total failure after all.

Pickwick insisted on sitting on her egg all the way to Mum’s house and plocked nervously whenever I went over twenty miles per hour. I made her a nest in the airing cupboard and left her fussing over her egg while the other dodos strained at the window, trying to figure out what was going on. I rang Bowden while Mum fixed me a sandwich.

‘Are you okay?’ he enquired. ‘Your phone’s been off the hook!’

‘I’m okay, Bowd. What’s happening at the office?’

‘The news is out.’

‘About Landen?’

‘About Cardenio. Someone blabbed to the press. Vole Towers is besieged by news channels as we speak. Lord Volescamper has been yelling at Victor about one of us talking.’

‘Wasn’t me.’

‘Nor me. Volescamper has turned down fifty million quid for it already—every impresario on the planet wants to buy the rights for first performance. And get this—you’ve been cleared by SO-1 of any wrongdoing. They thought that since Kaylieu was shot by SO-14 marksmen yesterday morning then you might have been right after all.’

‘Big of them. Does this mean my leave is over?’

‘Victor wants to see you as soon as possible.’

‘Tell him I’m ill, would you? I have to go to Osaka.’

‘Why?’

‘Best not to know. I’ll call you.’

I replaced the receiver and Mum gave me some cheese on toast and a cup of tea. She sat down at the other side of the table and flicked through a well-thumbed copy of last month’s Femole—the one with me in it.

‘Any news from Mycroft and Polly, Mum?’

‘I got a card from London saying they were fit and well,’ she replied, ‘but they said they needed a jar of piccalilli and a torque wrench. I left them in Mycroft’s study and they’d vanished by the afternoon.’