‘As you say, wrong again. But enough of that for now. More apple juice? Cream cake? Do help yourself. It goes off quickly in this weather, and I can’t really eat so much cream myself.’
‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘One piece is quite enough.’
‘As you please, of course, but I’m a little disappointed. Tell me, do you have to work at keeping the shape you’ve got, or are you naturally good looking?’
I remember giving him a sharp glance to see if he was joking, but received only an innocent stare in return. At least, I thought it was innocent. I didn’t have a great deal of experience to go by.
‘I’m probably not the right person to say,’ I replied.
He nodded gravely, as though I had just verified something, but passed no further comment.
After that, I visited almost every day. We became friends, joking and talking together in the way that friends often do. We even learned each other’s names. Jenny and Peter respectively, although I expect he thought of us as Peter and Jenny. One day was wet, with threatening black thunderclouds building up for most of the morning. We spent that time inside his cottage, listening to music, Mozart for the most part. Pleasant enough, though I really preferred something a bit more modern. I appreciate it rather better now than I did at the time. If I close my eyes I can recapture the scene clearly, the painted walls in a rather ugly shade of brown, except in the kitchen which was an even uglier green. There were pictures on the walls, some of them his own, others belonging to the cottage. The floors were of slate, cold to the feet, but refreshing in that hot, hot summer. There was a single bed, which I could see through a half open door that led to the bedroom. I never went in there, so cannot say anything more about it, but the living room had a large table and three not very comfortable old armchairs, along with a dresser of<