It came again last night, down long and shadow-filled corridors. It didn't roll, nor did it glide. It entered the air and folded into itself, into a corner. It has many corners, midway up these cold stone steps, under this burgeoning tree. It knows where the motion censors cross, and how they can be stepped through. It watched, nicking at the fray of a glove, knowing that it requires this darkness, to survive.

"In touch with the ground!" Val Parish raises her glass.

"Juices like wine!" Sir Marcus Wells raises his. A converted St Cedma's. Lace and candles at lunchtime. Why not? Put the place to some use. Waiters dressed as vicars, or verging on it. Verging on vergers. When she arrived, he'd been notching himself up to one. Potential supplier. Friend of the owner. No, not him. New, is he? They tend to come and go. High turnover. Not to concern you. The owner's owner. In all honesty, he didn't need to do this sort of thing in Bishop's Evenbridge.

"Actually, I am Hungry Like The Wolf." He says, finding the menu. "And why don't they write them like that any more?"

"All buskers and burglars these days. Hitmen on holiday." She tests the wine and watches him. They do say that your best friend isn't the one you like the best, just the one who got their first. Time provides its own loyalty, and perhaps we could say the same about crushes.

Gradually, she can bare to look up and around. She'd been here before; when Mal was asked to best man at a colleague's wedding. Bricking it about the speech, he was very impressed by the vicar's ease. Perspective, higher love and moral purpose, even eternal life. It's not even opium these days.

"Anyway, the home news."

"Latest is a motorbike and an overland through Africa. Talking himself into seeking documentary-maker interest. I wouldn't put bittersweet realism past the world."

"Tricky business, but I don't see Mal going with a whimper." Marcus clasps his fingers behind his head. "Empathise. Sometimes I just want to throw everything into the air and take to the bushes. Cro-Magnon." He'd had been saying this sort of thing since he was eighteen. As a rule, to partly justify some gambit he had on his mind. "Pack animal. Living on blackberries and pilfered ice lollies." He pauses. "How are you?"

"I'm everywhere, Marcus. Little time to be anything." He considers and smiles again, then enters a silence which makes her think that he is wondering what on earth to say. "But good. If I believed in the stars, I'd say that I was on the cusp of major changes and that they all have a purpose, and we just need perspective. You?"

"Better perspective. Challenged, but lost in work. You're slinking back the prodigal son, then there's no-one to slink back to. Where's the fun in that? You sit at your desk and thank God for Costchopper."

"And you're everywhere I turn these days. No offence."

"Ooh, people love a grumble. If we were gone, they'd miss us."

"Right!" She asks if he has decided.

"Bracing myself for Salmon On The Mount. Disappointingly choice. Not even St John the Bap." He is watching her, she can tell, looking to resonate something. She was Val the Confessor, for her sins. He had once said 'I never underestimate the Oxford rabble. Don't think I really had a personality before you lot. Birth of the real me. That's why people jump in the river. That's why people sing at midnight. Because they're suddenly themselves.' For better or worse, she was there at the birth. Of the rabble, the flock, the pack. There were even spats and canes at one point, as if coming together turned them into something else. Isn't that why people come together? Much easier than doing it on your ownsome. She looks up, and he is looking at her, and then she looks around the restaurant again.

"Work?" He asks, with a smile. "Found a real career?"

"Arf." The waiter returns and they order. "You said you had something in mind."

He picks up a spoon and slowly moves a finger as if to strum it. "The land behind the school is available. Sitting doing nothing in a prime spot I'm fond of. I've put in a Costchopper bid and it'll be hard to beat. All we have to navigate are objections."

"Can I ask what you plan to do with it?"

"You'll be aware from his easygoing pink sheet interrogations that Daveboy doesn't run a thing. The customer runs Costchopper. They demand and he creates, and the less we intervene the better. Aware of farmers markets? Bigger but similar. Forward to basics. Practically an opportunity to source your own fare."

"Social conscience at last." He is glugging wine as Val considers. "We can make use of the forest?"

"God, yes. It'll be an eye opener for the kids. We'll have to set aside times and so forth. Sensitive natural balances will be maintained."

"Sounds too good to be true."

"You're a stakeholder. You'll see the bumpf, the slideshow and so forth. There's some interactive whiteboards in it for you."

Val looks him in the eye. "I need more than whiteboards, Marcus."

"Try me."

"The next league table is going to be a drop in achievements. Highlight discipline issues." She folds her hands.

"Admit it." He advises, with no hesitation. "Never be caught unawares. Admit it now, along with your change plan. I can help. Announce it fifty foot tall. Rebrand with champagne reception. The league table becomes old news."

She nods. "I'd like to bring in my own special measures before anyone else can."

"Mm." He agrees but looks concerned. "Crimewatch. Crackdown. The harder you grip, the more you'll lose them sometimes. Adjudicated, classified and swiped."

"And?"

"Get at their roots. Something organic. There's a jam at broken lights. Do we crash? We weave in a mutually beneficial way." His hands seek to demonstrate. "Let them invest into something and they'll cheer for both it and Mrs Parish."

She looks around the restaurant like she wants to run with something. "Too much stops with me, but maybe people tell me what I want to hear. I'm shaking up the deputies. Visible pro-activity. Creating a new position. Organic, I'm sure."

He sits back to allow a bread basket onto the table. "I sense we're in the same dinghy. Campaigns for banks, presented by a real member of staff. Who'd present for Bishop's Evenbridge?"

Put like this, Val's first thought is affability, someone like Toby Pierce. "We're not corporate, Marcus."

"Still, my little propeller-heads are at your disposal." He flaps open a linen napkin. "Enough Corporate Modellers to throw Evenbridge upside down. And if we need to tie it into the land sale, that might be wise. Announce yourself the architect of something spectacular. In my humble estimation."

Lunch arrives while they are discussing mutual friends ("Karina was the French girl at the party who said I looked like Rimbaud. I left the room because I'd just seen 'First Blood'. Thought she meant Stallone.") and a short-lived comedy revue they found themselves roped into, Moby Dick's Schooldays, with an unfeasibly camp anthem entitled 'Ooh, It's All Coming Out Now'.

"Max? Left his wife. Gay as a ha'penny. So they say."

Val tests her veal. "I never would have guessed." She then clears her throat. "Moby met a sperm whale. He said 'My wife's a cow. Alleged I stained the ocean bed.'" Marcus joins in for the refrain. "But Ooh, It's All Coming Out Now." A passing vicar asks if their meal is satisfactory and is dispatched for another bottle.

"Don't. Don't." He laughs. "I'm sure people talk about single old me."

"Noo." She says consolingly. "You just can't do beastly things with people you respect. But can't marry anyone you don't. This is where aristocratic remorse differs from gay."

"Daveboy comes re-baptised, in the best of new money." He narrows his eyes. "It just seemed like such a bloody wasteland. Marriage. I could never get that out of my head."

Val doesn't know what to say. "There's always a road not taken. But then you do own a fleet."

It is then that his hand finds hers. His expression, quietly serious, contains a multiplicity of things. "Come back with me. Afternoon off. Brainstorm the propeller-heads."

Ah. "Do you.." God. It has been more than a while and, although her fingers instinctively grip back, and she does manage to create a smile, "Do we? Have any idea? What that would make me?"

"One or two former girlfriends have kindly forwarded me peculiar text messages the groom sent to them, which they saved especially for this, um, moment.." Mal Parish had been bricking it during the best man speech. He really had.

The restaurant is upside down and turning clockwise through the rear window of the SUV, across the car park. Her head rises over the headrest as he moves down to kiss her neck. "We can't just stare at him and wait." He kisses her again, breathing in her perfume, kneeling himself back onto the passenger seat. She didn't ask him to stop, but knew that their circumstances, his bodyguard or was it his driver, had a presence that intervened on his behalf.

"We won't have to." She promises, raising his hand and kissing it.

"Lord, would it bother either of us if I called you an interactive whiteboard? It really needn't belittle anything. Interactive whiteboard might be the best thing we can be. Above even the grey beard of law. Even now I'm failing, Lord, giving you human emotions like upset. See the kind of solipsistic creatures we are.

Whiteboard, this is not one of Val's more meditative moments. Not, you'll be pleased, a power prayer ten minutes into a rowing machine. It's an honest thanks, since we are kind enough to ask for her motivation. For your presence and patience, for friends we have known.

Two glasses. I'll be fine. Sure? He didn't say goodbye. Passed back through the car park, where a bodyguard was folding his newspaper. "What's a four letter word for 'strictly business'?" "How about a two finger word for 'mind your own'." And since we ask about his motivations, we'd have to say that people come together to become many things, with many facets, and many cooperative pliers fit for many new machines. Is he a stick-arounder? Get real. Has he heard of the Diocesan Regulations for Consecrated Grounds, Monuments or Ledgers? We'd be surprised.

But beastly things, beastly things. A black nugget of understanding we'll never put a finger on. If it helps, Val, it's got nothing to do with me. And who would you be? Interactive? If you recall? Ah, welcome. Join in. We are Val Parish and a big girl now, with our own motivations. Was guilt one of your ideas? Comes as standard, Val. Frustration? Go Cro-Magnon. "Fuckers." Good, but restrained. And they were sheep! Baa lambs, Val. Try getting to work. Being augmenting and educating the mind, your own and others. But, where the mind divides to watch itself, we find ourselves cursing self-regard even as we need it. Self-regulation? Don't look at me. Only got yourself to blame there. "Fuckers! Stupid fuckers." Better. Why have it in for stupid? "Stupid fucking woolly drop-out bastards." More. "Stupid fucking fence-banging unable-to-see-the-axe-coming.. things. Things." Things.

You've gone silent. I'm thinking, Val. Please go on with that touching reverence of yours. This'll be a prayer for those lost sheep, and for friends we waylay as we rise above or misplace trust or build great cathedrals only to forget our song. Sit within them in silence, capable only of contemplating the breadth of our handsome nave, or planning a rigourous mural for the transept, a gold and marble polish to our iconostasis. Stop! I don't mean driving, I mean reverence. Heard yourself? Handsome, rigourous, then polish. Still in the restaurant? Still half-anticipating rigourous polish?

Now you've gone silent. Damn, I wish I could shout at lost sheep. As a shepherd I should find it second nature but often feel somewhat saddled by the metaphor. Men. They're a black nugget. The beautiful but boring, more ice-covered by their vanity with every date. At sixteen we go for gold, until the appeal wears off, and then we meet Mal and he's more of a friend really. One who goes to university while we dally with a twenty seven year old social researcher, smart and full of stories, but taking a kind of advantage. At Oxford you turn inwards and become the sensible one, sharing a flat with the inexplicably popular Jenni. Okay, too explicable. Straight-ahead sense for the important paper. Beyond, four feet offer the stairs a so-methodical, light-heavy step. Earplugs plumped for tonight's abandon. The 'Ye-es'. The wall-scrape soft as swaying reeds before a storm. The 'Aw, Jenni. Not half!' Not half? What has she reeled in? A comic book mid-fielder? You've never heard anything as dippy and uncomplicated as 'Not half'. Say what you like about 'Not half', it cannot resonate like the dark blurt and navvies la-la deemed relevant to our inner ear. Was that some kind of social research? You never get the guts to ask her. Just how does one become, and stay, a 'Not half!' girl? Then Mal invites himself down for a summer and your personal history just kind of happens.

Now you've gone silent again. Say, when are you going to tell me you love me? I love you, Lord. Love you more than I think I can explain.

I love you too. I'm not stupid, am I? Not at all. But what am I, then? You're a little black nugget my job is to unravel. And you'll never be just a thing to me. Ever.”

As Val Parish takes a slow breath, invigorated more than she would have thought by this sense of the illicit, her junction looms quicker than expected. And what Mr Kenny Stobbart, of Michaels and Stobbart Haulers, does, at precisely the same moment, is to attempt to alter the colour scheme on his SatLad, from Aqua Crystal Vortex to Moon Desert Reds, in anticipation of a football fixture much later that evening.

His lorry is wide coming out from the junction, it is over the line, but it is her car which is forced to test the crash barrier for a second, with a scraping sound resultant along the left hand side.

Shock floodlights everything, even as she steers and brakes. It illuminates our framework, the curtainhood beyond the mind's stage. Black nuggets unravel as white faces, a childhood mouthful of lake water. Images neatly packed away like store for some emotional winter spill forth and prick her vision, while her hands grip tighter, and till the vehicle is at a standstill.