How did she know that from down here? Had she got a periscope?

‘He’s got three parishes, you know. And all his problems.’

Merrily drank some tea.

Oh, well.

‘I’m… afraid I don’t really know anything about that. Don’t really like to ask him these things.’ Peering over her cup. ‘Sounds like I’m prying.’

Mrs Aird looked up at the ceiling and made a sad, wounded noise.

‘It was his daughter wrecked everything. Emily. Got a son as well, but he’s too young to cause trouble. Emily would be… what, eighteen? Mrs Spicer, Fiona, she was from Reading, somewhere like that, near London. She didn’t really like the country, and when Mr Spicer left the Army-You know what he was, don’t you?’

‘Erm… no.’

‘ S… A… S.’

Mrs Aird mouthing it silently, like a breach of the Official Secrets Act.

‘Really?’

No wonder Syd Spicer was familiar with the Brecon Beacons.

‘Been out about eight years,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘But there’s something that doesn’t leave them, if you ask me.’

‘Mmm.’

Probably right. And they often didn’t leave the area. After many years based in Hereford, learning to become the most efficient killers in or out of uniform, they formed connections with the people and the land. Married local girls. Surprisingly – or maybe not – Spicer wouldn’t have been the first of them to become a priest.

‘Imagine the stress she must’ve been through,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘Never sure where in the world he was at any time, but knowing it was always going to be somewhere terribly dangerous.’

Merrily nodded. The SAS had probably the worst matrimonial record outside Hollywood. Breakfast with the wife, late supper in a cave in Afghanistan. Then retirement, still hyper, and they couldn’t settle down. The wives had to be very special to survive all that. Long periods alone, counting the Regiment graves in St Martin’s churchyard.