Another Chance Encounter in the Market Square

He walked to the other end of the bench like a cowboy just off a horse. He looked like a hollowed out Richard Harris, wearing tailored jeans, a horizontally striped cotton t-shirt and a Miss Marple gardening hat. ‘May I sit here?’ ‘Of course.’ He sat, nodding. Then, after a while, ‘What a quaint little town this is.’ ‘Really? With all the Tudor and the Halls?’ ‘Oh, granted. But I’ve just come back from living thirty years in Australia.’ Ah, that was the tang in the otherwise smooth, cultivated. ‘Sydney. Divorced my wife after all that time. Left her the house. A million dollars’ worth. The house, not her. Though I used to think she was. Women can do that to men. It’s because they have to ensnare – not all, of course, but quite a number in my experience – as they have fewer basic freedoms than us. Going to the pub alone, for instance.’ He had brightly cold blue eyes, that held no reflection of what he was saying. ‘I’m back here living in the flat I bought for my mother thirty years…