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baby sister tagging along.
    Every now and then, of course, Jess was included. Uncle Bob had bought tickets for the pantomime, and they had all gone, with another family, taking up a whole row of stalls, and Uncle Bob had bought programmes for everybody, and a vast box of chocolates. But then the Dame had appeared, in her red wig and her corsets and her great scarlet bloomers, and Jess had behaved most embarrassingly and burst into piercing howls of fear, and had had to be hurried out by Mummy and not returned again. Luckily that happened fairly near the beginning, so everybody else was able to settle down and enjoy the rest of the show.
    Uncle Bob was the best. Being with him, getting to know him, was the undoubted high spot of the holiday. Judith had never known that fathers could be such good value, so patient, so interesting, so funny. Because it was a holiday, he didn't have to go to the College every day, and so had time to spare, and they had spent much of it in that holy-of-holies, his study, where he had shown her his photograph albums, let her play records on his wind-up gramophone, and taught her how to use his battered portable typewriter. And when they went skating, it was he who had helped her around the rink until she found what he called her sea-legs; and at parties he always made sure that she wasn't left out, but introduced her to his guests, just as though she were a grown-up.
    Dad, although dear, and missed, had never been such fun. Admitting this to herself, Judith had felt a bit guilty, because, over the last couple of weeks, she had been having such a good time that she had scarcely thought of him. To make up for this, she thought of him now, very hard, but she had to think about Colombo first, because that was where he was, and that was the only place where she could bring his image to life. But it was difficult. Colombo had been a long time ago. You thought you could remember every detail, but time had blurred the sharpness of recall, just as light fades old photographs. She searched for some occasion on which she could latch her memory.
    Christmas. Obvious. Christmas in Colombo was unforgettable, if only because it was so incongruous, with the brilliant tropic skies, the nailing heat, shifting waters of the Indian Ocean, and the breeze stirring the palm trees. In the house on the Galle Road, at Christmas, she had opened her presents on the airy veranda, within sound of the breaking waves, and Christmas dinner had not been turkey but a traditional curry lunch at the Galle Face Hotel. A lot of other people celebrated this way as well, so it was a bit like a huge children's party, with everybody wearing paper hats and blowing tooters. She thought of the dining-room filled with families, all eating and drinking far too much, and the cool sea breeze blowing in from the ocean, and the ceiling fans slowly turning.
    It worked. Now she had a clear picture of him. Dad, sitting at the head of the table in a blue paper crown starred with gold. She wondered how he had spent this solitary Christmas. When they had left him, four years ago, a bachelor friend had moved in to keep him company. But somehow it was impossible to imagine the two of them indulging in seasonal cheer. They had probably ended up at the club, with all the other bachelors and grass-widowers. She sighed. She supposed she missed him, but it was not easy to go on missing a person when life had been lived without him for so long, with the only contact his monthly letters, which were three weeks old when they arrived, and not very inspiring even then.
    The new clock now pointed to eight o'clock. Time to get up. Now. One, two, three. She flung back the covers, hopped out of bed, and fled to turn on the electric fire. And then, very quickly, bundled herself into her Jaeger dressing-gown and pushed her bare feet into sheepskin slippers.
    Her Christmas presents were neatly lined up on the floor. She fetched her small suitcase, a Chinese one made of