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or something, went up and stopped my father. Yet no one cal ed the police. It never occurred to them to do that. It just wasn't part of their culture. What went on between husband and wife was their business, until the kids got hurt; then, the community usual y took care of it.
    That's what happened in our case.
    'My dad left, for good, that very night. We were actual y better off, for my mother had always been the breadwinner; he never had a regular job that I knew of, although he was always out and about. As far as I could see he just leeched off her. After he went, we never spoke about what had happened, not even when Eilidh and I were grown up. It was always there, though, hanging like a curtain between my mother and me, something unspoken that we knew nonetheless.
    'It stayed that way, until she was dying. She developed breast cancer; she had a big lump but she kept quiet about it until it was way too late.
    The afternoon before she died, I went in to see her. I was a probationer then; she didn't approve of my joining the police, and she didn't hide that from me.
    'She couldn't speak above a whisper at that stage, but she beckoned me close to her, and she said to me, "I never could forgive you, Margaret."
    And I said, "For what, Mum?" And she said, "For tel ing me. I loved your father." And that was the last thing my mother ever said to me.
    'Oh, how I hated him then; far more than ever before. The fact is, I don't think I real y did hate him until that moment; not even when he was doing al those things, because he was my father and I didn't know any different and I didn't understand, until someone at school said something and it al rushed in on me.
    'What it al comes down to is this. What I said back there was only partly true. I joined the police because of my father, but not just because of him. I joined because I wanted to change the culture I grew up in, the notion that even in the direst circumstances, the police are somehow the enemy of the working class. I wanted to be an accessible copper, to be the sort that people would rush up to in the street.'
    She frowned, a deep dark frown, which pained him for her. 'Yet somewhere along the line I lost that; I became a control freak, an authoritarian, the sort of copper kids run away from in the street. And now, my junior colleagues see me as some, sort of dragon, and maybe, that's what I am.'
    He waited, until he was sure that she had finished, that she had drained whatever well had overflowed inside her and brought her to spill out the deepest, darkest truths that she had withheld even from him, until that moment.
    'Why haven't you told me al this before?' he asked her quietly, when it was time.
    'I suppose I've been afraid you'd look at me in a different light. Now you know why I'm ambivalent about the kids thing. The truth is, there are times when I'm positively glad we can't have any.'
    'Why? Because you'd be afraid to trust me with our daughters?'
    He put the question gently, yet still her hand flew to her mouth in horror. 'No! Not for a second! No, it's because of me. I never had a proper, natural relationship with my mother; I'm plain scared that I wouldn't know how to begin to build one myself.'
    He shook his dark head. 'Of course you would. I'l tell you something else; you're no bloody dragon either. You're a good, a better than good copper.'
    'You might not say that if you'd seen a thing that happened this morning.'
    'What was that?'
    'Something very simple, but I can't get it out of my head. A young probationer came into my office, and he was shaking. The boy was scared, Mario, of me, and that's not right.'
    'Course it is,' he laughed, making light of it. 'The traditional function of the probationer is to crap themselves when going into the super's office.' She did not return his smile.
    'Look, Mags,' he told her. 'You have to believe this. You are an exceptional, dedicated police officer; Bob Skinner picked you out as that, and shot you up the ladder because