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any rate, there was normally no room in it for spontaneous, unplanned gestures of affection.
    â€˜Killed? What gave you that idea?’ His bright-eyed smile lit up a face as ingenuous as a baby’s. His hair was wispy. He was going bald. His figure was sagging into a paunch and he never ceased to be surprised that he could have produced so spectacular a daughter. He never ceased to worry about the life she lived in London, either – perhaps because neither he nor her mother had been privileged to be told anything much about it. But she was secretive by nature and always had been and was unlikely to change, so there was little to do but accept the situation. ‘I was nowhere near the place,’ he said.
    â€˜Only by good luck. Mum says you were there only about ten minutes before. Why were you? So early on Saturday morning? Easter?’
    â€˜My dear child, like a few more people who had equally lucky escapes, I’d certain things I had to do, work to see to ... the Institute can never really close completely. But let’s not talk about that.’
    Their eyes met. He wondered what she was thinking, if she remembered. It suddenly occurred to him that she probably thought it irrelevant whether her parents approved of her lifestyle, since there was so much she didn’t approve of in theirs. She held the cat cradled to her, watching him as he spooned in the last of his muesli. She was rather like a bedraggled little kitten herself, one that had been out in the wet, with those startlingly blue-green eyes in her sharp little triangular face, her spiky, gelled dark hair, claws sheathed at the moment but ready he knew to scratch at any time.
    â€˜All the same, it was a near miss, wasn’t it?’ Her gaze on his face was intent, and perhaps he didn’t imagine the concern behind it. ‘I was in Bognor that weekend with Seb and I didn’t hear about it until I got home.’
    â€˜ Bognor? With Seb?’
    She correctly interpreted the frown that appeared between his brows. ‘Now, Pop, don’t be so stuffy!’ she said impatiently. ‘Seb’s OK. He’s good fun – and Mr Loadsa-money at the moment – but don’t go getting any ideas. I’ve already told him it’s his motorbike I love and not him.’
    He wasn’t sure he was keen on the idea of her racketing around on the back of a Harley Davidson, either. He pushed aside his empty cereal bowl, and looked at her, careful not to show the dread he felt at the thought of where her fearless and headstrong nature might take her.
    But with unexpected gentleness she said, ‘You shouldn’t worry so much about me, Pop. I’m a big girl, now. I’ll be all right.’
    He wished he could believe that. But nothing she’d done so far gave him too much cause for hope.

CHAPTER 4
    Did other fathers, Mayo asked himself, fatalistically accept that they must in some mysterious way be to blame when their daughters suddenly became as incomprehensible as some creature from another planet? He suspected that most of them did, that it was all part of the contemporary human condition. But that didn’t make it any easier to cope with. Julie had come home after three weeks with her grandmother, still of the same mind. And left again after three days.
    â€˜All she’ll say is she doesn’t want to make any major decisions yet – only little things that don’t matter, like chucking up a career and leaving college and knocking around the world like some blasted gipsy.’ He added tonic to gin for Alex before subsiding into a chair on the opposite side of the hearth with his own whisky. ‘Before her teeth fall out and she’s married and saddled with six kids and a mortgage, to be precise.’
    Alex grinned and sipped her drink. ‘Didn’t we all. Ancient as I am and feel, I can still remember the urge.’ Well, maybe. He thought of himself at Julie’s age,