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twenty-five years earlier. Recalled a vague restlessness, the feeling that the world was out there and why weren’t you out there with it? But had he ever wanted to kick over the traces so completely? He found his memory for things like that was growing dimmer, the older he became. Still not quite yet into the sere and yellow, he sometimes felt that he understood so little of people of Julie’s generation he might have been born before the Flood.
    â€˜It’s endemic in the student population,’ Alex said calmingly. ‘She’ll be all right when she’s got it out of her system. Itchy feet, they all get it.’
    â€˜Not half way through a college course!’ He didn’t want to be smoothed down. He wanted to be allowed to give vent to what he felt.
    â€˜Especially half way through a college course. All right, they don’t all pack it in, but at least she’s not doing it without thought – give her credit for that.’ Alex settled back into the sofa with her high heels kicked off and her feet up on a small table, anything but the crisp, efficient police sergeant she’d been an hour before. Their free time coinciding for once, they were in Mayo’s flat, he was doing the honours and had in mind for their strictly non-vegetarian meal a large mixed grill, including pork chops and kidneys. Then afterwards, hopefully, she would stay on, though he couldn’t ever be sure of that. Just glad to pick up whatever crumbs were on offer, you poor old mutt, he told himself, knowing it wasn’t true, because such terms between him and Alex could never be acceptable to either.
    â€˜You’d better believe she’s serious about it, Gil. It takes courage to do what she’s done. She must’ve known what your reaction would be.’
    â€˜Good God, I’m not that frightening! Am I?’
    Alex looked amused. ‘Well, maybe a bit Victorian papa – thinking about your daughter not being a sweet, biddable little girl any more. Sorry, shouldn’t have said that. Not my business.’
    â€˜No, what you say makes sense, I suppose – but what d’you mean, it’s not your business? Anything to do with me is your business, I hope.' He thought about pressing the point, but he’d no desire to spoil a good evening before it started. They’d achieved a compromise which for the moment suited them both. If he were honest, he’d admit it was a truce rather than a compromise but it was for the time being working, and he wasn’t going to push his luck by breaking the rules and asking her to marry him yet again. There’d been a time when he’d thought she wouldn’t marry him because she wasn’t yet completely free of Liam, her Irish ex-lover. Now that he’d apparently gone into limbo (and bad cess to him, bloody Liam of the Sorrows) and no longer appeared to occupy her thoughts so much, he had to realize she had ambitions beyond marriage: a career she didn’t intend jeopardizing by the demands of a husband and maybe children. She’d seen too much of that happening with her female colleagues, she said. There was some truth in that, but the threat of her promotion hung over him like the sword of Damocles – and perhaps over Alex as well. He sensed a tension in her tonight – but he was always on the edge of apprehension with Alex. Moodily, he swivelled the ice around in his glass and switched problems again. ‘What gets me, I suppose, is that I can do damn all about it, though I won’t give up without a try.’
    â€˜No, Gil, I suspect you won’t.’
    He acknowledged this with a wry smile. There was silence between them while she slowly felt herself relax. It was very easy to do that up here in this quiet top-floor flat. Carly Simon, in deference to her own tastes, on the turntable. The tick-tack-tocking from the old clocks, knackling away from every corner of the rooms – something