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widow; and, though she must have at least considered the possibility of his death as soon as he started seeing active service, James was her youngest.
    Laraine is also drawn back to the family home. The oddest side-effect is that she gets back together with her first boyfriend, Sean Rye. He is acting manager of the bank and seems likely to accede to Dad’s old job. She is engaged to a bloke you didn’t like, but breaks it off and gets engaged to Sean, which surprises you. You always thought he was a bit straight for her.
    Mum discovers an interest in antiques through her new boyfriend, Phil Parslowe. They spend weekends tracking down
escritoires
and attending estate sales.
    Your presence isn’t quite so much needed at home, so you spend more time in London. The Thatcher years grind on and you see victims all around you.
The Scam
runs a lot of investigative pieces. You have a sense of the unfairness of it all. You get angry about James. He stands in for the jobless, the abused, the disenfranchised, the dead.
    You go out with a colleague, Clare. She is obsessed with incidences of police brutality against racial minorities and early-1970s pop music. She likes to play Abba while making love.
    Mum and Phil get married, which pleases and surprises you. Not least because it gets you off a guilt hook. And then Laraine and Sean.
    You split up with Clare and go out with an editor, an American, Anne Nielsen. Her history of family disasters makes you feel normal, but it doesn’t last. Anne chucks you and you get back with Clare, on your terms: Bowie, yes; Bay City Rollers, no.
    Margaret Thatcher is still in power.
    You go on Jobs Not Bombs marches and organise fund-raisers for the miners’ strike. Clare lives part-time at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. You write a series of profiles of prominent Thatcherite members of parliament, showing just how much they have benefited financially from legislation the government has passed. You get a few cheerful death threats.
    Clare moves all her records and tapes and her stereo down to Greenham Common. You don’t know where she plugs it in. She comes back sometimes in the middle of the week, but not often.
    You think more and more about James.
    You write articles about the sinking of the
Belgrano
, the diplomatic chaos that led to the Falklands conflict, the resignation of Lord Carrington, reports of British war crimes.
    Finally, Anne tells you to deal with the thing that really haunts you. She assigns you to write about James. You have to start with the copse. To you, there is an electric line between the copse and the Falklands. In the end, you have to blame yourself as much as anyone or anything else.
    When Anne reads the article, she cries. She persuades the editorial collective of
The Scam
to run the piece, and you get quite a lot of attention. You go on the radio and television. You get to debate with Tory MPs.
    Clare tells you she’s decided on political grounds to become a lesbian. Actually, she’s fallen into a sleeping-bag with some rainbow-haired peace bimbo who
likes
Little Jimmy Osmond. Good luck to the both of them. You would try it again with Anne, whom you think you actually love, but there’s too much complicated pain in her background. You worry that you would become a grief household. Loss isn’t your whole life.
    * * *
    A left-wing publisher offers you a small advance to turn the James article into a book, working in most of your other Falklands pieces.
    You aren’t sure. The book would be a more permanent record than any number of articles. It would also be good for your career: you can’t keep meeting daily deadlines for dwindling fees from struggling, often doomed, periodicals. But it’d take you back to a country you hope you have escaped. It would, in a literal sense, mean you would have to go home.
    If you agree to do the book, go to 78. If you turn the offer down, go to 85.

7
    I n Class Five at Ash Grove Primary School, you’re given tests every