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passport and a vivid image of himself smoking beneath a ceiling fan in tropical countries, a battered Nikon and a bottle of whisky by his bedside.
    Of course what he really wanted was to be a photographer. At sixteen he had completed a photo-project called ‘Texture’, full of black and white close-ups of tree bark and sea-shells which had apparently ‘blown’ his art teacher’s mind. Nothing that he had done since had given him as much satisfaction as ‘Texture’ and those high-contrast prints of frost on windows and the gravel in the driveway. Journalism would mean grappling with difficult stuff like words and ideas, but he thought he might have the makings of a decent photographer, if only because he felt he had a strong sense of when things looked right. At this stage in his life, his main criterion for choosing a career was that it should sound good in a bar, shouted into a girl’s ear, and there was no denying that ‘I’m a professionalphotographer’ was a fine sentence, almost up there with ‘I report from war zones’ or ‘actually, I make documentaries.’
    ‘Journalism’s a possibility.’
    ‘Or business. Weren’t you and Callum going to start up some business?’
    ‘We’re giving it some thought.’
    ‘All sounds a bit vague, just “business”.’
    ‘Like I said, we’re giving it some thought.’ In truth Callum, his old flatmate, had already started the business without him, something about computer refurbishment that Dexter didn’t have the energy to understand. They’d be millionaires by the time they were twenty-five, Callum insisted, but what would it sound like in a bar? ‘Actually, I refurbish computers.’ No, professional photography was his best bet. He decided to try saying it out loud.
    ‘Actually, I’m thinking about photography.’
    ‘Photography?’ His mother gave a maddening laugh.
    ‘Hey, I’m a good photographer!’
    ‘—when you remember to take your thumb off the lens.’
    ‘Aren’t you meant to be encouraging me?’
    ‘What kind of photographer?
Glamour?’
She gave a throaty laugh. ‘Or are you going to continue your work on
Texture!’
and they had to stop while she stood in the street laughing for some time, doubled over, holding onto his arm for support – ‘All those pictures of
gravel!’ –
until finally it was over, and she stood and straightened her face. ‘Dexter, I am so, so sorry …’
    ‘I’m actually much better now.’
    ‘I know you are, I’m sorry. I apologise.’ They began to walk again. ‘You must do it, Dexter, if that’s what you want.’ She squeezed his arm with her elbow, but Dexter felt sulky. ‘We’ve always told you that you can be anything you want to be, if you work hard enough.’
    ‘It was just a thought,’ he said, petulantly. ‘I’m weighing up my options, that’s all.’
    ‘Well I hope so, because teaching’s a fine profession, but thisisn’t really your vocation, is it? Teaching Beatles songs to moony Nordic girls.’
    ‘It’s hard work, Mum. Besides it gives me something to fall back on.’
    ‘Yes, well, sometimes I wonder if you have a little too much to fall back on.’ She was looking down as she spoke and the remark seemed to rebound off the flagstones. They walked a little further before he spoke.
    ‘And what does
that
mean?’
    ‘Oh, I just mean—’ She sighed, and rested her head against his shoulder. ‘I just mean that at some point you’ll have to get serious about life, that’s all. You’re young and healthy and you look nice enough, I suppose, in a low light. People seem to like you, you’re smart, or smart enough, not academically maybe, but you know what’s what. And you’ve had luck, so much luck, Dexter, and you’ve been protected from things, responsibility, money. But you’re an adult now, and one day things might not be this …’ She looked around her, indicating the scenic little back street down which he had brought her. ‘… this serene. It would be good if you