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got back to the States, she spilled the lot to Miles and demanded that he fire me.   He told her that he never let personal things influence business decisions, and he warned her not to say or do anything to upset Dawn.
    “He was a bit pissed off that I hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him myself, but we’ve sorted that out.”
    “Well,” she muttered, ‘that was easier than you thought, wasn’t it?”
    “I suppose so; I was never really, truly worried about that side of things, but I’m glad it’s all out in the open.”
    “Me too.”   Susie paused.   “Tell me something, Oz.   If all this hadn’t hit the press, what would you have done?”
    “About the baby, you mean?   Exactly what I have done.   In our own time,
    maybe, but I’d have gone public’
    “Why?”
    I looked at her, in the rear-view mirror.   “You’re sitting there, holding our daughter, and you have to ask me that?”
    “I just want to hear you say it.”
    “Okay.   Because I’ve never been as proud of anything in my life as I am of being her father.”
    She threw me a dazzling smile.   “Good.   Because there won’t be any more, you know.   This one’s going to be a spoiled only-child.”
    “Susie ...”   I began.
    She could read my mind, almost as well as Jan was able.   “Don’t go there, Oz.   Don’t give me the “I’ll stand by you” speech.   I’ve got everything planned out.   I’ll run the business mostly from home; my managers and staff will have to get used to meeting me there.   I’ll have a live-in nanny, and domestic help; someone to clean and someone to cater when I have working lunches and the like.   I don’t need stood by, lover, especially not by someone like you.   You’re just starry-eyed over being a dad, so don’t go noble on me.”
    That shut me up; in fact neither of us spoke, until the Charing Cross turn-off.   “What are you going to do while you’re shooting this new movie?”   Susie asked me.
    “You mean where am I going to live?”
    “Yes.”
    “I haven’t made my mind up.   I could take a suite in a hotel, but I had enough of them in Toronto, so I’m going to look for a place to rent for the duration.   I’m not due there until the middle of next week, though; that being the case I thought I might bunk with you till then, and use the time to get myself sorted out.”   I looked at her in the mirror again.   “Or is that not a runner?”
    She grinned at me.   “I think I can allow that.   The thought of sleeping with a movie star still has its attractions.”
    Eight.
    It was clear to me from the off that Susie loved that apartment.   Even if she had been ready and willing, I saw that as a big obstacle to us getting together permanently, since I couldn’t conceive of myself wanting to lay down any roots there, not again.
    Still, our time together was fun, while it lasted, even if I found it difficult to concentrate on the script of the new movie.   A new baby is a bit like a quiet fart, in that its presence pervades all the surrounding space.   A few months before, wee Janet hadn’t been as much as a twitching in my loins, never mind a gleam in my eye.   Prim and I had muttered things about children, but vaguely, quietly, as if we were each afraid the other might take us seriously.
    My Jan had been pregnant when she died; Prim had been pregnant too at one stage, by someone else, so each of us had our own mixed feelings, even if they were unexplored and unspoken.
    When Susie and I had flung our fling, I had made the classic male assumption that she was on the pill.   It had been years since a knotted condom had lain under my bed.   Yet when she let me in on the truth, I felt my heart take flight in my chest; if Prim had given me the same tidings, it would have fallen like a stone.
    I’d tried to explain my elation to myself, but I couldn’t.   And then wee Jan was born and I understood.   Things don’t have to be conventionally right; some