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drink before you go?”
    “Sure.   Any chocolate?”
    Jean looked surprised, as though she hadn’t figured Tayte for a hot chocolate drinker, despite his contradicting waistline.   “I have no idea,” she said.   “Let me go and see.”
    She was gone several minutes.   When she returned, Tayte came away from the window where he’d been watching the lights on the Thames and sat down again.   Jean handed him a thick-rimmed mug that was just right for his super-size hand.
    “Mind, it’s hot,” she said.   “It’s a little past its use-by date, too, but I think you’ll live.”
    Tayte thanked her.
    “So now it’s your turn?” Jean said.   “You’re obviously not married.   Ever tried it?”
    Tayte laughed.   “No,” he said, categorically, like anyone could tell that he wasn’t the marrying type.   But that wasn’t really it.   The laughter was more of a defence mechanism.   A reflex action equivalent to putting on a brave face because marriage seemed as unlikely and as scary a thing to him as having the nerve to ask someone out on a date in the first place.
    “Why not?” Jean asked.
    She was direct.   Tayte admired that about her, even if it was beginning to make him feel awkward.   He had an image of the ‘why not’ fixed in his head: Sandra Greenaway, senior Prom 1987.   Since that night he’d gone through all the responses he could imagine and he couldn’t think of a single one that hurt him more than when she’d taken two steps back and laughed at him along with her friends.
    “I guess my work keeps me too busy,” he said.
    It was a white lie and a lame one at that, but he knew his fear of rejection ran far deeper than Sandra Greenaway and he didn’t want to get into it just now.
    “Marcus told me your parents died when you were young,” Jean said.   “That must have been tough.”
    Tayte had to smile.   “You don’t mince your words, do you?”
    She slapped her own wrist.   “It’s the by-product of a career in further education.   I don’t mind if you’d rather not talk about it.”
    “No, that’s okay,” Tayte said.   He was happy just to talk about something else.   “I was seventeen.   They were on the return flight to DC from a vacation in the Florida Keys.   I would have gone but I was studying for college exams.   That was the excuse anyway.   Truth was, I didn’t want to go.   I didn’t much like flying then and I’ve hated it ever since.   They put the crash down to some malfunction or other.”
    “I’m sorry,” Jean said.
    “It was a while ago now.   I’ll fly when I have to but I always try and talk myself out of it first.”
    “So coming over this weekend must have been a big deal for you?”
    “I’d put it off too long,” Tayte said, wishing now, in light of what had happened to Marcus, that he hadn’t.   “I’m getting a little more used to it though and I’m glad I didn’t talk myself out of it this time.”
    “No,” Jean agreed.
    Tayte sipped his chocolate.   “Anyway, going back to my parents.   I only found out that Mom and Dad were really my adoptive parents after the accident.   I’ve been looking for my roots ever since.”
    “And are you any closer to finding them?”
    Tayte thought about that and slowly shook his head, thinking that he was probably the only professional genealogist on the planet who didn’t know a damn thing about his own ancestry.   How ironic could life get?   He started to think about all the dead ends he’d arrived at over the years, reminding himself of how little he still knew.   He thought about the many DNA samples he’d sent to one registry and another in the hope of finding a match with one of his biological relatives, but nothing had come of it.   The memories made him oblivious to the fact that the conversation had stopped.
    “Well,” Jean said.   She got up, collected the cups and headed for the kitchen.
    Tayte didn’t mind the questions and he hoped he hadn’t