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them."
    "Right, too busy watching to commit violence, lady with her hand up?"
    "Ever been raped? You wouldn't say that if you'd been raped."
    "I still might if it was true, I hope," Rachel said mildly as another woman shouted, "What about being afraid to stay in? Half the violence is in the home, only they don't want the public knowing."
    "Don't all talk at once or we won't hear you. Suppressing evidence of domestic violence. Who are you saying does that?"
    "Who do you think? This government that wants the family to be the answer to everything."
    "Family answer to everything. Who else believes violence starts at home? Yes, social worker there."
    "All the violent criminals I've come in contact with were brutalised at home. In Sweden it's an offence to strike a child, and if we want to break the cycle of violence—"
    Uproar greeted this. Susanne made out shouts of "Show me anybody it ever did a bit of harm" and "I'd do more than strike some of them." The presenter ranged back and forth in front of the audience, shouting, "Whoa, whoa" and trying to conceal his delight. "Make punishing children illegal," he said as the noise subsided into incoherence. "Is that the answer, yes, with the moustache?"
    "I didn't say—" the social worker protested, but the man called upon to speak was louder. "Anyone who commits violence is a coward. What they need is some violence done to them."
    "But then what would that make the doer?"
    So said Liu, another student of Susanne's, infuriating the previous speaker. "That's the kind of rubbish that gets police killed on the streets. We should give them all the weapons they need, and teachers while we're at it."
    "Arm police and teachers. Yes, no, next to you, T-shirt?"
    "If a teacher thumped me I'd just go and thump someone else."
    "Yes, you and your friends go in for that, don't you? I'll come back to you, but teachers teaching violence, anyone? Back row, you've had your hand up for a good bit?"
    "I hope everyone knows it's being taught as a subject right here in Manchester."
    "Violence on the curriculum. Yes, now where is she? Some people would say you're inviting more violence by teaching it."
    Though he had been gazing at Susanne for some moments, it had taken her that long to realise he hadn't mistaken her for someone else. "Let's make it clear I teach at the University," she said.
    "Yeh-yeh-yeh," the presenter said rapidly, sounding like an imitation of a dog at the end of a run, "but violence."
    "Well, I think we need to distinguish between representation and reality. In my course we look at depictions of violence in prose and film."
    "Why look at it at all?" shouted the woman who had raised the subject of the course.
    "As long as our culture produces images of violence, I think it's important to understand how they're consumed and what they signify."
    "That's not culture. That's not what we sent our Elaine to university for."
    The presenter held up one hand like a traffic cop toward the woman and bowed at Susanne. "You're saying you don't enjoy it, it's just an academic subject."
    "I wouldn't say that academic subjects shouldn't be enjoyable. Sure I enjoy some depictions of violence," she said, raising her voice as a mutter of dissatisfaction from various areas behind her turned into a jeer. "Part of the point of the course is to look at what our enjoyment involves."
    "We don't need professors to tell us that," a man yelled.
    "Specially not a Yank."
    "Are we being expected to pay her wages?" a third wanted to know.
    "We want violence stopped and you're making a living out of it," Elaine's mother shouted. "Ban it all and we might get somewhere."
    "Don't tell us nobody's proved a connection. It all ought to be banned in case there is."
    "If we aren't sure what effects it has," Susanne said, "isn't it possible that trying to suppress something that's so much a part of our culture might be more dangerous?"
    "Leave it in case we make it worse. Anyone agree with that? Yes, no, third row, no, you're