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okay.”
    â€œOnly okay? I should have expected a good-looking youngman like you to have had a lively time. Do you have a girlfriend?”
    Conscious of Marina listening at the doorjamb, he said, “No one serious.”
    â€œI should think not. There’s plenty of time for ‘serious’ later. Right now you should be having fun. God knows, serious comes soon enough.” Settling the kettle to boil on the hotplate, Grace Brigshaw wished that Adam would come back and take his friend out of the kitchen, where he was ill at ease and she had complicated things to do. None of this showed on her attentive face, but Martin sensed it as he sat in a stick-back chair, glad of the Aga’s heat, wondering at this kitchen’s airy space.
    â€œYou’re from the grammar school in Calderbridge, aren’t you?” Marina demanded. “I hear they don’t rate women very highly there. On the evolutionary scale, I mean.” She picked up a carrot and crunched it between her teeth, while her intent, grey-blue eyes traversed the kitchen, looking for some advantage with the matter that pressed more closely on her mind.
    And this was unjust. He felt the heat of it. “Actually I have a rather high regard for Emily Brontë,” he retorted, and thought he had established an ascendancy, until he saw the two women glance at each other. He heard his words as they must have heard them and flushed to his ears.
    â€œShe
was
quite exceptional,” agreed Grace Brigshaw, and bit her lip. For a moment, sensing his misery, she wanted to pull him up from where he sat with his thick, flannelled thighs spread over large, cheaply shod feet, and hug him into relaxed laughter. But the boy would probably just stiffen like a hare on a poulterer’s hook. So where to take things now? Oh dear, withMarina already cross and tiresome, and the sky crowding with snow, this could quickly veer into a difficult day.
    At that moment the front door banged open and two big dogs bounded into the kitchen with lolling tongues, their haunches shivering in an ecstasy of return. “Ah,” said Mrs Brigshaw, “here’s Adam at last,” and Martin reached out with relief to the two dappled English setters that slobbered at his thighs.
    â€œI didn’t think you’d bother to come,” Adam said, “not with snow threatening.”
    The absence of warmth in his voice left Martin wondering whether this friend he had met by chance was now regretting the invitation impulsively offered after they’d talked for an hour or so amid the steam and chatter of a coffee bar just before Christmas. They were of an age, both sixth-formers, though at different schools, working as temporary postmen during the Christmas rush, and both soon to go up to university. Conversation had revealed their shared enthusiasm for modern poetry, cinema and jazz. Each had been curious about the other’s background, yet Adam’s manner now suggested that what had seemed a discovery in the Pagoda Coffee Bar might prove an embarrassment among his family.
    Martin said, “It didn’t look too bad when I set out.”
    Grace Brigshaw glanced at where Martin kept his face dipped towards the warm, writhing smell of the dogs. “Well, at least Hengist and Horsa haven’t forgotten how to welcome guests,” she sighed, and glowered at her son, who said, “We’d better go up to my room.”
    Wondering what had possessed him to come here rather than joining Frank Jagger and the others at the Black Horse before bussing out to the rugby match at Crow Hall, Martin got to his feet. He stood awkwardly between the approaching mug and his departing host as Marina asked, “Don’t you want this tea then?”
    Leaving the room, Adam said, “Bring it if you want.”
    â€œLunch will be at one,” Adam’s mother called after him. “Or thereabouts.”
    Holding the mug that had been thrust at