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mother was chopping vegetables for a soup; Polly sat begging for pieces of potato peel. “Darling, you wouldn’t like to feed her, would you? Get her out from under my feet?”
    By this time Roger had grown calmer. He collected the dog’s bowl and took the tin-opener from the drawer. “Where’s Dad?”
    “I think he must have gone upstairs. I think he must be lying down.” Jean’s tone was suddenly so neutral, so audibly neutral, that in fact it wasn’t neutral at all.
    “Oh dear.”
    “Yes. Oh dear, indeed.” But she made a visibly conscious effort not to elaborate on the point. “Were things all right at the station?”
    “What makes you think they wouldn’t be?”
    “Nothing whatever. Just an unconsidered turn of phrase, you poor pedantic boy.” She threw a carrot in the bin, as having grown too rubbery even to make soup. Then, possibly alerted by something in the tone of his response, she repeated her question. “Were they?”
    “No. Not really.”
    “Why? What happened?” Her vegetable knife stopped slicing and she turned to face him with automatic concern.
    As he spooned out the dog food and Polly scrabbled excitedly at his trouser leg, her tail lashing frantically, he reported as faithfully as he could the substance of what had been said. “But as I walked home I got more and more bolshie. Even if I have to pay for only one day’s ticket, that’s over forty quid. And it’s so unfair. When they took my money they engaged to give me three-hundred-and-sixty-five days of travel. Consecutive travel.” Roger had rehearsed that phrase.
    “I know, love, I know. But it’s no good getting all het up over it. I still have a spot of emergency cash left in the building society. I’ll write you out a cheque.”
    “Yet it isn’t fair, Mum. I shouldn’t just give in to it. ‘If we can keep you as a customer we’ll certainly pay you back the days we owe! If not—sorry, mate—just thirty-six pounds, not a penny more!’ That’s effectively what they said to me.”
    Jean touched his forearm sympathetically, then turned back to her preparation of the vegetables. “Darling, you never seem to learn. All your life you’ve complained that something or other isn’t fair; but what have you ever been able to do about it? The world isn’t fair—sooner or later we all have to become resigned to that. So why not follow the man’s advice: just stay at home tomorrow? We’ll go to the cinema…and afterwards have coffee and cake; we can pretend we’re on a date!” At the moment Jean worked only three days a week, in an antiques shop, although she was thinking, regretfully, that she would soon have to look for something better-paid. She laughed; there was a note of excitement in her laughter. “Have we ever been to the pictures together, without anyone else in tow?”
    But Roger refused to be drawn. He watched Polly, who was by now pushing her bowl right across the kitchen, pushing it with tongue reluctant to acknowledge there was no more left. “And then what happens on Tuesday?”
    “ Indiana Jones ,” persisted his mother, “you said you wanted to see it. Oh, darling, do say yes! And I’ll be the one to speak to Mr Cavendish, to tell him you’re not well.”
    “ Anything—so long as you never lie! That’s what you used to say.”
    “Oh, Roger, don’t be such a…”
    “What?”
    “And apart from anything else, my pet, think how embarrassing you’d find it.” However, she didn’t expatiate on what ‘it’ was. “You—who won’t even wear a bright tie in case it draws attention to you. You—who always wear a belt and braces.”
    “What in God’s name has that to do with anything?” Yet he didn’t wait for an answer. “And, anyway, when do I complain so much about everything being unfair?”
    “Don’t say you don’t even realize you do it. I thought you knew yourself better than that.”
    “No. Tell me. When do I do it?”
    “It’s not important,” said Jean.
    “But I want