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really going to learn self-sufficiency.

Chapter 2
    MY father sat down heavily in his favourite chair.
    â€˜Jane dear,’ he said seriously, ‘are you going mad, or is it—it probably is—me?’
    â€˜It’s me, Father,’ I said calmly.
    â€˜Well, that’s a relief.’ He took his pipe out of his jacket pocket, on the outside of which I could see a dark-brown burn mark.
    â€˜Have you been setting yourself on fire again?’ I asked severely.
    â€˜What? Oh, shut up. You’re just trying to change the subject. Just a minute while I calm myself, before you burden me with the details.’ He drew on his still-smouldering pipe for a few minutes, and took a mouthful of the whisky and water I’d placed discreetly at his elbow. He wasn’t drinking regularly any more, but he still liked his dram, and it did him good. I always kept a bottle handy for when he came down at weekends.
    â€˜Now,’ he said at last. ‘What lunacy is this? Who’s put this cuckoo idea into your head?’
    â€˜It just came,’ I said modestly. ‘I don’t think it’s cuckoo, I think it’s very exciting.’
    Strange how I could talk to him now, argue with him, listen to his point of view on things, and not ever get angry or offended. We had found a new relationship since our trouble had been resolved. It was almost as if we were two different people.
    Before, it had all been quite different. A word, a breath of criticism, a chance remark about my hair-style or my choice of a new dress, and I would be apt to flounce from the room, stung to the heart by what I mentally characterised his ‘constant carping’. Everything in his manner falling short of total approval seemed to me a deliberate attack on my self-esteem, a further proof that he didn’t love me.
    Now I was not in any doubt on this point. If he had not loved me, he would hardly have taken to drink during the time when, at his impulsive request, I was living on my own awaiting the birth of his irregular grandchild. He would hardly have treated David with all the besotted affection I had once felt deprived of, and even, as I had heard, boasted about him freely to my rather self-righteous, not to say narrow-minded, uncles and aunts. These were manifestations which, coming from a man like my father, could only have sprung from love.
    Now I looked at him with unreserved tenderness as he scowled disapproval at me.
    â€˜Have another drink,’ I urged, unable to think of any immediately effective argument in favour of my unfeasible plan.
    â€˜Do you
want
me to die of DT’s?’ he asked irritably. ‘I probably shall anyway, or go loopy, thinking of you in that hell-hole of a city … you’re not really going, are you?’
    â€˜Yes, I think so.’
    â€˜But who’ll look after David while you’re away?’
    â€˜What do you mean?—He’ll be with me.’
    â€˜What!’
    â€˜Naturally,’ I said calmly.
    â€˜Now I know you’re mad. Have you even begun to think it through?’
    â€˜I’ve begun. I didn’t get very far. I never do—how can one “think through” something one’s never experienced?’
    â€˜Well, as a starter, you might try imagining what it will feel like to be all by yourself in some tenement block somewhere, surrounded by Puerto Rican thugs with flick-knives. Just so you can be around when Addy’s book is published. It’s absolute
rubbish
,’ he said, getting very heated now. ‘What possible use can you be?’
    â€˜Publicity.’
    â€˜Guff,’ he said shortly. ‘You’re not even the author. What sort of publicity can you supply? Do you think the publishers are going to ask you to jump off the Empire State Buildingnaked into a tea-strainer or something? Stay at home and don’t be so ridiculous.’
    I was silent. How could I explain the feeling I had, that Addy