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cheaper.’
    ‘And what about these arcade games I’ve seen on TV?’
    ‘Those are virtual reality, too. In fact, entertainment has probably been the most successful application of VR so far.’
    ‘Huh,’ said Greg. ‘And how does it all work? Do you need some great big machine?’
    Richard could see that Greg was genuinely interested, and was happy to tell him more. ‘No, not at all. Most systems are similar to the Bondscape one you’ve used. You need a computer with special software to run the virtual world. Then a head-mounted display with two little screens, one for each eye, earphones to give sound in stereo, and a sensor that tracks where you’re looking. So, when you turn to the left, the image you see changes to the view to your left in the virtual world. Special gloves can recreate a sense of touch. With the senses of sight, sound and touch all totally immersed in the computer-generated virtual world, you really are in virtual reality.’
    ‘Cool,’ said Greg. He sipped his beer, and a thought struck him. ‘So can you make any nice new friends with this equipment?’
    ‘Pervert,’ I said.
    ‘No, I think it has lots of possibilities for all those lonely American guys in a strange country shunned by the local talent.’
    ‘You’re right,’ agreed Richard. ‘Virtual sex has plenty of possibilities, most of them truly disgusting. It’s called teledildonics, by the way.’
    ‘Gee,’ said Greg in his fake innocent-American-in-London voice. ‘And what peripheral equipment does that need?’
    I glanced at my watch. ‘We’ve got to go,’ I said to Richard. ‘Karen’s cooking supper. Come on.’
    We left the pub, Greg heading south, and Richard and I north. It was only a fifteen-minute walk back to my house.
    ‘Nice guy,’ said Richard.
    ‘Yes, he is.’
    We walked on in silence for a bit. ‘I saw Dad,’ Richard said.
    ‘When?’
    ‘A week ago. In Oxford.’
    ‘How is he?’ Much to my surprise, I found I really wanted to know.
    ‘He’s fine. He’d like to see you.’
    ‘Oh.’
    Richard didn’t push it. He could tell I wasn’t going to bend. I had only seen my father once in the last ten years, and that had been at my mother’s funeral. I still had no desire to see him again.
    Until I was seventeen, we were a typical university family. My father was a fellow at an Oxford college, where he taught mathematics. He was an expert in an obscure branch of topology. He had met my mother when he was twenty-five. She had been a beautiful twenty-year-old student from Milan doing a summer course at Oxford. Apart from a few years at Stanford University in California in the sixties, we had been brought up in Oxford. My parents argued occasionally, great squalls that soon subsided. When provoked, my mother had quite a temper. But she managed to create an atmosphere of love and warmth in our house, a cocoon of security for two adolescents uncertain of their place in the world.
    And then one day my father had walked out.
    Richard and I had no warning, and neither had my mother. He had fallen for one of his post-graduate students. She was only twenty-four, just a couple of years older than Richard. They moved into a small house together in Jericho, less than a mile away. It devastated my mother. She refused to talk to my father, and so did I.
    Six months later she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Two years later she was dead.
    I was still angry with my father. I couldn’t forgive him, though Richard could. I had inherited my mother’s temper; Richard was more tolerant.
    We walked on in silence for a few minutes. Richard broke it. ‘How’s work?’
    ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘We all made lots of money last year when the market rallied. This year, the market’s going to fall and we‘ll all lose lots of money. Simple really. They should just give us the rest of the year off and keep us out of harm’s way.’
    Richard laughed. ‘So, no mega-bonus this time?’
    ‘I’ll get by,’ I said. ‘They tend