I calculated that Max would have finished his lunch by half past one and be just reaching the coffee stage, so I went upstairs at twenty-five to two. Selina was outside the dining-room door, carrying a tray with used plates on that she was taking to the kitchen. She made the kind of face people make when a conspiracy is afoot, a pursing of the lips and raising of the eyebrows. Yet we hadn’t conspired together in anything. It occurred to me then that she was afraid of Max.

He was as he had been at our previous encounter, sitting at the table with his coffee cup in front of him, but this time with a book propped up against a tall pepper pot and open at a page of statistics. As was his custom, he continued to read for a few moments before turning his eyes on me. His appearance surprised me. His glasses he seemed to have discarded. He looked fit and well and younger. His protuberant eyes were bright, the whites clear and porcelainlike, and his jowls seemed firmer. The tracksuit he inevitably wore was a new one, or new to me, the velvety chenille kind in quite a smart dark blue.

“I know what has brought you here, Clodagh,” he said. “I’m one jump ahead of you there.”

“GUP told you?”

“Oh yes, the day before yesterday, and I was glad they did. It has given me a little time to think.”

I was none too pleased about this. After all, I was two years past my majority, I was a grown woman of twenty. Max wasn’t my guardian or in any way responsible for me. The way I saw it I was just his lodger—but a lodger who paid no rent. It was this factor which kept me quiet when the truth was I wanted to ask him what business it was of his. GUP had wasted no time. The principal must have got straight on the phone to him.

“Of course, you were warned. You had Moses and the prophets but you refused to hear them.” I had no idea what this meant and have none now, but it has stuck in my mind. “Now, frankly, I don’t think the Grand Union Polytechnic would be too happy to have you back even if you changed to a different course. The long and the short of it is, they don’t want any truck with you.” Max laughed, appreciative of his own wit. “I must say I’ve revised my opinion of that establishment, it seems admirably run and with some excellent people on the faculty. But now to your future. History? English? Economics? I seem to remember you were not at all bad at history when you were a small girl. Now, shall I make some inquiries and see what kind of courses are available?”