‘But Julie said that’s all boys want, and they’ll work on you until they get it, or they’ll just quit taking you out.’

‘It’s true of some,’ David said, ‘but not all. How well do you know Jerry?’

‘I don’t know,’ Christine said, ‘but I can tell you this: if it turns out that that’s all he wants, I’d rather stay home.’

‘Thank you,’ David said, smiling at her. ‘That will make my evening a good deal more peaceful.’

‘You don’t have to wait up or anything.’

‘I certainly do.’

That was one of Mary’s instructions he would follow to the letter. He had always waited up for his own girls. Patricia was asleep on her feet by ten. He was naturally a night owl, and he tried to enjoy those hours alone, but one of the curses of his job was that it filled his head with wrecked cars. He had worried far more about road accidents than he had about his daughters’ virtue. And that would be his concern tonight, he saw, when he greeted Jerry at the door. It was hard to believe he was old enough to drive a car, let alone be a seducer of innocent girls.

When David went back into the living room, he caught Tyler up on the couch in the living room window making kissing noises at the pair going down the steep walk to the street.

‘That will do, Tyler,’ David said firmly. ‘You don’t want to make a profession of being a nasty little brother. They only get bribed on television.’

‘All of a sudden she thinks she’s somebody,’ Tyler said.

‘She is somebody,’ David said. ‘She’s your sister.’

‘I don’t ever want to go out with a boy,’ Patsy announced.

‘They improve as they age,’ David said. ‘You like your cousins well enough don’t you?’

‘They’re cousins,’ Patsy said. ‘It’s just so—I don’t know—phony.’

Christine, taking this giant step out of childhood, had embarrassed her brother and sister. How gratefully they surrendered to Monopoly and then the safety of their set bedtimes.

David sat down at the piano and played softly as he had always done, for this had always been for him a house of sleeping children.

Christine was home a full half hour before her deadline.

‘Well, how was that?’ David asked, getting up from the piano.

‘A while before I have to worry about the pill,’ she said with a grin. ‘He didn’t even kiss me goodnight. But he did ask me to the Valentine dance at school.’

‘Wonderful!’ David said.