And if that wasn’t regrettable coincidence enough, I ran slap into Sharon, Fitzpiers, and Asimova on my first day back in Harrods food hall. Asimova was screaming and stamping her foot, demanding her own individual hand-raised venison pie as far as I could understand it, and Fitzpiers was searching in his pockets for the money to buy her one. I thought, but only fleetingly, about offering. I had heard that Fitz no longer believed that the future lay in SF and had gone over to the novel of industrial espionage as the genre that spoke most vividly for our times. I didn’t know how much truth there was in this but I did notice that Sharon was wearing a rather beautifully tailored seersucker boiler suit tucked into shiny on-site wellingtons, and I let that determine my inference. They didn’t recognize me at first. Then when they did they tried hoping that I wouldn’t recognize them. It was too late, though; a smile had appeared like a geological fault across the whole width of my face. Fitzpiers was just about able to shake my hand, but Sharon clearly found any form of contact with me impossible unless it was through her solicitor. I was just feeling sorry that that was the case, wishing that we could get on as of old and share a joke about Fitz’s predilection for milkshakes, when Asimova started crying again. I think she wanted her own individual smoked salmon this time. ‘Daddy!’ she screamed. ‘Daddy!’ That was enough for me; I was off, half-way to the other end of Knightsbridge, before she could scream it a third time.