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came south, to London, as soon as I could.’
    She told him about her childhood in the North East, about the beauty and the wildness of the countryside, and the city where she had grown up. ‘I still like to go back. My mother’s there, and, I don’t know, there’s something…’
    He was listening quietly, his eyes on her face. ‘It’s still home?’ he suggested.
    She laughed. ‘I suppose it is.’
    ‘I don’t feel like that about Liverpool,’ he said.
    She took the opportunity to turn the conversation round to him. ‘Does everyone call you Joe, or are you Joseph sometimes? I don’t know any…’ Her voice trailed away.
    His face had changed, gone cold and distant. Then he seemed to remember where he was and gave a rather forced laugh. ‘No. I’ve only ever been Joe.’
    He was a pathologist, he told her, with a research interest in foetal medicine and neo-natal development. ‘That’s when it all happens,’ he said. ‘In a way, the path of your life is mapped out for you in those few months. After that, it’s downhill all the way.’ He didn’t look too depressed about it. ‘It’s a bit like computer software. Leave a bug in there–most people haveone or two–and it will probably kill you in the end.’
    ‘Like a predilection for tripping over dogs and falling in canals?’
    ‘Don’t knock it. Just because we haven’t found it yet…It could be there. But no, in that case the dog stops you from dying of what you’re programmed to die of.’ He was marking time while he decided what he wanted to do next. He’d spent the last year in the Gulf, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As he said that, the same, rather cold look flickered across his face.
    ‘Saudi Arabia,’ she said. ‘Tell me about it.’ She’d had a chance to work there a few years ago. The money had been excellent, but she’d decided she couldn’t face living under the restrictions the culture would impose on a single woman.
    He hesitated, then said, ‘It’s not an easy place. They call it the magic kingdom. A whole modern world has just sprung up out of the desert, but the people haven’t changed. It’s like one of those optical illusions. You look and you see a modern country, and then you look again, and you’re in the Middle Ages, and what you thought you were looking at, it isn’t there any more. Which one is the real Saudi Arabia…?’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe we don’t have the equipment to see it. I have the option of going back, but…’ He picked up a piece of bread and didn’t finish the sentence.
    ‘You don’t want to stay here?’
    He shook his head. ‘The NHS–it’s tied up inred tape and bureaucracy. I want something with a bit more of a challenge.’ He’d spent most of his working life overseas, and he planned to leave again as soon as he could. He’d applied for research posts in Canada and in Australia. ‘Those are places I want to be.’
    ‘That’s something I’ve got to decide,’ she said. ‘Where I want to be.’
    He raised an eyebrow in query, so she went on. ‘I had plans to open a language school, but it went wrong. Money problems,’ she said, to forestall any questions. ‘So I need to decide–do I start again, or do I go and work for someone else? And where.’
    ‘You don’t want to stay in the UK either?’
    She shook her head. She’d first started teaching English because it gave her an opportunity to travel. ‘Not really.’
    ‘So where?’
    ‘China. I’ve never been there and there are some interesting jobs in Beijing. Or Tokyo, maybe. I’m not sure if I fancy Japan. Patagonia.’
    ‘Patagonia?’
    ‘I just like the sound of it. Mountains and condors and more space than you know what to do with.’
    They arranged to meet again. He wanted to see her the next day, but she put him off. She had bruises from her relationship with Michel that could still hurt. She wasn’t ready to go through that experience again. Joe wasn’t going to be around for long. She wasn’t