There was something Spartan in Tessa's make-up that was appealing, especially after Julia, a woman who inclined to the rococo, a subject on which she had once given him an entertaining lecture that had somehow involved sex (typical Julia). Julia was much more educated than she allowed you to believe. Tessa would have been bemused by Julia if she had known her. As it was, she was indifferent, 'your ex', no interest, no jealousy (but what if she had known about the baby?). There was something refreshingly neutral about Tessa. He would never have thought he would find 'neutral' an attractive adjective for a woman. Just goes to show.

They had known each other for four months, they had been married for two. He had been engaged to Josie for over two years before they married so he had no personal evidence that a long courtship was the foundation of a long marriage. ('Oh, I think we were married long enough,' Josie said.) Nonetheless, the sudden impulsive marriage to Tessa had been completely out of character for him. 'No, it wasn't,' Josie said, 'you've always been the most uxorious of men.' 'No, it wasn't,' Julia said, 'you were desperate to marry me, and think how disastrous that would have been.' For I am wanton and lascivious and cannot live without a wife. He was neither wanton nor lascivious (or he liked to think he wasn't), but being married had always seemed an ideal state to him. The Garden of Eden, the paradise lost.

'You're not actually very good at being married,' Josie said. 'You just think you are.' 'You're a lone wolf, Jackson,' Julia said. 'You just can't admit it.' Josie and Julia lived uncomfortably in his brain, conflated into the voice of his conscience, the twin recording angels of his behaviour. 'Marry in haste,' Josie's voice said. 'Repent at leisure,' Julia's concluded.

'What day is it?' he asked the policewoman.

'Friday.'

Tessa flew back into Heathrow first thing on Monday. He would be home by then, if not before. He would be there to meet her off the plane, as promised. It was good for a man to have a goal, it was good for a man to know where he was going. Jackson was going home.

They had met at a party. Jackson never went to parties. It was the slimmest of chances, a confluence of the planets, a ripple in time.

He had bumped into his old commanding officer in the military police, in Regent Street of all places -again, not an endroit where Jackson was usually to be found. The Fates had clocked him crossing Regent Street, but for once in a good way.

His old boss was a rather roguish guy called Bernie, whomJackson hadn't seen for over twenty years. They had never had much in common apart from the job, but they had got on well and Jackson was surprised by his own pleasure at this unexpected encounter so when Bernie said, 'Look, I've got a few folk coming round next week to the flat for a drink, as casual as it gets, why not join us?' he had been tempted before eventually demurring, at which point he had found himself at the end of a charm offensive from Bernie which finally proved irresistible -or rather, it had become easier to say 'yes' than to keep on saying 'no'. In retrospect, he realized it wasn't so much pleasure at seeing Bernie as it was at unexpectedly getting a reminder of a life that was now lost, two old soldiers reminiscing about the past.

He had been surprised by two things. The first was Bernie's flat in Battersea which was plushly decorated and full of things -furniture, ornaments, paintings -that even Jackson could recognize as 'good'. Bernie had mentioned something about being 'in security' (what else?) when they met but Jackson had never suspected that security could be so well remunerated. Jackson didn't mention his own good fortune.

The second surprise was the guests Bernie had assembled. 'A few folk round for a drink' had transformed into what Jackson overheard a guest refer to as 'one ofBernie's famous soirees'. Jackson was pretty sure he'd never been to a 'soiree' before.

The flat was peopled by well-dressed London types -men in hip spectacles and women in ugly and extraordinarily uncomfortablelooking shoes. Jackson was innately suspicious ofwell-dressed men real men (i. E. men from the north) didn't have the time or the inclination to shop for designer clothes and he believed that no woman should wear a pair ofshoes that she couldn't, ifnecessary, run away in. (Although a couple of years ago he had observed a girl simply throwing her shoes away in order to run, but she had been Russian and crazy, albeit worryingly attractive. He still thought about her.) None of the women at Bernie's 'soiree' looked as if they would be prepared to toss away their Manolos and Jimmy Choos to make a quick getaway. Yes, he knew the names of designer shoemakers, and no, that wasn't the kind of stuff real men from the north should know, but he had been stuck in Toulouse airport with Marlee last summer and had been tutored relentlessly by her from the pages of Heat and OK!.

*

Bernie greeted him effusively at the door of the flat and led him into the already slightly overheated crowd. How Bernie knew these people was puzzling. None of them seemed like the natural social circle of a fifty-year-old ex-RMP guy.

'Cocktail?' Bernie offered and Jackson said, 'It's against my religion, got any beer?' and Bernie laughed and, punching him on the arm, said, 'Same oldJackson.' Jackson didn't think he was the same old Jackson, he had shed several skins since last seeing Bernie (and acquired a few new ones), but he didn't say so.

Jackson was no good at parties. He couldn't do small talk. Hi, my name's Jackson Brodie, I used to be a policeman. Maybe it was something to do with the lives he had led, first a soldier and then a policeman -neither profession exactly fostered idle chat. At first sight the people at Bernie's party (sorry, soiree) seemed strangely vacuous, as if they'd been hired for the night to play at being festive. Jackson found himself skulking around the fringes of the gathering like a latecomer to the waterhole, wondering how long he had to continue to endure the evening before he could make his gruff excuses and leave.

At which point,Tessa pitched up at his elbow and murmured into his ear, 'Isn't this ghastly?' Jackson was pleased to note that not only was she wearing a simple linen dress, made all the more attractive in contrast to the odd garb sported by some of the other women, but also low-heeled sandals that she could easily have run away in. She didn't choose to run, but stayed close to his side. 'You seem like a safe harbour,' she said.

After five minutes of conversation made awkward by the volume of noise in the room he had said boldly to her, 'Fancy getting out of here?' and she said, 'I can't think ofanything I'd like better,' and they'd gone to a pub over the river in Chelsea, not really Jackson's kind of place but nonetheless a thousand times better than Bernie's. They had talked until closing time over a civilized bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon before he walked her all the long way home to her flat ('smaller than a postage stamp') in Covent Garden. On the final stretch he took her hand ('Shy boys get nothing' -the words of his long-dead Lothario of a brother came unexpectedly into his head) and when they reached her door he had planted a firm but decorous kiss on her cheek and was rewarded by her saying, 'Shall we do this again? How about tomorrow?'

He couldn't have designed a better woman. She was cheerful, optimistic and sweet. She was funny, even comical sometimes, and much smarter than he was but unlike the previous women in his life didn't find it necessary to remind him of this fact at every turn. She was graceful Ca lot ofballet when I was young') and athletic ('tennis, ditto'), and liked animals and children but not to the point of being over-sentimental. She had a job she loved but that she was never overwhelmed by. She was fifteen years younger than he was ('Lucky dog,' Bernie said later when he 'caught up' with Jackson) and hadn't yet lost the glow of youthful enthusiasm, seemed, in fact, as if she might never lose it. She had long, light-brown hair, cut in a heavyfringed style that made her look like an actress or a model from the sixties Gackson's preferred look in a woman). She was someone who didn't need looking after but who nonetheless was properly grateful when he did look after her. She could drive and cook and even sew, knew how to do simple DIY, was surprisingly frugal but also knew how to be generous (witness the Breitling watch -her wedding present to him) and was the mistress of at least two sexual positions that Jackson had never tried before (hadn't even known existed, actually, but he kept that to himself). She was, in short, how God intended women to be.