I was relieved. Firstly because he'd heard from Andrew, and second, because I'd expected worse. Now that I knew he'd reported in, I could let myself become angry. Andrew's actions seemed tiresome, compulsive, impossible to sympathise with. All the womanising, as well as my willingness to listen to his stories, had made me introspect. The person I found inside me was a person intent upon hiding out, not as different from her mother as she'd like to think. Though I assumed our mother had become a drunk in order to be a stay-at-home, there was also the chance that the desire followed the drinking. Afraid that I had been genetically encoded to hide, I forced myself to put my coat back on and take a late-afternoon walk.