"God, I hope not," Jenny says frankly, eyes going wide, before she can stop to consider the implication in what she's saying. It isn't, she rationalizes to herself, like it was so awful back there; she had good parents, stability. She was just also a girl who'd lost what she had heard called the best part of herself before marriage, to a man who was married, and dropped out of school and lost any chance of going to university. There would be no prospects of any kind for her back there, but then, how much better can she really have it here? (His hand is off her arm before she can think maybe she could, maybe she could.)

That's wrong, too, though. Losing something means having something to lose in the first place, and therein lies the advantage that Tabula Rasa could have on Twickenham, however painful the loss itself. Smiling a little, self-deprecating and far more natural, more confident, than she actually feels, she lifts one shoulder, keeps just as close. "Things were a bit of a mess, when I showed up here," she says simply, just this side of rueful. It's a gross oversimplification. Why should he want to hear, though, about all that happened, how foolish she was? And why should she want him to? "Stay or go, the one's practically the same as the other."