I must have gone to bed around a quarter after ten I need a lot of sleep and so I like to be in bed by then I must have read a while The latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style It's funny, but I had no sense of living without aim The day before you came ABBA - "The Day Before You Came"

The apartment was quiet when Hester slipped in. She had no doubt that her mother would soon hear her and come to ask how the evening had gone. Jenna Silberstein seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to her daughters' private lives; she always seemed to know when something dramatic had happened. She called it the "instinct of a Jewish mother" and Hester had always idly wondered if her sisters Mary and Sarah, both mothers by now, had developed the same instinct.

Taking advantage of the fact her mother hadn't appeared the minute she set foot inside the apartment, Hester quickly went into the bathroom to wash as quietly as she could. Her heart was beating fast when she made it back to her room without being intercepted. Even though she knew her mother could find her if she wanted to talk to her; even though Hester was actually looking forward to telling her mother all the things that had happened that night, she took some satisfaction from the fact she had managed to earn herself a few surreptitious minutes of privacy.

Hester removed the library books and papers which cluttered her bed, reminders of her job as a teacher. The last couple of days had been routine, just the usual cycle of days at school and quiet evenings at home. She had got up at 7.00 as always yesterday, and then headed to the school to battle with her eight to ten-year-olds again, teaching them the things they would need rather than the things she wanted to teach. Not that anything she wanted to share with them would be of any practical use in their lives as Alphan workers. History, literature, philosophy, were all concepts which their childish minds couldn't yet grasp, and which would be of little use in their future jobs anyway. Given the circumstances, the keyword of Alphan education had to be practicality.

There were times when Hester wondered if she had chosen the right field of work. From childhood, there had been no doubt in her mind that she wanted to spend the rest of her life working with books in some way. Reading and writing were Hester's pleasures; to her, the English language was a treasure to be rediscovered with every author she read, to be honoured with every word she wrote. Perhaps she should have applied for a job in the library, instead of blindly following in her mother's footsteps. But her classmates Delores and Fatuma were the ones who had won the Librarian's attention, and Hester hadn't wanted to disappoint her mother.

Shy as she was, teaching wasn't easy for Hester. It meant putting on a performance several hours a day, being constantly scrutinised by pupils and their ambitious parents. She wasn't bad at it, or so she hoped; she did receive praise from the parents and her colleagues, and she had kept at it for the past five years. Hester knew that to abandon the job would be to admit defeat and invite the disdain of her peers; people who didn't enjoy the jobs they had chosen were nothing more than malcontents. But teaching remained a strain, and Hester sometimes longed to have a job which allowed her to work in solitude.

Hester had gone straight home after school. On the journey home, she had read the latest messages on the bulletin boards, preparing some answers she would send later. That evening, she watched the film Stardust Memories with her parents; her sister Sarah, who was over for a few days with some Ceresian friends, had opted for a night out. Hester had received a short message from Michael saying he would come and pick her up for Sarah's birthday party the next evening. She had gone to bed before eleven and dreamed something about the Fellini-inspired fantasy scene in the movie. It had been an ordinary day.

But after tonight, everything felt different. Sarah's birthday party had changed Hester's life, and, upon reflection, she couldn't wait to tell her mother about it.

Hester had already changed into her nightgown and brushed her hair by the time she heard a discreet knock on the door. She darted into her bed, just as she used to when she was a small child, and called out "Yes?" with a smile on her lips.

"How are you, my love?" asked her mother, putting her head around the door. "Are you going to sleep now?"

Hester shook her head. "No, I'm not tired yet, Mama."

Her mother took that as an invitation and entered the room, coming to sit on Hester's bed. She looked very old in the stark light from the bedside lamp, Hester noticed. White roots showed at the base of her dyed red hair and fine lines criss-crossed her soft sallow skin; Jenna was in her seventies now, retired and gradually moving closer to her inevitable death. Hester wondered if she would look like her mother at that age. But most of all, Hester wondered how much longer she would have her mother to talk to.

"Did you enjoy the party?" asked Jenna, placing a loving hand on Hester's arm. "Sarah said you were all going down to the Catacombs. I haven't seen her at all this evening, so I guess she's still out somewhere."

"She probably went back to the temporary quarters with Ling Ling and the others," volunteered Hester, though she didn't know for sure.

"Did you stay out with Mike?"

Hester could see the curiosity in her mother's dark eyes. The young woman looked around her room for a moment, wondering if she should tell her mother what had happened. Her eyes fell on the poster for Woody Allen's Manhattan on the wall opposite her bed. On Alpha, good girls didn't sleep with a man unless they planned to marry him. But in the world her mother had left behind, a woman could pick and choose her lovers. Hester knew her mother wouldn't disapprove.

"I went back to his place," she said shortly, though she lowered her eyes.

"Oh Hester!"

Jenna seized her daughter's face between her hands and kissed her on the cheek, obviously delighted. Jenna had lived on Earth in a time when it was usual for young women to have several partners before finding one to settle down with; she had always expected her daughters to behave the same way. Mary had turned out as Jenna wanted, but had as yet settled down with no one; Sarah had followed the stupid Lokian habit of marring the first man that came along, and had lived to sorely regret it. Hester wanted to live the lifestyle her mother approved of, but her timidity and the conservative Lokian society around her made it difficult.

"Did you sleep with him?"

Hester sighed as Jenna released her. Of, course, her mother would have to ask. She couldn't just accept Hester's vague comment and draw her own conclusions. Hester lay down in bed and propped herself up on one elbow, brushing back the dull brown curls that fell into her face.

"Yes, I did," she said. The memory seemed so distant now that Hester already felt as though she was talking about another lifetime. "And I'm kind of wishing I hadn't..."

"Oh, don't worry, my poppet." Jenna stroked her cheek comfortingly. "There's nothing wrong with sleeping with a man if you like him. As long as you don't get pregnant -- and that's not the end of the world, either."

Hester shrugged her shoulders and plucked at the sheet. "I'm not going to get pregnant. I get my shots. The trouble... I don't know, Mama, but there's something strange about Mike. He was... it was like he wasn't really there. And, well, what's worse is that I wasn't really there either. I wasn't thinking about Mike. I mean, I like him as a friend and I just agreed to sleep with him because I thought 'At last I get an offer!'. I didn't want to be a virgin forever. But we're not going anywhere. He doesn't love me and I sure as hell don't love him."

"I didn't think so," said Jenna gravely. "I could feel you weren't in love. So what are you going to do? Break up with him?"

"I'll have to." Hester sighed; it was easy to see the right decision now, while she was sitting with her mother in the comfort of her bedroom. But implementing it would mean confronting Michael, and Hester didn't like confrontation. "I don't know what I'll say to him, though. 'Hey, Mike, I know we've been going out for a year now, and we've just had a roll in the sack, but it turns out I don't like you after all'?"

"If you think Mike doesn't love you, maybe it'll be a relief for him to have you let him off the hook," suggested Jenna, spreading her hands. "You're neither of you going to be happy if you're just going through the motions. Mike is a nice guy and you both deserve better."

Hester smiled wanly and lay flat on the bed. "It's getting the better that bothers me. I go out with Mike because he's willing to go out with me. Most guys just look straight through me. I'd probably have to tart myself up like all the other girls if I wanted to get someone else, and it's just not me. I don't know if anyone else could be interested, so it doesn't seem worth the fuss of selling myself like that if I'm not sure I'll get anyone. Even when I want to, I mean, when I meet someone, I think about it and I decide it probably isn't worth the effort."

"And have you met someone else?"

How did her mother have this uncanny ability to see through the most innocent of remarks? Hester didn't answer straight away. The early stages of an infatuation always felt very private to her. She would hide her feelings and deliberately avoid discussing the object of her desire with Jenna for fear her mother would guess the truth. Then after a few days, she'd tell her mother everything and spend the next few weeks or months sharing her passion with Jenna. Hester's infatuations never lead anywhere, because the object of her love was usually a fictional character, or a performer from Earth, or some man on Alpha whom she would never dare to approach in real life. So she would get over it and spend a few months or years with no one in her heart, until the next infatuation began.

Hester was tempted to go through the whole process as usual. She could deny any interest in anyone right now, and then tell her mother about it later, just as she had done for all her teenage crushes. But Hester was no longer a teenager. She was twenty-three and she knew by now that this infatuation, like all the others, would lead nowhere. There was no point keeping it private, to nurture it in her dreams, because it was a dead-end before it even started.

"I can't say I've really met someone else," she admitted. "He didn't even talk to me tonight. I've met him before and he always looked through me, like everyone else. People see me as a person when I'm their kids' teacher, but in other situations, I never know what to say. Most of the time I can't be bothered to find out what to say, either. And then tonight... I don't know. Things felt different. Maybe because I was wearing that trashy dress of Sarah's..." She nodded towards the garment, laid out on a chair.

"Well, you might think it's trashy, but I thought you looked beautiful in it," said Jenna tenderly, brushing one of Hester's curls behind her ear. "You're such a pretty girl."

Hester didn't quite agree with this last statement. She had a good figure, with a full bosom and round hips, and she was aware that her dark eyes and curly hair made her cute, but she thought her nose stuck out too much and her mouth was too big. It didn't bother her particularly, but she had mentioned her opinion to Mike once. He had immediately retorted that her nose was small and her mouth was lovely. Mike was a nice guy. There were definitely advantages to going out with him, even though he was ugly as a pig and didn't even want her. Even though he had looked blankly at her naked body, no desire in his expression, just some kind of automatic response when he lay against her and closed his eyes. Hester wondered who had been in Mike's mind at that moment.

"Mike also said I looked good tonight," she said thoughtfully. "He does make an effort to be nice to me. I guess that's what started it. I was sitting there and I was thinking how different I looked in this dress. And I don't know, it made me think that maybe, if I made the effort and dressed like that more often, I could get all these guys I like. So I looked around and I looked at this guy and I thought if I could have any guy in the room, that's the one I'd have. And it suddenly made me look at him differently and I realised I really did like him. I don't know... It doesn't make much sense now..."

"This was before you slept with Mike?"

Jenna's tone was neutral, but Hester could see the implications of what she had just said.

"Yeah. I guess I wasn't very kind to Mike, sleeping with him with this other guy on my mind." She decided not to tell her mother that it was highly probable that Mike had been similarly distracted. Hester didn't want to admit that her first sexual experience was such a non-event. "It's one of the reasons I think we should break up. I didn't want to be with him; I just wanted... well, I did it for all the wrong reasons."

"One of them being that you thought a little experience wouldn't hurt to go after this other man?" Jenna was smiling indulgently and Hester was grateful for her understanding.

"I don't know if the other man is really worth it, to be honest," admitted Hester. It was something she had been thinking about on her way back from Mike's place. "But Mike's told me so much about him, and in some ways, I think we might have some things in common. He's an artist; he might enjoy some of my stories, and maybe he's read some of the books I've read. Everyone else is just so boring and unimaginative here; they never read a book and if they've seen a movie or a play, they never have anything original to say about it. Mike's favourite subjects of conversation are engineering and Alphan gossip. It would do me good to talk to someone who sees things differently. And this guy definitely does -- you should see the painting he did in Mike's quarters. It was extraordinary!"

"This guy doesn't have brown streaks on his cheeks, by any chance?"

Hester shrugged; she knew she had given the game away as soon as she mentioned that her new love interest was a painter. "I know," she said before her mother got a chance to protest. "He's got a bad reputation and he's about as useful to Alpha's survival as a puffball. But... oh, Mama, he is gorgeous. If you'd seen him tonight... I don't know. Normally, you see all the girls tarted up, their 'wares on display' as some say, and the guys just dress plainly and stare at the girls. But the situation was reversed here. Salvatore was well dressed, there was something about his clothes that just made you want to look at him, and you could, because that was obviously why he was dressed like that. I don't think there was a single woman who didn't keep an eye on him tonight. And it felt good to have the roles reversed, to have a guy on display for the women and not always the reverse."

"I've heard Salvatore has a reputation as a ladies' man..." Jenna didn't look too pleased with the whole situation. She placed a hand on Hester's arm again. "Look, Hester... If you like him, then get to know him, and sleep with him if you want to. But I don't think you should get too involved if you can help it. I don't know him, and to be quite honest, I didn't know his parents either. They were always distant Command Center staff when we were drifting through space, and then they had no children in my school when they still lived on Alpha. Those who did know them have said they were both good people. Some people say Salvatore is just having a wild youth, and I can't say anything against that. Maybe that's right and maybe you should just find out for yourself..."

Jenna paused, evidently uncertain whether to continue. "But?" prompted Hester.

"But I'll tell you what my own Mama told me," said Jenna. "Never get too involved with a Don Juan. Men who chase after a lot of women usually have something wrong with them. Very often, they do it because they don't really like women and they're trying to prove something to themselves. Do you remember that book, The Diary Of A Mad Housewife? Well, you remember that the woman told her lover that all Don Juans were latent homosexuals -- that's what I've heard too. So... Well, all I'm saying is just be careful."

Hester guffawed as she suddenly remembered PJ asking Salvatore out. She could still picture the whole scene; Salvatore leaning over curiously as PJ presumably made his advances, then the bemused look on the Psychon's face when he understood what was being asked, and finally his generous smile as he shook his head. Maybe Salvatore was really a homosexual and just didn't like PJ; the man wasn't exactly good-looking. Even though Hester had decided she liked Salvatore, the idea that he might like men didn't bother her. On the contrary, it made her even more curious to get to know him and participate in his unusual lifestyle in some way. She was hardly going to end up marrying him, so it didn't matter how strange and disreputable he might be.

"Don't forget that he's very young, too," added her mother. "He's probably just sowing his wild oats. I... I don't want to discourage you so much, but you know all the problems we've had with your sisters, and I don't want you to be unhappy."

Hester smiled as if to say she had no intention of being unhappy. But she was thinking. She had forgotten about Salvatore's youth. How old was he? Eighteen? Nineteen? Mama was right; he was too young to be the object of her infatuation. She was an adult woman and he was just a teenager. She would have to let him grow up a bit if she wanted to go out with him; she didn't want people accusing her of being a female Alan Carter. Hester shook her head, determined to forget all about it.

"Don't worry, Mama, I'll be careful," she said gently. "I'm not in love, just... intrigued. I know I'd have to try very hard if I wanted to be more than just another one of his conquests. But that's not what I want anyway; I'm curious to know what such a different person is like, that's all. If he's interested, perhaps we can go out together for a while. Or maybe I'll never talk to him again. Maybe I'll meet the love of my life tomorrow instead. I'll just have to see what happens."

Jenna stroked her cheek again. "Whatever does happen, don't forget that your old mother is always here to help."

"Oh, don't worry," said Hester with a smile. "I'll be certain to let you know when I need help."

She said that, but she knew she could trust Jenna's "instinct of a Jewish mother" to come to the rescue if anything ever went wrong. In the meantime, Hester settled down for a peaceful night's sleep. She could sort out her non-existent relationship with Michael tomorrow, or perhaps on his next restday. As to Salvatore, she would just have to see what happened. One thing she did know; her life would never be the same again.