How can you make a student happy? Drop them at university – and make a lightning-quick exit | Zoe Williams

The impulse is to hang around meeting their friends, and their friends’ parents, and checking out their room. Maybe you’ll all go to a restaurant in the evening ... But be aware: no teenager or twentysomething wants this I was driving my niece to university, and my son asked what time I’d be back, which was itself inherently sad. When they’re little and you’re leaving them with a babysitter and they ask in a plaintive tiny voice for your estimated time of return, and your heart is gripped in a vice of guilt and impatience, all you long for is the day when they don’t care whether you go to the pub or not. Then, wham, they’re 18, and they ask in a hopeful, slightly shifty tone, as if wishing for the answer “I’ll be back at 2am, or maybe never”. You cannot fathom why your absence would be such a benefit – will they have an impromptu party? Start a fire? But that is because you’re avoiding its unspoken centre: it is much more relaxing for them when you’re out of the house. Anyway, I dredged the correct answer from a memory so deep and true it was as if I’d got it from a past life: “Not late.” Because everyone’s dream mum (or aunt) when they’re being