what does "even the playing field"mean? Strike paused in the act of hanging up his jacket and stared at her. “You didn’t get that out of Heat magazine.” “No. I was doing psychology at university. I dropped out.” She felt, obscurely, that it might somehow even the playing field to tell him about one of her own personal failures, before delivering the bad news. “You dropped out of university?” He seemed uncharacteristically interested. “That’s a coincidence. I did, too. So why ‘fuck Johari’?” “Deeby Macc had therapy in prison. He became interested and did a lot of reading on psychology. I got that bit out of the papers,” she added.