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of fat round his waist which normally, because it was out of sight under his shirt, he could ignore. His bulging midriff apart, Robin had the undeveloped physique of the intellectual. Fair hair in his case meant almost devoid of body hair as well, a characteristic he thought might put women off. Perhaps his insecurity about his appearance was one reason for his repeated searching for reassurance through extra-marital relationships.
    His wife Helen, still as slim at thirty-five as she had been fifteen years ago, shushed the dryer over her long blonde hair, before dressing.
    'I'll fetch breakfast,' said Robin. He had intended to go into the University for nine-thirty. Impulsively he scrubbed that plan.
    'When I watch you,' he said, 'I think rude thoughts.'
    'You'd be better off working them out at the gym.'
    A thought struck her.
    'Didn't you have to be at work early?'
    'No one'll miss me for an hour. Tom's away at the inquest.'
    'Right.' Helen felt stupid. She paused. She changed the subject and hoped he didn't notice her hesitation. 'I wasn't joking about Rosie. You've had more than your nine lives with me. One more slip and we'll be going our separate ways.'
    'I'm desperately sorry, darling. You have my word, on my life, that I will always be true to you till the day I die. I don't know what came over me. It must have been the effect of the drink and the tiredness.'
    'And the hormones,' she said acidly. 'Perhaps you've been going through the male menopause.'
    He pulled a face. He was sensitive about being on the brink of fifty. 'Truly, darling, it was you I was thinking about that night. You really are the most beautiful woman in the whole world. You're the only one for me.'
    'I wish you'd give me compliments like that in the normal course of events, rather than only when you want something.'
    'I love you, utterly, completely.'
    She laughed, trying to act dismissively:
    'You're a flatterer.' And an emotional child, she thought.
    'Are we friends again?'
    'I suppose so.'
    'And lovers?'
    'You'll have to wait and see. I'm about to leap out of the house to keep a date with a very patient hairdresser.'
    He looked hurt now.
    'Please, Helen, darling.'
    She came round to his side of the bed, bent over and kissed him. 'I'm keeping your behaviour under review. I may give you an appointment later this evening, Dr Lovelace, when things have quietened down?'
    Robin smiled. His mood changed abruptly and he sniggered.
    'What is it?'
    'It can wait,' he said.
    'Come on,' she said impatiently.
    'I realised just then when I was watching you, how bees make love with their fingers.'
    'I didn't know bees had fingers. I'm surprised at such an elementary mistake from a University Reader in entomology.'
    'They don't. It's poetic licence.'
    'That's not fair,' she said crossly. 'Now you're a Reader you can make anything up. If I'd written that in an exam you'd have failed me. Reader? Why do they promote you and give you such a daft title? I mean, every primary school pupil learns to read.'
    Robin refused to be put off.
    'I wish I'd only just met you and you’d asked me what I did. I'd say I'm researching lovemaking with flowers, instead of boring insects.'
    'Rule one,' she said. 'Never bite the hand that feeds you. You're only saying they're boring. I know you find them far more fascinating than us mere humans.'
    Robin nodded absently.
    'You're not meant to agree with that,' she complained. 'Anyway, insects aren't boring. Their lives interlock so closely with every other living organism. Without them to pollinate plants, for instance, there'd be no seeds to produce the next generation.'
    'True, but there's hardly romance attached to them.'
    'I don't believe this,' she said. 'You've switched sides and now I'm defending your subject.'
    She looked quizzically at him from the stool in front of the dressing table:
    'Are you trying to achieve an outside view for some paper you're writing?'
    Robin seemed to ignore this as he accelerated into his