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glorious prospect again.
    ‘I must get another job first. Before he knows anything about us, or he’ll stop it. Stop me getting anything worthwhile, anywhere.’ She put her hand quickly upon his, and he smiled at her. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll manage it all right. I’d like something well away from here. I’ve still got contacts up in Manchester, but this damned recession means it’s taking time. There are a hundred people after every decent job. But there are still people who rate me, you know, up there.’ For a moment it was important to him that she understood his worth, in that wider world outside here, where she had never seen him.
    ‘I know that, you silly man.’ But she could not think how she was to show him that she knew it; she had never seen him with the team he managed. She simply knew that he would be competent and efficient, as he was as a lover. She dropped into the shaky northern accent she had learnt with the university dramatic society for their revue. ‘But will they accept me up there, Willie Mossop, when there’s trouble at t’mill?’
    ‘Of course they will, you daft ha’porth.’ He had dropped his own Lancashire accent a long time ago, but he fell into it readily enough whenever he chose. He dropped it again immediately now, to show her this was serious. ‘There are nice places to live, you know, in Yorkshire and Lancashire. it’s not all grit and grime. We’ll—’
    She pressed her fingers softly upon his lips, enjoying the warm, damp mobility of them. ‘I know there are, but I don’t care where I live, so long as I’m with you. I’m not just a spoilt bitch who needs her comforts, you know. Well, only some comforts, anyway!’ She took the towel and rubbed it softly around his groin, so that he sprang laughing away from her and began to climb awkwardly into his clothes.
    She enjoyed watching him, as she enjoyed all his movements. He looked vulnerable now, giggling at her with one leg into his trousers like a gangling boy who is half-irritated and half-embarrassed by the scrutiny. She thought she could see in him the youth she had missed, and dwelt upon it, greedy for all of him, for those parts of his life that were still private from her, despite all their intimacies.
    ‘Tell me again about the others,’ she said. The words were out before she knew she had formed them. She was even more shocked that she should say such things at this moment than he was.
    Ian stood, comically arrested in the act of zipping up his trousers, looking at her now with wide blue eyes and the hurt look of a schoolboy harshly accused. ‘I thought we’d agreed not to raise that again,’ he said. She could not tell whether he was annoyed or merely surprised.
    ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it. I don’t know what made me do it.’ She reached out her hand for him, but his movements in the moments which followed were away from her: tucking his shirt hastily into the waistband of his trousers, pulling on his socks, fastening his tie, reaching out for his shoes and his jacket.
    There was a pause before he gave her the rebuttal she realized now that she had been seeking. ‘I told you. Those women didn’t mean anything. Not compared with what I feel for you.’ He came sulkily to a halt, aware that he was making the age-old protestations of the adulterer. He turned back to her with what was partly an appeal, partly a rebuke. ‘I thought you already understood all that.’
    ‘I have. I do.’ She was miserable, feeling herself falling sheer and long from the heights she had so recently occupied, and dizzied with the misery which now threatened.
    ‘I was divorced for four years before I met you, you know.’ He was combing his hair, sounding apologetic and resentful when he wanted to do neither, watching her covertly through the mirror.
    ‘I know. Of course I know. And I wouldn’t want you to have lived like a monk.’ She tried to convince herself of that by the force with which she said it,