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within the bosom of the new bint, Ian's heart was not entirely free of her. He was not entirely averse to jealousy when she was happy with another man. She had seen that. She knew him well enough to read him. She did not need to lean across the table and say that the new man in her life had the genital equivalent of a Polaris Tomahawk stationed in his underpants, she had merely to lean back and let her eyes go secretive and misty. Something old and primal, she supposed. He would come and call and sniff it out, like a confused dog.
    But unfortunately her experiences with the new swains were so unerringly awful that to pretend was useless. No one could say that, after Ian, she had not tried. But if Dorothy Parker was right about 'Scratch a lover and find a foe' she should come on down to west London. Never mind scratch. In west London it was 'put the slightest, softest finger pad of pressure on the skin of a lover and you will find yourself availed of the entire Napoleonic retreat, Gallipoli, and assorted extracts from the Somme and Dunkirk . . . with artillery. Something to do with loss of empire and the lack of big-game hunting probably. No other outlets but the snare of the signal of a wiggling piece of skirt (gloriously into battle) and the fury of being captivated by it (retreat with guns).
    As a married woman she was so protected from it all. It made her shiver every time she thought now about the
     
    Houses of Parliament and the male majority who ruled within thinking about sex every six minutes. Could that be true? If it was, then the only compulsion she could liken it to as an experience was the number of times you thought about peeing when in the last stages of pregnancy. And then you had the excuse of the baby's head or bottom or tender little foot on your bladder. Male politicians had no such excuse with regard to their wobbly bits, unless they had called into Cindy the Whip for a quick trussing en route for the House. Which, she was not surprised to read in Cindy the Whip's autobiography, was not unknown. But rare.
     
    Which meant, God help the planet, that most of the assembled parliamentary representatives did it spontaneously. One minute the Chancellor of the Exchequer was holding up his Treasury case and spouting about family allowances, and the next he was in the mental grip of a lurid coupling that might or might not include goldfish. That, she thought, must be the point at which he reaches for a glass of water. She imagined sex peppering every single debate in Parliament, like perforations in a colander: whale hunting with harpoons - congress in wet suits; pregnant prisoners wearing shackles - Vaseline, leather and whips; the European Union butter mountain - Last Tango in Paris and what Marlon did with half a pound of unsalted ...
    Recalling that particular piece of filmic legend, her heart contracted with grief. It was after borrowing the video of Last Tango, on the pretence of its being a cinematic milestone (her) and the perfectly honest desire to see a woman buggered (him), that Ian turned to her, or - to be fair - peered round her heaving buttocks, and suggested it would be nice to have another baby.
     
    What?
     
    The children were teenagers. Freedom was in sight. She was thirty-six and crisp on the matter. 'You want one, you go and have one,' she said.
    He looked surprised (apart from a little daft), peeking between her legs like an anxious gynaecologist. Well, he was surprised, unsurprisingly surprised, because until that moment she had denied him nothing. She knew how to get and keep a man and it was not by saying no to things.
    He scowled.
    I have spoiled him, she thought, as she watched little willy die. Another baby? My plans, my hopes, my dreams, she thought, amid a lathering of Lurpak.
    'Come on, baby,' he wheedled. He could wheedle her like nobody else. But this time - for the first time - she denied him.
    'Ian, I have had my tubes tied.'
    'But you could always have them undone.'
    That her