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towards her sleeping brother and he placed his tiny arm over her shoulder as if he was protecting her.
    “Sleep tight little angels, I love you both so much,” Hayley whispered and pulled their sleeping bag up an inch. The temperature inside the tent plummeted at night. Hayley grimaced at the thought of reaching through the crane fly squadron to turn the lantern down a shade but she was saved by the arrival of her sunburnt husband. The zip on the flysheet rasped noisily as he opened it up to gain entry. “Shush, you clumsy man! They’ve only just gone off to sleep.”
    “Good, because the barbecue is glowing and the sausages are nearly cooked.” Her husband clapped his hands together playfully as if he was excited about a plate of charcoaled sausage. Hayley noticed that his hands were black.
    “Look at the state of your hands, Karl. I hope you haven’t been touching the food with them,” she scolded him.
    “I had a little trouble starting the barbecue that’s all.” He opened his hands and made to rub them on her face. She giggled and pulled away from him. “What’s the matter? You used to like my dirty hands all over you,” he teased. He was joking but there was a barb in his humour.
    “Get away from me you tramp!” She laughed. “I never liked your hands on me. I just pretended that I did to keep you quiet.”
    He pulled her towards him and kissed her cheek. “Oh you were pretending were you?”
    “Yes, well not all the time,” she said coyly.
    He pulled her closer still and felt himself stirring sexually. His flimsy cargo shorts did little to hide his excitement as he tried to kiss her on the mouth. 
    “Karl.” She leaned away from the kiss and pushed him away.  Things hadn’t been right between them for a long time.
    “What’s wrong?” He gasped. It had been a long time since they had made love. His wife didn’t seem interested any more. He was hoping that the fresh mountain air would stir emotions in her that had been dormant since she had given birth to the twins. The reality was that it wouldn’t, in which case the fishing rod would come in handy.
    “Nothing is wrong, Karl.” She stepped back out of the embrace completely. “Apart from the fact that our children are sleeping two yards away and your brother and his snooty wife are on the other side of that canvas wall.”
    “She’s not snooty, Hayley, and I’m sorry, I was just fooling around,” he whispered. He stepped closer to her again. She tensed as he touched her. He could feel her involuntary physical revulsion to his embrace. Something had been lost between them along the way. He still loved her, that was for sure, and he certainly loved his twins but the fire that they once had was gone. At first he thought the arrival of their children had doused their passion, but it ran much deeper.
    Sleepless nights and tiring days took their toll on his wife in the early months and so he gave her space and time to feel like being a woman again, not just a mother. Months flew by and when they finally made love, he knew that something had changed in her. She seemed to be mechanical. There was no intensity to the passion like there had been before. It had gone and so far, it showed no signs of returning. He tried hard to cope with the constant rejection but he was a red-blooded male with a high sex drive. Karl had turned his attention to other women and although he tried to be discreet, he couldn’t help but feel that Hayley knew every time that he cheated.
    “Your sausages will be burning,” she said quietly. She couldn’t look him in the eyes. Hayley leaned forward and kissed his lips quickly. He felt like it was a kiss from his grandmother or an old aunt, for all the passion that it contained. “I’ll be out in a second,” she added.
    “Fine, you do that,” Karl snorted like a sulky schoolboy. He opened up the tent flap and went back outside. Hayley could hear her sister-in-law’s voice through the canvas.
    “Hey babe,