‘Everyone has been taught to feel ashamed about sex. Most of us outgrow it. I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic about those who don’t. But I do object to being lumped together with them as if I belonged to a meaningful minority. It isn’t one.’

‘Then you don’t see any point in amending the human rights legislation?’ David asked.

‘There are a hundred laws that should be changed. I’d sooner cast my lot with Morganthaller for abortion on demand if I had any political energy.’

David felt emotionally and morally unhinged by this conversation. He was being confronted with whole areas of human experience about which he held no considered opinions. He knew Patricia’s horror of abortion was part of her punitive grief, but it wasn’t anything he’d ever thought about in a positive light. It shocked him to hear his sister so vehement in its support.

‘I guess I have some moral reservations about that,’ he said.

‘Men can afford to,’ Diana said.

He wanted to object to being so generalized, but it wasn’t something he really wanted to argue about against her formidable experience and knowledge.

‘Men are a meaningful minority, I suppose,’ Constance mused.

‘When we’re discussing things like terminating a pregnancy, I think so,’ Diana said.

And perhaps women were a meaningful majority when it came to self-righteousness, David pondered, as he rested on the bus from his battering. Was there any point in his attempt to reclaim the moral territory he had so long ago surrendered to Patricia if all he could do was surrender it to Diana? In relationship to women, men had the advantage only if they never took it; otherwise they were tyrants and rapists. David sighed and was given a sympathetic look by an old woman who was knitting a baby’s sweater.