I started pacing the room again. How could she have already worn it? She’d said she’d only had it a week and I knew for a fact that she’d stayed in every evening since Fitz’s party – the one I’d been at – attending to her face. I put that to her. But tactfully. I didn’t want her to think I was checking up on her.

‘Who said anything about going out in the evening?’ she asked. But she was no more accusatory than she was defensive. If anything she was rather blankly neutral. ‘It was a daytime party I wore it at.’

‘A daytime party?’ I don’t know why that stung me as much as it did. I don’t suppose I would have liked it had I discovered that Sharon was slipping out of bed after midnight and stealing away for assignations in piano bars and casinos the minute I began to snore; but the idea of her tootling off in her space suit in broad daylight, in the middle of the afternoon, struck me as far more sinister. ‘Who the hell goes to daytime parties?’ I asked, and I instantly wished that I hadn’t. I was absolutely certain that I didn’t want to know the answer.

But it was too late. ‘SF people mainly. You know – friends of Fitz’s.’

‘I see,’ I said.

‘Not the kind of people you would like,’ she assured me.

‘I guess not,’ I said.

‘They talk about SF classics.’

‘Like the Odyssey,’ I suggested.

‘That’s right, and they watch old SF movies.’

‘Like The Battleship Potemkin.’

‘That’s right. And they swap wives.’

I swear that I snapped my head up so abruptly at this that I have suffered ever since from some of the side effects (not excluding the indignity) of whiplash. ‘They what?’ I demanded to be told again.

Sharon couldn’t have been more matter of fact. She was even dipping the tip of her little finger in her jars again and rubbing soothing balms into her skin. ‘They swap wives,’ she said, ‘but you wouldn’t like any of them – they’re all SF wives. Well, almost all.’

My heart was pounding at my ribs, hammering to get out. But how was I to ask what I wanted (wanted? – I was consumed by the need) to know? ‘Sharon,’ I said, ‘am I to assume that you’re trying to tell me that you –’

‘Took part? Of course. Why else would I go? You know I don’t like old movies.’