Hugo spiked another piece of steak, and continued to look at her while he ate it. She continued to smile, the smile turning into a sort of bland, mask-like, Medusa defiance, but good-natured still, for Kate was after all relentlessly good-natured, that was one of her problems: and how well she looked, how pink and shining with health, although he knew that she was not particularly well at all, but on the contrary had been rather ill and was now rather miserable, with some cause. Kate had often complained, in the past, as a joke, that the worse she felt, the better she looked, and now she did indeed look healthier than ever, her pale brown hair escaping bouncily from beneath her green headsquare, her white teeth munching the spinach; as though the surface of her resolutely refused to acknowledge any interior difficulties, as though the glow on the surface emanated in direct contradiction from within, in order to confuse, perplex, and throw spectators into disarray. Hugo knew her well enough to stare her out, and would have done so, but she came back to the attack without dropping her eyes.

“Look, Hugo,” she said, “it’s all very well for you, and I’m as bloody sick of bloody women as you are, I’m sick to death of them, I wish I’d never invented them, but they won’t just go away because I’ve got tired of them. Will they?”

“You could switch to industrial relations. Or Middle Eastern affairs, perhaps,” said Hugo, for Kate had just been complaining about her latest visitor, a student from Iraq, who had arrived unannounced and seemed to be intending to stay indefinitely.

“Don’t be silly, Hugo. I know my limitations,” said Kate.

“That’s a very unfeminist remark,” said Hugo, provocatively.

“Look,” said Kate, ignoring this new angle, and returning to an earlier point in their conversation, “look, do you want to see my morning’s post? You don’t, do you? But you’re going to have to, just the same. Here”—and she started to delve around in the large kitsch carpet-bag she’d been carrying around on her shoulder for years—“here, take a look at this lot”—and she slammed down on the table a great untidy wad of letters and envelopes and brochures, which, when sorted and expounded, proved to contain: