Most of the talk between them these days seems to be about ovulation prediction kits and luteinising hormone surges. Cullen’s not even sure he wants a baby. Until recently he and Veronica were of one mind on this but when she hit thirty-five, the clock didn’t just start ticking, it began to beat out a desperate kind of alarm which Cullen found at first bewildering and then just plain terrifying. Veronica became obsessed with the mechanisms of reproduction, forever taking her temperature and monitoring her cycles, taking no sexual interest in Cullen whatsoever until the indicators told her it was time, and then laying siege upon his seed. For a while Cullen pushed back, but soon discovered that only led to rows. Surrender seemed easier. That and looking elsewhere for the satisfaction of his needs. He told himself that this too would pass and until it did, he had a right to his extra-curricular fantasies, his own particular obsessions.

‘A quickie will do,’ Veronica says now.

Cullen briefly considers his options which boil down to servicing Veronica now or later. I’m having an off day or I’ve got a headache won’t wash. Later only means putting off the inevitable and there’s something about seeing his mother which stops the old troop carrier in its tracks. Dr Freud would have a field day with that! It had better be now.

‘Kiss me, darling,’ Veronica says, smiling and with a gleam in her eye.

All right, all right, he thinks. His eye lands on the handle of the cupboard under the stairs where he keeps his Browning game gun and a strange thought crosses his mind for a moment. Blinking it away, he turns his brain to conjuring images of long ago until, thank God, his groin automatically begins to rustle and stir.

Afterwards, he helps Veronica prop herself on the sofa with cushions and returns to his still-damp jacket in the hallway. At the door he notices that the cleaner has picked up the post – Veronica always leaves it where it falls, on the grounds that it’s ‘boy stuff’, by which she means bills – and left it in the letter rack. He leafs through, stuffs a couple of items in his jacket pocket and heads out of the front door, past Veronica’s brand-new top-end Mini to his own ten-year-old Volvo S60. He lets himself into the driver’s seat, removes the mail from his jacket pocket and stuffs the envelopes in with all the others in the glove box. Eventually, he’ll have to empty it, but for now, it’s out of sight, out of mind.