Archie looked up at her over her shoulder into the looking-glass. ‘I do rather hate birthdays. Being reminded.’

‘Nonsense!’ she said briskly and shook the powder puff gently. ‘I love them.’

‘You aren’t sixty. I am. Today.’

‘And what’s so awful about that? Prime of your life, I’d say.’

‘A definite landmark, sixty; we’re given three score years and ten, remember.’

‘Tosh.’ She patted her fine-boned cheeks busily.

‘Not tosh to me. I have just seen myself in the bathroom mirrors.’

‘Not for the first time, darling, surely!’ A light laugh, dismissing.

‘For the first time as sixty.’

She turned to face him slowly. ‘Archie. What ever is it? You can’t have suddenly aged overnight! You were fifty-nine yesterday. What awful physical metamorphosis has taken place since last night?’

‘My backside is flabby, wrinkled. I’m sort of shrinking. Oh …’ He waved his hand vaguely over the package on his knee. ‘Oh, not since last night, no. It’s been taking place for a time now. I have watched the lines. The general,’ he looked about him worriedly, ‘the general sagging. Sagging. Drooping, age … I think it is quite obscene.’

She looked at him with startled eyes, her arms folded, hands in her lap. ‘Darling Archie. So dreadfully serious. You have a beautiful figure, perfect skin … you always did have. You were always so vain about them.’

‘And have no longer. I don’t like the way things are going; I’m setting in for the winter, you might say, and I can see what it is going to be like. I dislike it all intensely. Don’t care for the way things are settling down. For old age.’

She stared at him helplessly. ‘You’ve never spoken like this before: I’m shattered.’

‘So am I. Shattered too. Vain men are when faced with reality. Quite simply, I hate what is happening to my body: hate it.’ He got up from the bed suddenly, and taking his package with him walked over to the windows and looked out into the golden morning. ‘The idea of performing a sexual act repels me.’

Cuckoo let out a little cry of anguish and turned swiftly on her dressing-stool, hand to her mouth with amazement.

‘What a terrible thing to say! Archie! You’ve gone mad. You can’t be well.’

‘I’m perfectly well. Merely withering. Withering.’

‘Stop! Stop!’ she cried and covered her ears with her hands.