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he isn’t going to be your new father.’
    â€˜Well … he’s quite a nice bloke.’
    Carol was appalled. ‘He’s a faceless, ambitious, self-satisfied, crummy, crappy, yuppie smoothie prig,’ she said.
    â€˜He’s quite a nice faceless, ambitious, self-satisfied, crummy, crappy, yuppie smoothie prig.’
    â€˜Hey!’ said Simon. ‘When are you two love-birds going to name the day?’
    â€˜Poor Simon. Thank God I’m not cursed with good manners,’ said Elvis.
    â€˜What?’ said Simon.
    â€˜Trying to change the subject so tactfully.’
    â€˜Except it wasn’t tactful, was it?’ Both men were shocked by Carol’s vehemence. Vehemence wasn’t her stock-in-trade.
    â€˜What?’ said the philosophy graduate feebly.
    â€˜He won’t name the date, Simon, till I’ve passed my philosophy finals.’
    â€˜What?’ said the bemused young estate agent.
    â€˜Oh, bloody hell, stop saying “what” alternately, will yer?’ said this new vehement Carol. ‘I’ve yet to satisfy Elvis, Simon, that I’m a mentally worthy partner for his philosophic journey through life.’
    â€˜What?’ said Elvis.
    Carol stormed off, leaving one rather surprised young man and one very surprised young man.
    â€˜Women!’ said the very surprised young man.
    â€˜I know,’ said the rather surprised young man. ‘They have an uncomfortable habit of hitting on the truth, don’t they?’
    â€˜Simon! That was almost clever.’
    â€˜I know. I have the occasional flash.’
    â€˜How is your sex life?’
    â€˜Non-existent.’ Simon dropped his voice. ‘I’ve given it up. That married woman I showed round one of our properties was the last woman I will ever have in my life.’
    â€˜That’s funny,’ said Elvis. ‘I had the distinct impression she was the first woman you’d ever had in your life.’
    Simon’s concern for his image wrestled with his need to confess. The need to confess won.
    â€˜She was the first woman and the last woman I’ll ever have in my life. I hate sex. It terrifies me,’ he said. ‘There! I’ve admitted it. I’m a happy man, Elvis.’
    Simon’s sister Jenny was staring at the fading day, trying to fight back tears as she thought about her own wedding day, only seventeen months ago.
    The sky was dotted with clouds now. Jenny watched their shadows. At her wedding, she had been real. Now she felt that she was a shadow.
    These dark shapes that floated across the neat rectangles of that over-careful garden, what could they be to a young woman so sensitive to the prospect of cosmic disaster but the shadows of strange flying creatures, birds and mammalsrendered enormous and grotesque by nuclear radiation on a vast scale, huge deformed multi-breasted limbless freaks with pitted scaly skins? She shuddered and turned away from the horror of it, towards the horror of the pretended normality of the Garden Room. She walked instinctively towards Elvis, her husband’s brother, and he seemed to walk equally instinctively towards her, so that what he said became curiously important to her.
    On the whole, she wished that he hadn’t said, ‘Hello, Jenny. What on earth are you wearing?’
    â€˜Thank you,’ she said bitterly. ‘It’s made out of llama wool by very poor Peruvian Indians who need our support.’
    â€˜Several llamas died to make it possible,’ said Elvis. ‘And you a vegetarian.’
    â€˜Nobody’s ever suggested that having a social conscience is easy, Elvis.’
    At last Elvis noticed that Jenny was close to tears. ‘I’m sorry, Jenny,’ he said, and he looked momentarily surprised at his own sincerity. ‘You look lovely.’ He kissed her, warmly, on her cold cheek. ‘Paul’s a lucky man.’
    â€˜So are you.’
    â€˜You what?’