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make-up?’
    â€˜What?’ This time it looked as though Kent really would follow his instinct and hit the researcher.
    Laura intervened quickly. ‘Just we’ve been doing a feature on it today.’
    â€˜On what?’
    â€˜Make-up for men.’
    Kent snorted and took a long swallow from his drink.
    â€˜Apparently it is going to come,’ Laura explained. ‘And in our feature today a surprising number of the interviewees seemed quite attracted to the idea. Lots of men in the States use it already.’
    â€˜Yes, and I can just imagine what kind of men,’ said Kent, with an unequivocal look at Rob.
    â€˜What, people like
moi
, you mean?’ Rob’s hands fluttered coyly to his chest. ‘True, I’m not quite the Adonis I was a few years back. Anno Domini has taken its cruel toll, I’m not ashamed to admit it. Are you suggesting I might benefit from a dab of the old Max Factor and a flick of mascara? Well … I think you could be right.’ Rob’s face formed into a mask of wistful tragedy. ‘Blunt, Kent, cruel perhaps, but – I’m horribly afraid – right.’
    The atmosphere didn’t improve. Laura kept pleading with her eyes to Rob, but the researcher was enjoying himself far too much and her unspoken entreaties seemed only to goad him to further outrage. Kent became more and more silent, his shoulders more and more rigid.
    After a while Laura gave up. She hurried down the rest of her wine and rose to her feet. ‘Better be on our way. Are you free for dinner, Kent? We can talk then.’
    Kent grunted that he was free.
    â€˜I’m free for dinner too,’ Rob cooed winsomely.
    â€˜Well, bad luck. You’re not coming with us.’
    A flicker of hurt crossed the researcher’s eye, and Laura felt guilty for the brutality of her words. She knew the emptiness of Rob’s evenings when he hadn’t got anything arranged. But this evening she had to be pitiless. ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow,’ she hissed at him as they got their coats. ‘You’re absolutely incorrigible.’
    â€˜I know,’ the researcher sighed with a defeated gesture. ‘I’ve spent all my life looking for someone to “corrige” me, but have I had any luck? Need you ask?’
    As Laura and Kent left the bar, she looked round. Rob lingered, a model of indecision, weighing the options of diving back into the boisterous derision of the
Newsviews
team, or returning to his solitary bedsitter in Kentish Town.
    Her brother’s body language recoiled from the pastel decor and tall potted plants of the restaurant, but Laura was damned if she was going to change her lifestyle to accommodate his tastes. She knew he would have preferred some honest, traditional place with an English menu and soggy vegetables, but she felt again the perverse desire to antagonize him.
    He looked askance at the slim black-clad waiter who flourished menus at them, and his thick eyebrows rose when he saw the contents. ‘It’s all right,’ said Laura. ‘My idea – my treat.’
    Kent shrugged. He didn’t need to say, ‘Well, if you choose to waste your money on overpriced Frenchified stuff like this, that’s up to you.’ His body said it for him.
    They ordered. Kent, with a perverseness matching Laura’s, insisted on a plain steak without any of the sauces which had helped bring the restaurant and its chef into
The Good Food Guide
for the first time that year. The manner of his insistence contrived – probably as he intended – to put the waiter’s back up.
    The waiter flounced away and Kent looked at his sister with defiance. Then a great weariness seemed to assail him. His shoulders slumped, tension seeping out of his body, and with the back of his hand he stifled a yawn.
    â€˜Long day?’ asked Laura, solicitude apologizing for her earlier brusqueness.
    Kent nodded. ‘Called out at