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of a fife.
    For several seconds after she had ushered the last traces of the note into oblivion, the rest of the Courage Consort sat mute. In the extraordinary quiet of Martinekerke forest, they breathed like babies, no one wanting to be the first to speak.
    'I was worried about that one, I must confess,' said Roger, finally. 'Well done.'
    Catherine blushed and concealed her throat behind one hand.
    'I just seem to be able to hit higher and higher notes all the time,' she said.
    The silence moved in again, as soon as she'd finished speaking, so she pressed on, making conversation to fill the void.
    'Maybe if I'd had one of those fearsome Svengali mothers pushing me when I was young I could have been a coloratura by now.'
    Dagmar was uncrossing her lotused legs with a wince of discomfort, wiggling her naked feet—her own solution to the house-slipper dilemma.

    'So what sort of mother did you have?' she asked.
    Catherine looked up at the ceiling, to see what might be written there about what sort of mother she'd had.
    'She was a cellist, actually,' she replied meditatively, 'in the BBC Symphony Orchestra.'
    'But I meant what sort of person was she?'
    'Umm … I'm not really sure,' murmured Catherine, her vision growing vague as she stared at the delicate mosaic of cracks in the paint overhead. 'She was away a lot, and then she committed suicide when I was twelve.'
    'Oh, I'm sorry,' said Dagmar.
    It sounded odd, this effete Britishism, coming at robust volume from the German girl. The sharpness of her accent made the condolence sound like something else altogether, and yet there was nothing insincere in her tone: in fact, it was Dagmar's sincerity that really struck the discord. The phrase 'Oh, I'm sorry' must have been composed by the English to be softly sung in a feminine cadence.
    'Not your fault,' said Catherine, lowering her gaze to smile at Dagmar. A ghostly blue after-image of the ceiling lamp floated like an aura around the German girl's face. 'It was me who found her, actually. Me or I?—which is it, Roger?' She glanced at him, but not long enough to notice his frowning, eyebrow-twitching signal for her to stop talking. 'She did it in her bed, with sleeping pills and a polythene bag over her head.'
    Dagmar narrowed her eyes and said nothing, imagining the scene and how a child might have taken it in. Julian couldn't contain himself, however.
    'Did she leave a note?' he enquired.
    'No,' said Catherine. Roger was getting up, rustling papers at the periphery of her attention. 'Though the polythene bag wasn't a plain one. It was a UNICEF one, with pictures of smiling children all over it. I always wondered about that.'

    Even Julian couldn't think where to take the conversation from there.
    'Tragic business,' he said, getting to his feet to follow Roger into the kitchen.
    Dagmar wiped her forehead with one arm. As she did so, the fabric of her top was pulled taut against her breasts, alerting her to the fact that she had leaked milk from her nipples.
    'Excuse me,' she said.

    'How long has it been, do you think,' enquired Roger in bed that night, 'since we last made love?' Leading a singing group, he'd learned to hide his fault-finding under a consultative guise.
    'I don't know,' she said truthfully. 'Quite a long time, I suppose.' It would have been … undiplomatic to suggest otherwise, obviously.
    The spooky silence of Martinekerke forest was back with them in the inky-black bedroom. Catherine wondered what had become of the moon, which she could have sworn was almost full last night. There must be clouds hiding it just now.
    'So, do you think we might have a problem?' said Roger after a while.
    'I'm sure it's nothing that won't come good,' said Catherine. 'The doctor did say that the antidepressants might suppress … you know … desire.' The word sounded cringemakingly romantic, a Barbara Cartland sort of word, or else a throwback to William Blake.

What is it that women do require?

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