“Which one’s he?”

Kevin frowned. The frown deepened as he saw the mess of cups and dirty milk bottles, the sink full of dishes.

“I’ve been working so hard,” Janey explained again.

Kevin looked pointedly at the half-full glass, still with unmelted ice cubes.

“What would you like to drink?” she said.

“A dry white wine, please.”

“Well, be a duck and get it from the cellar. I must go to the loo.”

Upstairs she looked at herself in despair. Her hair looked like a mop, her face was red, her eyes tiny from drinking and lack of makeup. Old trousers and a shrunk T-shirt made her bum and boobs look huge. Scraping a flannel under her armpits, spraying her crotch with scent, she slapped on some liquid foundation and failed to pull a comb through her tangled mane. She went to the typewriter and wrote: “Men shouldn’t drop in,” with one finger.

Downstairs, Kevin, up from the cellar, was holding a bottle and looking bootfaced. “I gather you don’t like our wedding gift.”

Janey went white. “Oh, no, no, no! We just put it there because, er, Billy’s mother came to dinner and she had a poodle which, er, died, and we thought she’d be upset.” She shrugged helplessly. It had been worth a try.

Then there was the hassle of finding a corkscrew and a clean glass, and then a basin that wasn’t full of dirty dishes to wash it in.

“There’s a basin in the downstairs loo,” said Janey. Then, worried she might have forgotten to pull the chain, she seized the glass and rushed off. But it was all right. She had.

“Why d’you buy Whiskas instead of Moggie Meal?” said Kevin, looking at another of Harold’s plates, which was gathering flies.

“I’m sorry, Kev. I know I’m a lousy wife, but I’d just learnt the names of Billy’s horses when you changed them all, and the village shop’s run out of Moggie Meal. I get so bombed when I’m writing and I haven’t eaten all day.”

Kev raised an eyebrow at the remains of scrambled egg in the pan.

“How’s the book going?”

“All right. I’m up to ‘Married Men.’ ”

“Based on Billy?”

“Billy’s too nice. Most married men I know are like babies — into everyone.”

She wondered if he used hot tongs as well as a blow dryer, and had got that butterscotch smooth tan out of a bottle. He was in good shape though, his flat stomach emphasized by the big Gucci belt.

She was dying to get herself another drink, but he was only a quarter way down his. Kevin didn’t drink much; it made his accent slip. She felt mesmerized by his flashing gold cuff links and medallions.

“Don’t you get frightened when you’re here alone?” he asked.

“I’ve got a panic button wired up to Rupert’s house, and a burglar alarm, but since Harold kept setting it off I gave up using it.”

“You were pretty scared when I arrived.”

“I thought you were the bailiffs. Please don’t come home, Bill Bailiff,” she giggled lamely.

Kevin got up and walked round the kitchen. “This place is a tip and you look frightful. I’d never allow Enid to let herself and our place go like this.”

Janey felt livid.

She got up and poured another drink, but nothing came out. “It helps if you unscrew the top of the bottle,” said Kevin.

“Do you honestly think,” Janey went on furiously, “that if you walked into Solzhenitsyn’s house, he’d be dusting or putting cups in dishwashers or making chutney? You bet there’s a Mrs. Solzhenitsyn playing the Volga boatman to calm his nerves and bringing in the samovar and caviar butties every ten minutes, and typing his manuscript, as well as keeping his house clean. Christ!”

“Enid looks after me.”

“You bet she does! Because you’re so jolly rich she doesn’t have to work. She doesn’t have a money problem in the world, any more than Helen does. So they can spend all day washing their hair and waxing their legs and thinking about paintwork and getting your underpants whiter than ever.”

“My mother went out to work, and she cleaned the kitchen floor every day.”

“So what?” snapped Janey. “She wasn’t a writer. Writers think about writing all the time, not cleaning tickets, and if they’re worried about money all the time, they can’t write.”

“It’d be better,” said Kevin, “if, instead of writing rubbish about the opposite sex which makes you restless, you scrapped that book and spent more time looking after Billy. He looked like a tramp in Athens, breeches held together with safety pins, pink shirts, dinner suit covered in stains, holes in his shoes.” He picked up a pile of envelopes, flipping through them. “These envelopes should have been posted weeks ago. You’re a slut,” he went on, turning to face her, “and you’re overweight. If you were my wife, I’d send you straight off to a health farm.”

“Ridiculously bloody expensive,” said Janey, blushing scarlet. “I’d rather buy a padlock for the fridge. I am trying to write a book.”

“You drink too much. So does Billy. It’s impairing his judgment. If he’s not careful, he won’t be selected for the World Championships.”

“I expect he’s fed up with being hassled by you.”

“That’s not the way you should talk to your husband’s sponsor,” said Kevin, getting to his feet and putting down his half-finished drink. “Well, I’m off.”

Janey was shaken. She was so used to rows with Billy ending up in bed that she couldn’t cope with the progression of this one.

“Aren’t you going to finish your drink?”

“No, thanks. Get some sleep, and when you’re sober we’ll do some straight talking.”

“It’s hardly been crooked talking this evening,” said Janey sulkily, following him unsteadily to the door. In the doorway he turned, shoving his fist against her stomach, just a second before she hastily pulled it in.

“God, that zip’s taken some punishment! I’ll come back on Thursday and take you out to dinner,” he said.

It was all Billy’s fault, thought Janey, as she shaved her legs three days later, for telling Kev to drop in on her. Beastly jumped-up creep. The bath looked as though a sheep had been sheared. Not a follicle of superfluous hair was left on her body. Her bush had started to grow again like a badly plucked chicken, so she’d even shaved that too. She hadn’t had anything except three grapefruit and two bottles of Perrier since she’d last seen Kevin. She’d cleaned the house and washed her hair and painted her nails and rubbed body lotion in all over, even into the back of her neck. She couldn’t tell Billy about Kev because he hadn’t rung, which boded ill too. He always rang if he won.

Oh, well, she’d be a good wife, and nice to Billy’s sponsor and at least Kev would be useful for her chapter on arrivistes. Janey detested Kevin Coley, but she cleaned the bedroom most thoroughly of all, putting roses on one bedside table and the Moggie Meal Sponsored Book of Pedigree Cats beneath the Bible on the other. She felt much thinner but her nerves were jangling from so many slimming pills. Nothing was going to happen tonight, she kept telling herself, but she hadn’t felt so jumpy since she’d gone to Wembley for her first date with Billy. Kev hadn’t said what time he was coming. Probably he had high tea and would arrive at five.

He turned up at eight. When she answered the door he said, “Sorry, must have come to the wrong house,” and turned back down the path.

“Kevin, have you been drinking?”

He turned, grinning. “Is it really you? You look quite different from the lady I saw three days ago.” He stared at her for a minute. “Wow,” he said, sliding a hand round her waist. “You look delightful, quite the old Janey.”

For a second he fingered the spare tires above her straining white trousers. “You could lose another stone and a half without missing it, but you’re on the way and the place smells fresher too.”

No one, reflected Janey, would be able to smell anything except Paco Rabanne.

“I’m only coming out with you to research my chapter on married men,” she said.

He had a buff-colored Mercedes. Frank Sinatra’s “Songs for Swinging Lovers” was belting out of the tape deck. Christ, he must be old to like that kind of music, thought Janey. That brushed-forward hair must cover a multitude of lines. The village boys, idly chatting and guffawing in the evening sun, stared as they passed. That’ll reach Mrs. Bodkin and probably Helen, by tomorrow, thought Janey.

“Lovely properties,” remarked Kev as they drove along, “lovely old Cotswold places.”

He was wearing a white suit and a black shirt and a heavy jet medallion. You’d get a black eye if he kept it on in bed, Janey was appalled to find herself thinking. Interesting that he’d made such an effort for her. Beyond seeing that his suits were reasonably well cut in the first place, Billy didn’t think about clothes. He was without vanity; that was one of the things she loved about him.

Kev took her to a very expensive restaurant in Cheltenham. The menus had no prices and, although he showed off and was very rude to waiters, snapping his fingers, complaining the wine wasn’t cold enough, and sending food back on principle, they treated him with undeniable deference.

“How do you keep so fit?” she asked, looking at his waistline.

“I exercise a lot. Enid and I have joined the country club. You have to be elected. I play a round of golf whenever feasible. I jog on weekends. I exercise with weights in the morning.”

Janey giggled. “Do you swing Enid above your head?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Kevin coldly.

For the first course Janey lapsed and had huge sticks of asparagus dripping in melted butter.

“Naughty,” chided Kevin. “At least three hundred calories.”

“I don’t care,” said Janey, lasciviously taking an asparagus head in her mouth. “I’ll go back to grapefruit tomorrow.”