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By Root 616 0

square desk, dark wood, and one of those leather-cushioned office swivel-chairs that he picked up second-hand too; he says it’s very comfortable for working. The desk has a reading lamp on it, a blotter, an assortment of pens and pencils, and Peter’s graduation portrait in a stand-up frame. On the wall above there’s a small bookcase – his law books on the bottom shelf, his hoard of paperback detective novels on the top shelf, and miscellaneous books and magazines in between. To one side of the bookcase is a pegboard with hooks that holds Peter’s collection of weapons: two rifles, a pistol, and several wicked-looking knives. I’ve been told all the names, but I can never remember them. I’ve never seen Peter use any of them, though of course in the city he wouldn’t have many opportunities. Apparently he used to go hunting a lot with his oldest friends. Peter’s cameras hang there too, their glass eyes covered by leather cases. There’s a full-length mirror on the outside of the cupboard door, and inside the cupboard are all of Peter’s clothes.

Peter must have heard me prowling. He called from inside the bathroom, “Marian? That you?”

“I’m here,” I called back. “Hi.”

“Hi. Fix yourself a drink. And one for me too – gin and tonic, okay? I’ll be out in a minute.”

I knew where everything was. Peter has a cupboard shelf well-stocked with liquor, and he never forgets to re-fill the ice-cube trays. I went to the kitchen, and carefully assembled the drinks, remembering not to leave out the twist of lemon peel Peter likes. It takes me longer than average to make drinks: I have to measure.

I heard the shower stop and the sound of feet, and when I turned around Peter was standing in the kitchen doorway, dripping wet, wearing a tasteful navy-blue towel.

“Hi,” I said. “Your drink’s on the counter.”

He stepped forward silently, took my glass from my hand, swallowed a third of its contents and set it on the table behind me. Then he put both of his arms round me.

“You’re getting me all wet,” I said softly. I put my hand, cold from holding the icy glass, on the small of his back, but he didn’t flinch. His flesh was warm and resilient after the shower.

He kissed my ear. “Come into the bathroom,” he said.

I gazed up at Peter’s shower curtain, a silver plastic ground covered with curve-necked swans in pink swimming in groups of three among albino lily pads; it wasn’t Peter’s taste at all, he’d bought it in a hurry because the water kept running over the floor when he showered, he hadn’t had time to look properly and this one had been the least garish. I was wondering why he had insisted that we get into the bathtub. I hadn’t thought it was a good idea, I much prefer the bed and I knew the tub would be too small and uncomfortably hard and ridgy, but I hadn’t objected: I felt I should be sympathetic because of Trigger. However I had taken the bath mat in with me, which softened the ridges.

I had expected Peter to be depressed, but though he wasn’t his usual self he certainly wasn’t depressed. I couldn’t quite figure out the bathtub. I thought back to the other two unfortunate marriages. After the first, it had been the sheepskin on his bedroom floor, and after the second a scratchy blanket in a field we’d driven four hours to get to, and where I was made uneasy by thoughts of farmers and cows. I supposed this was part of the same pattern, whatever the pattern was. Perhaps an attempt to assert youthfulness and spontaneity, a revolt against the stale doom of stockings in the sink and bacon fat congealed in pans evoked for him by his friends’ marriages. Peter’s abstraction on these occasions gave me the feeling that he liked doing them because he had read about them somewhere, but I could never locate the quotations. The field was, I guessed, a hunting story from one of the outdoorsy male magazines; I remembered he had worn a plaid jacket. The sheepskin I placed in one of the men’s glossies, the kind with lust in penthouses. But the bathtub? Possibly one of the murder mysteries he read as what he called “escape literature”; but wouldn’t that