Antman (3 page)

'Please sit down.'

*  *  *

Robin Lovelace was lying on the unmade bed browsing through the pile of uninteresting morning mail. His eye caught an unwelcome view of the pudgy roll of fat round his waist which normally, because it was out of sight under his shirt, he could ignore. His bulging midriff apart, Robin had the undeveloped physique of the intellectual. Fair hair in his case meant almost devoid of body hair as well, a characteristic he thought might put women off. Perhaps his insecurity about his appearance was one reason for his repeated searching for reassurance through extra-marital relationships.

His wife Helen, still as slim at thirty-five as she had been fifteen years ago, shushed the dryer over her long blonde hair, before dressing.

'I'll fetch breakfast,' said Robin. He had intended to go into the University for nine-thirty. Impulsively he scrubbed that plan.

'When I watch you,' he said, 'I think rude thoughts.'

'You'd be better off working them out at the gym.'

A thought struck her.

'Didn't you have to be at work early?'

'No one'll miss me for an hour. Tom's away at the inquest.'

'Right.' Helen felt stupid. She paused. She changed the subject and hoped he didn't notice her hesitation. 'I wasn't joking about Rosie. You've had more than your nine lives with me. One more slip and we'll be going our separate ways.'

'I'm desperately sorry, darling. You have my word, on my life, that I will always be true to you till the day I die. I don't know what came over me. It must have been the effect of the drink and the tiredness.'

'And the hormones,' she said acidly. 'Perhaps you've been going through the male menopause.'

He pulled a face. He was sensitive about being on the brink of fifty. 'Truly, darling, it was you I was thinking about that night. You really are the most beautiful woman in the whole world. You're the only one for me.'

'I wish you'd give me compliments like that in the normal course of events, rather than only when you want something.'

'I love you, utterly, completely.'

She laughed, trying to act dismissively:

'You're a flatterer.' And an emotional child, she thought.

'Are we friends again?'

'I suppose so.'

'And lovers?'

'You'll have to wait and see. I'm about to leap out of the house to keep a date with a very patient hairdresser.'

He looked hurt now.

'Please, Helen, darling.'

She came round to his side of the bed, bent over and kissed him. 'I'm keeping your behaviour under review. I may give you an appointment later this evening, Dr Lovelace, when things have quietened down?'

Robin smiled. His mood changed abruptly and he sniggered.

'What is it?'

'It can wait,' he said.

'Come on,' she said impatiently.

'I realised just then when I was watching you, how bees make love with their fingers.'

'I didn't know bees had fingers. I'm surprised at such an elementary mistake from a University Reader in entomology.'

'They don't. It's poetic licence.'

'That's not fair,' she said crossly. 'Now you're a Reader you can make anything up. If I'd written that in an exam you'd have failed me. Reader? Why do they promote you and give you such a daft title? I mean, every primary school pupil learns to read.'

Robin refused to be put off.

'I wish I'd only just met you and you’d asked me what I did. I'd say I'm researching lovemaking with flowers, instead of boring insects.'

'Rule one,' she said. 'Never bite the hand that feeds you. You're only saying they're boring. I know you find them far more fascinating than us mere humans.'

Robin nodded absently.

'You're not meant to agree with that,' she complained. 'Anyway, insects aren't boring. Their lives interlock so closely with every other living organism. Without them to pollinate plants, for instance, there'd be no seeds to produce the next generation.'

'True, but there's hardly romance attached to them.'

'I don't believe this,' she said. 'You've switched sides and now I'm defending your subject.'

She looked quizzically at him from the stool in front of the dressing table:

'Are you trying to achieve an outside view for some paper you're writing?'

Robin seemed to ignore this as he accelerated into his argument.

'If the alternative is your average male in wellies, with beer gut and boxing gloves, give me a twelve hour love-making session between a pair of hermaphroditic giant snails any day.'

'Why hermaphroditic for goodness sake?'

'Basically because until they've explored each other's bodies they don't decide which is to be the man and which the woman. He sticks his love dart into her side and injects her with a massive dose of calcium carbonate plus various aphrodisiacs.'

'Robin, is this true?'

'Well the love dart and the calcium carbonate are, but the rest is speculative.'

'As usual,' she said, 'accurate on the pedestrian bits, while indulging wildly on the male fantasy front. Men!'

'Come back to bed.'

'No, I'm meeting Laura at ten-thirty and I have to do some shopping after the hairdresser.'

'You never said earlier you had to be anywhere.'

'You never listen.'

'That gives us at least half an hour.'

'Five minutes.'

'Pessimist.'

'You're incorrigible. You'll have to cut the description and forget the slowness of those snails.'

'My love dart is already quivering.'

'What makes you think it's your stab. It could be mine. Fancy snails having solved the problem of liberating women. Simply exchange genders.'

'Tease.' He was standing behind her, sliding his hand round to unbutton her blouse.

Helen was in that matter-of-fact mode he didn't fancy. 'Hurry, or I'll be late. You'll have to drop me in town before going to work.'

*  *  *

Laura had planned to be in town shopping with the children. She knew Helen was intending to pop into Marks and Spencer's that morning to try to change a skirt which she now felt was too short. Of all mornings, this day of the resumed inquest was the one to be out of the house, and hopefully distracted. So they had arranged to meet for coffee and a chat at Quenchers opposite Princes Quay between nine forty-five and ten. Normally, when their paths crossed casually on the street, Laura couldn't have a proper conversation with Helen for more than a minute or two. There was always some interruption, or a reason for not stopping longer. She thought about congratulating Helen. Tom had found out late last night about Robin's successful grant for the expedition to equatorial Africa. That would be a relatively safe topic of conversation. Tom was going to leave a message for Robin first thing. Helen would know by now. On another tack, it wasn't the occasion to ask about whether the inquest brought back all that emotion associated with Detlev's shocking death. Helen probably wouldn't have talked in any case. Perhaps it would release feelings which would somehow make too public her affair with the most senior research fellow in the tightly-knit Research Centre in which Robin and Tom were deputy director and director respectively. Helen had always said to Laura what a disaster it would be if Robin found out about her and Detlev.

'He'll use it to justify going for anyone he fancies,' she confided.

Laura had got the children up early, breakfasted, braved the early morning traffic jams and driven into town with them for nine o'clock. She parked in the long-stay park in the Old Town, but having arrived couldn't settle to shopping. Instead, she irritated herself and the children by passing in quick succession through several department stores without a clear notion about what style of summer outfit she was looking for and where she might find it. The kids grew increasingly restive. Sarah wanted the toilet and Matthew a drink. This took more time and chipped further away at her patience. She was able to change the skirt at M&S on the way. She finished up hunting through children's clothes stores for bargains and impulse buying one or two totally unsatisfactory items which neither Sarah nor Matthew liked. By ten o'clock she'd dropped the shopping back at the car and was already hanging about with the kids near the Ferens Art Gallery, but it was ten-fifteen before Helen turned up. They walked across Castle Street and sat outside the cafe at one of the tables by the yachts in the Marina. Ocean-going craft with half a dozen busy crew berthed side by side with tiny boats for sculling up and down the Humber. The breeze ruffled the water, jangling riggings on a hundred masts. Seagulls swooped and called raucously.

Helen was hardly aware of the colourful scene. It was earlier than she was used to stopping for coffee, but because it was later than she'd anticipated, she had that irritated sense of being late herself. Normally, she would have enjoyed the feeling of indulgence, but today she was angry and frustrated. She was mad with Robin for being so matter of fact about it, mad with herself for weakening and going to bed with him this morning. She was also very upset and not a little guilty about the tragedy of Detlev, but she couldn't take that on board at this moment. The frustration in her voice wasn't far from tears.

'Hell, Robin! First you were going, then you said you definitely weren't going. Now you are.'

'I wasn't,' he said sorrowfully.

'Just as I hoped we were moving onto an even keel you change the rules again. I can't believe it.'

'It's hardly me changing the rules. These research bodies are a law unto themselves, part of the uncertainty of academic life.'

'It can't be the Science Research Council. You told me the grants took ages to sort out.'

'No, it isn't,' he said hastily. 'It's our partner university. Someone's had to drop out.'

'Your wife has to suffer so you can fill the gap at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile another academic changes his mind and prefers to put his feet up.'

'It isn't like that. He's ill.'

'We have all this upheaval because one of your colleagues has the flu.'

'He hasn't got flu. He was told yesterday he's dying of cancer. He may only last a month.'

'Love it, don't you. Seeing me dig a pit for myself.'

Robin waved a hand: 'I didn't mean –'

'I thought the trip wasn't for another month.'

'They leave in less than a week.'

'You could follow on, presumably.'

'Unfortunately there's no chance of that. Either I go with them or we lose the tickets. That means we lose the place in the research team and possibly put the entire expedition, and the grant, in jeopardy.'

'So, suddenly, from not going at all, you're leaving immediately.'

'Well,' he said lamely, 'not exactly immediately.'

'Come on, Robin, within the next day or so.'

'I was due to go to the meeting in London anyway and the Oxford conference afterwards has been arranged for ages. It seems logical to return to Heathrow after that and hop on a plane.'

'That's all it is,' she said sarcastically, 'hopping on a plane.'

'That's the bad news.' He looked embarrassed and added brightly, 'The good news is, the man I'm replacing was taking his wife.'

'You'll be travelling with his wife?' Helen's heart went into a panic fluttering. 'Is she young and attractive?' She regretted the question as soon as she'd uttered it. But these were anxieties never far from the surface when you lived with Robin.

'No, silly. There's a place for another person. But he was paying. We'd have to pay for you to go. And it's full fare, no special deals.'

'You mean I could go, but we can't afford it,' Helen said bitterly.

'I could try the bank, but the University is a no-go area. Times are hard.'

'Forget it,' said Helen, knowing their overdraft and credit card debts piled higher each month. Another thought occurred to her: