'Us?' Victor said. 'Why?'
'Because I say so.'
'Are we doing something wrong?' Wally asked.
'No, honey, you're not. I just want to be left alone for a moment with daddy.'
I felt myself shrink inside my skin. I wanted to run. I wanted to rush out the front door and go running down the street and hide.
'Get yourself a coffee, Vic,' she said, 'and sit down.' Her voice was quite flat. There was no anger in it. There was just nothing. And she still wouldn't look at me. The boys went out, taking the comic section with them.
'Shut the door,' Mary said to them.
I put a spoonful of powdered coffee into my cup and poured boiling water over it. I added milk and sugar. The silence was shattering. I crossed over and sat down in my chair opposite her. It might just as well have been an electric chair, the way I was feeling.
'Listen, Vic,' she said, looking into her coffee cup. 'I want to get this said before I lose my nerve and then I won't be able to say it.'
'For heaven's sake, what's all the drama about?' I asked. 'Has something happened?'
'Yes, Vic, it has.'
'What?'
Her face was pale and still and distant, unconscious of the kitchen around her.
'Come on, then, out with it,' I said bravely.
'You're not going to like this very much,' she said, and her big blue haunted-looking eyes rested a moment on my face, then travelled away.
'What am I not going to like very much?' I said. The sheer terror of it all was beginning to stir my bowels. I felt the same way as those burglars the cops had told me about.
'You know I hate talking about love-making and all that sort of thing,' she said. 'I've never once talked to you about it all the time we've been married.'
'That's true,' I said.
She took a sip of her coffee, but she wasn't tasting it. 'The point is this,' she said. 'I've never liked it. If you really want to know, I've hated it.'
'Hated what?' I asked.
'Sex,' she said. 'Doing it.'
'Good Lord!' I said.
'It's never given me even the slightest little bit of pleasure.'
This was shattering enough in itself, but the real cruncher was still to come, I felt sure of that.
'I'm sorry if that surprises you,' she added.
I couldn't think of anything to say, so I kept quiet.
Her eyes rose again from the coffee cup and looked into mine, watchful, as if calculating something, then fell again. 'I wasn't ever going to tell you,' she said. 'And I never would have if it hadn't been for last night.'
I said very slowly, 'What about last night?'
'Last night,' she said, 'I suddenly found out what the whole crazy thing is all about.'
'You did?'