‘That’s where it shows,’ Flora said, slapping at the loose skin of her under-arm. ‘There, and under the eyes.’

She peered appraisingly at herself in the mirror, pulling faces as if she were alone, and I was embarrassed by her candour. (Though I have as much interest in my appearance as most women, I feel it is somehow degrading to admit it. Before we came away, I bought a special cream supposed to restore elasticity to the skin, but I destroyed the wrapper on the jar and accompanying, incriminating literature, as furtively as I had, when young, removed the cover of a book on sex.)

Perhaps, I thought, sitting on the bed and watching Flora, perhaps I feel like this because I am ashamed to be a woman, a member of that subjugated race who preoccupations are so trivial and unimportant.

Flora has no such inhibitions. Successful in a masculine world, she has the confidence to be feminine when she feels like it.

‘I suppose,’ she said, with one last, earnest look in the mirror, ‘it’s something to be almost done with the bloody decades. Perhaps one should have an artificial menopause and be done with them altogether. A new life at forty! I believe it works marvellously, as long as you keep up the hormones.’

‘You don’t look forty.’

At this moment she didn’t. Flat-chested, narrow-hipped, her fair hair sleek from swimming, she looked like an impish boy.