Aphrodite's Hat by Salley Vickers

ever and ever amen. Just tonight. So we remember the bus ride.’
    In the morning she said, ‘I’m catching an early train. Don’t argue, the ticket’s booked and I can’t change it. But this here –’ handing him a leaflet – ‘is about an exhibition I’m showing some work at soon. Come and visit me if you fancy seeing it.’
    William was back home and reading in the sitting room with the larger tortoiseshell cat on his knee when Helena returned from Paris. She sailed in, bearing a flat white box which when opened revealed some exquisite cherry tarts.
    â€˜How was your arty trip?’ She kissed him graciously, still smelling gorgeous, not, in truth, wanting to know.
    â€˜Immense fun.’
    â€˜Really?’ Helena raised her perfectly symmetrical eyebrows. William could usually be counted on to have a dull time.
    â€˜Really. I found a pleasant hotel. Next time you go off on one of your jaunts I might go away again.’
    Helena’s scarlet mouth made the slightest movement of resistance. ‘If the hotel’s that good, then perhaps I’ll come too.’
    â€˜I don’t think it’s your cup of tea. I had to have supper in the local fish and chip shop and there was a traumatic bus ride from St Ives. I doubt I shall ever recover.’ He hoped he never would.
    â€˜Food in the hotel no good?’
    â€˜Not in the circs, no.’
    â€˜Doesn’t sound much fun to me.’ She glanced at the book. ‘What are you reading?’ She never usually asked.
    â€˜It’s about modern sculpture.’ He closed the book, marking his place with a leaflet. He nodded down at it. ‘There’s an interesting exhibition coming on in Derbyshire. I might go.’
    Helena gave a dramatic shiver. ‘Derbyshire? Brrrr. Chilly.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said William, comfortably. ‘I know. That wouldn’t be your cup of tea either.’

THE SPHINX
    â€˜Did you know that Sphinx means “strangler”, and that she strangled travellers who couldn’t solve her riddles?’ Sylvie Armstrong asked a fellow guest during a dull conversation about Egypt at a dinner party.
    â€˜I wonder how the bodies were disposed of?’ was the rejoinder.
    Sylvie was impressed. The young man seated beside her was beautiful and she had asked the question expecting a more sentimental response.
    Sylvie’s husband, Phillip, whose son was an archaeologist out on a dig in Egypt and had raised the topic under discussion, shot a look across the table. She knew that look. It meant: please don’t embarrass me in public.
    â€˜She ate them, I think,’ Sylvie continued. ‘Though they never explained the “whys” of that sort of thing, did they, the ancients? I mean, why would one mind so much if one’s riddles remained unanswered?’
    â€˜Perhaps it was disappointment,’ was the young man’s response to that. ‘Maybe she didn’t know the answers herself and strangled them in frustration when they failed to come up to expectation.’
    A psychoanalyst who had been lecturing the rest of the table on the manifestations, late in life, of addiction to the breast, shoved his oar in at that point. Perhaps it had to do with an infantile fear of being smothered by the placenta at birth? he suggested, somewhat aggressively bringing up the Oedipus complex. But Sylvie was too intrigued by her young man to be led into the misty labyrinth of psychoanalytic theory.
    â€˜I expect you’re right.’ Her eyes covertly surveyed his across the table. He had, she noted, the mild china-blue eyes of a certain breed of expensive cat. ‘But you can’t help wondering why someone so powerful needed someone else to supply them with answers.’
    â€˜It is of the essence of power,’ the young man equably suggested, ‘to look for a match.’
    â€˜And ditch it when it proves unequal …?’ Sylvie