Approaching fifty, May Duggan was taken aback by her vigorous sexual response. At a time of her life when most other women bowed to the inevitability of warm flushes and waning libido, by some strange quirk of nature May seemed to have been given an additional blast of hormones. She became prey to sexual fantasy. It took very little to set her off. A fleeting glimpse of a young cadet's cheeky little buttocks encased in tight pants was enough to feed her lust for a week, by which time some other eroticism became fuel for her lascivious imagination. She was a woman of Brunhildan proportions - breasts, belly and buttocks formed after the fashion of a more voluptuous age. Her own milky reflection dimly seen in the pocked mirror over the washstand was an add incitement. She began to explore her body in a way previously foreign to her. Sometimes it was the plush feeling of her inner thigh which mesmerised her. She would stroke her satiny flank, imagining how it would feel to a lover's hand. With fluctuating hormone levels, her breasts became tender and bursting as overripe mangoes. Palpating her nipples lazily, she would stare down at them, livid and erect, and wish it were anatomically possible for her to taste them as her husband and children had. It was as if a fire had ignited in her bloodstream. She accepted that her metabolism was disturbed. She waited for it to right itself.

She took to wearing lighter garments and impulsively flinging wide the windows. But as the weeks passed she became so highly charged that even the rub of cotton against her flesh was a sensuous delight. One particularly humid night in June, while her husband lay, an inert lump, in their featherbed, she restlessly threw back the covers and stole out to the wooded slopes behind their house, avid for the cool currents of air on her bare skin. The thought of discovery heightened her excitement and she quivered expectantly, naked except for a pair of wellington boots. Sounds distorted by the night startled her. A wood pigeon rising with clashing wings from its perch, the jeering call of a nighthawk form the topmost tree. On hearing voices nearby, she stealthily made her way between the boles of trees, always within earshot of her unseen companions. She shadowed them to the outer perimeters of the sylvan mass and crouched, hidden by an overhanging fern, as they passed close by. She felt the ground tremble beneath their tramping feet, heard the staccato snapping of twigs grow faint as they drew further away. Careless of encounter, she openly travelled home by the main track, a pale blob in boots, an ageing wood nymph. She crooned a song. Her hormones were in riot.