Hermione: What are you looking at?
Imogen: Nothing.
Hermione: But you’re peeping through a crack in the curtains.
Imogen: It’s nothing. Just checking the weather.
Hermione: No need. It’s frosty and the sun is shining. A glorious February afternoon. The setting sun has turned golden red on a downy bed of soft rippled cloud and is casting long shadows through the leafless branches...
Imogen: Shush.
Hermione: I want to see what you’re staring at. You’ve been there nearly a quarter of an hour.
Imogen: Nothing.
Hermione: It must be something. I can hear something... a sort of grunt followed by a cracking sound.
Imogen: You’re imagining it.
Hermione: I’m going to look for myself.
Imogen: No... oh all right. But don’t twitch the curtains.
Hermione: Why it’s Jory splitting logs. What’s so interesting about that?
Imogen: Nothing.
Hermione: Oh, I get it. You’re fascinated by his thermo-regulation. He’s stripped to the waist and sweat is running off his torso in rivulets like snow fed streams down...
Imogen: Please. Now move over, I want to check up on the weather.
Hermione: OK. Let’s open the curtains just a crack so we can both see better.
Imogen: Just a crack. Very slowly. We don’t want to disturb him.
Hermione: He’s very muscular isn’t he?
Imogen: I hadn’t noticed.
Hermione: Muscles in places were other men don’t have places.
Imogen: I hadn’t noticed.
Hermione: And those Lycra shorts are very tight.
Imogen: Stop it. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
Hermione: I don’t think I like that Scythian tattoo on his left shoulder though.
Imogen: It’s disgusting isn’t it?
Hermione: Something more Cornish would be better. A dragon perhaps.
Imogen: He’s an animal, with all that grunting.
Hermione: So why is one watching him?
Imogen: Morbid fascination. He’s like something out of a horror film.
Hermione: Or a fireman’s calendar.
Imogen: Yuk. That’s so not us.
Hermione: I think he’s rather gorgeous.
Imogen: I can see that he might appeal to a certain type of woman.
Hermione: The sort who like firemen.
Imogen: Quite. He’d appeal to the atavistic type of woman.
Hermione: One can almost see his hitting a woman with a club and dragging her by her ponytail into his cave.
Imogen: Don’t it’s too horrible to think about.
Hermione: If I didn’t know better I’d think you fancied him a little.
Imogen: No. Never in a thousand years. Too disgusting for words... I’d rather die. Although perhaps there’s a tiny, shameful part of me that... no, that’s not true.
Hermione: But you’re happily married to Vere.
Imogen: The term is sometimes an oxymoron.
Hermoione: But not always.
Imogen: Vere can be forgetful at times.
Hermione: Forgetful?
Imogen: Of his duties.
Hermione: It’s all right. A lot of women fancy a bit of rough.
Imogen: I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.
Hermione: He’s very short of money.
Imogen: What’s that got to do with anything?
Hermione: The bailiffs took away his TV and microwave yesterday.
Imogen: That sort of man is often improvident.
Hermione: It’s very difficult when you’ve got two hungry children who need shoes and gloves.
Imogen: He’s certainly not bringing his verminous family around here for meals. I saw nits hopping around in his son's hair the other day.
Hermione: It was dandruff. And nits don't hop.
Imogen: Fleas are just as bad.
Hermione: Two hundred pounds would go a long way with a man like that.
Imogen: Two hundred pounds?
Hermione: He’s desperate. They're both desperate.They’ve got debts... they can’t afford to heat their cottage. When the food bank is empty, he and his wife have to scavenge round the back of supermarkets at night for out of date food.
Imogen: What’s a food bank?
Hermione: It's a sort of soup kitchen with tins... and he’s a very proud man. Two hundred and fifty would be better.
Imogen: Hmmm. Perhaps one should try to restore the man’s dignity.
Hermione: That would be so kind.
Imogen: What about his wife?
Hermione: I understand that pragmatism is the dominant ethos in their cottage.
Imogen: We’ve never had this conversation.
Hermione: Mum’s the word. It’s the sort of thing Lady Godiva would have done.
Imogen: I might have to grow my hair a bit longer...