THE DROPOUT

'What the hell was that noise?' I said, rubbing my eyes. 'There's someone downstairs.'

I stretched out an arm to retrieve my glasses in the darkness, so I could better focus on the solid black around me.

A groaning from below was clearly audible.  

'Wake up,' I hissed. 'I'm going down.'  As I reached out to prod my wife, it became evident that the other side of the bed was no longer occupied. Suddenly, I could hear raised voices in French, and I remembered where I was.

That was our first and last treehouse holiday, and the end of my wife's somnambulatory episodes - you can't sleepwalk if you're paralysed from the waist down.

Even today, four years after the accident, the sight of her distorted limbs makes me shudder - a salutary lesson of the absolute necessity of taking out holiday insurance.

Ironically, my new wife won't go near a treehouse - she has vertigo, and gets dizzy reading a tall story.