I settled into my deep, bubbly bath and picked up my book.

With any luck I would have twenty minutes all to myself while my husband took his turn to scream at the children.

I turned to the page that had been folded at the top and began to read. Something wasn't right.

Either I was having a fit of amnesia or the plot had jumped ahead. I flicked through the previous couple of pages and didn't recognise them either.

It then dawned on me what had happened. "Sweetheart," I yelled. Several minutes later my husband came running up the stairs.

"What is it?" he panted, holding a Barbie doll in one hand and a sicky baby's vest in the other.

"I can't stop long as I've left Eve and Max playing with a bottle of bleach."

I waved my book (East of the Mountains, by David Guterson) at him. "You've been doing it again."

"Doing what?" he replied, affecting an air of innocence.

"Reading my book," I said crossly. "Honestly, why can't you just wait until I've finished?"

He could see it was pointless denying the charge, but he came up with his own defence. "Well, you shouldn't leave it lying around. Anyway, you're taking ages. You're still only on page 28."

"That's because I am so tired by the evening that I fall asleep after two paragraphs."

"Do you want me to tell you what happens after he crashes his car?"

"No I don't," I said, ushering him out of the bathroom. "Get your own book."

Usually the books I read are of no interest to my husband. He wouldn't dream of picking up Bridget Jones' Diary or Jane Eyre. And we have never had to fight over my psychology texts - except when he has suggested they're taking up valuable shelf space and that it was about time we took them to a charity shop.

I feel the same about my husband's science fiction collection (which, he assures me, is of the highest quality) and his weighty tomes about the Hapsburg Empire. I'm afraid that, in our house, Iain M Banks and Charlotte Bronte are unhappy bedfellows.

Occasionally, however, I hit upon a novel that also appeals to my husband. And we end up with the antithesis of a book club.

We had this upset over the fourth Harry Potter installment. Given that he had turned his nose up at the first three books, dismissing them as "fantasies for children", I had thought the risk of leaving HP and the Goblet of Fire around was pretty minimal.

But when the book went missing from the bathroom, where I do my reading and was mysteriously found in my husband's workbag several days later, my suspicions were aroused.

"Er, it was spirited there by Voldemort," said my husband, who's knowledge of Harry Potter's arch enemy confirmed his guilt.

Unfortunately, his crime turned me off reading any more Harry Potter.

"I'm surprised you liked it anyway," said my husband. "I thought I was the one that liked science fiction."

"I wasn't reading it for the science fiction," I said. "I was having a nice relationship with the characters."

This was what I had hoped to develop with the David Guterson novel, which is a story about a man dying of cancer who revisits the mountains of his childhood. But my husband's interference is spoiling it for me.

"Why are you reading a story about a man who's going shooting?" he asked.

"Do you have some sort of fascination with guns?"