Kneeling down in front of him, smothering the thought that in another context this would be extremely erotic, Holly found herself nose to groin with Charlie. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes,’ Charlie hissed. ‘Never more so.’

Hands trembling slightly, suddenly nervous, Holly reached out and gently unbuckled Charlie’s tan leather belt, before fumbling a little with the button of his trousers. Finally managing to release it, she unzipped his flies, trying not to notice Charlie’s figure-hugging grey boxer shorts, or, to be truthful, to stare at what they contained. From this angle, had she dared to look for longer than a second, the view was very interesting.

‘Do you want me to, er, take your trousers down?’ Holly asked, glancing upwards at Charlie. Because he was bent over, his face was quite close to hers, and she felt a stab of sympathy as she realised just how embarrassed he was by this whole situation.

‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ Charlie said stiffly, his face rather flushed.

‘OK. Here goes. Try not to let go of the mouse while I do it.’

‘Bugger the mouse,’ Charlie muttered, but his hands stayed put either side of it.

Carefully, mindful of the strange angle and not wanting Charlie to be mortified any more than he was already, Holly eased down Charlie’s trousers until they were around his knees. ‘I think you can let go now,’ she said as they both paused.

‘I’m not sure I can,’ Charlie said.

‘Of course you can,’ Holly said, stifling the urge to laugh again. Charlie’s constituents would have a field day with this if they ever found out. The MP and the mouse would be a story to dine out on. If she ever went to dinner parties, that was.

‘Shit. You’d better undo my shoes, too, before I take off my trousers or it’ll get stuck if it goes down.’

Holly lost the battle against the giggles this time, but, not daring to look Charlie in the eye, she quickly untied his shoes and helped him to step out of them.

‘OK, we’re good,’ she said. ‘If you take your top hand away, I’ll pull your trousers right down and hopefully I’ll be able to catch the little bugger on the way out. Three… two… one…’

In a split second, Holly found herself crushed under Charlie’s weight as he caught his right foot in the hem of his trousers and fell forward. From the corner of her eye, she saw the small, brown field mouse, the cause of so much aggravation, scuttle out from the top of Charlie’s left trouser leg and dash underneath her sideboard, but what was more pressing was the warm, slightly trembling body that had ended up on top of hers, and the stirring of something even more alive than the mouse inside a certain pair of grey boxer shorts.