Ed tugged the zipper right down the curved small of her back. Then he gently slipped the straps off her shoulders, and pulled down the front of her gown, baring her breasts. In the mirror, he could see how large and rounded they were, and how wide her pink areolas spread. He watched his hand reach around her, and clasp her left breast as if it were a heavy, ripe fruit.

Della stretched her neck back, and kissed him. He pulled her gown right down, and she was standing in front of the mirror naked. The shape of her pale body was punctuated only by the petal-pink spots of her nipples and the gingery plume of her pubic hair.

They said nothing. There was nothing for them to say. Ed stripped off his shirt, and took down his pants. Then he sat on the edge of the tub and clasped Della around the waist, pulling her towards him, so that at last she lowered herself on his lap. As the steam from the running water gradually hazed up the bathroom mirror completely, they were able to see Della opening her thighs wide, and straddling Ed’s legs, so that the dark hard head of his penis could slide its way between the rose-coloured lips of her vulva, right up as far as his black-haired balls; but then they could make out nothing more than two blurred impressionistic figures, two different patterns reflected in a surface like breathed-on mercury.

Ed clutched Della’s soft, big breasts, resting his cheek against her back and thrusting and thrusting until he felt that it wasn’t humanly possible to thrust any deeper. Della threw her head from one side to the other, gasping and shuddering with the feeling of what Ed was doing to her. And when Ed at last ejaculated, she bent forward and said, ‘Oh, that’s beautiful,’ even though she hadn’t reached a climax herself.

Afterward, they sat in the bedroom, wrapped in huge soft yellow towels, watching each other with new awareness. Della hadn’t told him yet, but she didn’t want to sleep with him in his marital bed. The act would only have been symbolic, but it was more than she felt he was prepared to give her, and more than she was prepared to take – at least until they knew each other better.

Ed said, ‘Was I better than Shearson Jones?’

She looked at him wide-eyed. ‘How do you know I’ve ever made love to Shearson Jones?’

‘Have you?’

She smiled at him. Not too broadly. She didn’t want to antagonise him. ‘Would it matter to you if I had?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’m being ridiculously jealous, the way most new lovers are.’