Now they were actually here, Shauna was dubious. She took in the house, the grounds, the expensive cars parked out front. Thought of that visit from Jeb, him saying never forget your roots. But fuck that. This was what she craved. All of this.

‘You didn’t tell me it was Blenheim bloody Palace,’ she said.

‘I didn’t know,’ said Josh. ‘Come on, Shaun. They’re just people. They don’t bite.’

‘If you say so.’

‘There’s no way those tits are real,’ said Shauna to Josh an hour later, as they stood for a moment alone in a conservatory that wouldn’t have disgraced Kew Gardens.

‘Shaun!’ Josh said, laughing and glancing around in case the lady of the house had returned and heard. She hadn’t.

‘These are real though,’ said Shauna, and with a cheeky grin she yanked down the zip on the front of her dress and gave him an arousing flash of nude dark-brown nipples. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

‘Shaun! Behave!’ But Josh was grinning. One of the best things about Shauna’s figure was her big perky tits, and she knew it. Not even breastfeeding Connor had altered the beauty of them, and Josh had only to see them to get a hard-on like a concrete pole.

Shauna picked up her champagne flute. ‘I’m telling you. No way are they real,’ she said.

Josh sighed. Shauna had taken against Dave’s wife on sight. And vice versa. From the very first greeting, it had been clear that the two women were not going to be buddies. Philippa, Dave’s missus, was a tall patrician blonde with an elitist manner. She had an ex-model’s slim hips and long legs and – yes, Shaun was probably right – impossibly full, pert breasts that looked weird perched upon her skinny ribcage.

Dave seemed a lot older than Philippa. In fact, he looked like a weathered little gnome standing by the side of his glamorous wife, the poor cunt. There was no doubt that he was loaded and had probably paid for those plastic tits on his credit card.

‘There you are, the pair of you,’ said Dave, joining them, bottle of Bollinger in hand. ‘Top-up, anyone?’

He refilled both their glasses. Josh thought that Dave was already half-cut and that was only on a couple of glasses of bubbly. You wouldn’t take this cunt out on a Friday night with the lads; one whiff of the barmaid’s apron and he’d be flat on the floor.

‘Phil’s dynamite in the kitchen,’ he said with a smile. ‘Dynamite at hiring catering staff, anyway,’ he added, and although he was half-laughing there was something bitter in the way he said it. ‘Come on through to the lounge. You haven’t seen it yet, have you?’