‘There’s no bathroom,’ she explained, ‘just a shower that comes off the water tank, but when we were here during the holidays we’d swim every day, so most of the time we’d stay salty. Well, Tom and I would anyway.’ She walked to the back door and threw it open. ‘And of course there’s the dunny way up there,’ she said, pointing to the outhouse among the trees twenty yards up the slope.

She rejoined him at the table, where he hadn’t unpacked his own kit; his bathing costume and towel, and the bottle of champagne he’d purchased from a black-market contact and brought along as a special surprise. He was simply standing there, watching her every movement.

‘Do you want to go for a swim?’ she asked.

He thought she seemed to be talking a lot and he wondered whether she might be nervous, or perhaps even regretting her decision. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

‘No.’

They stood motionless, looking at each other, both wondering who would make the first move.

It might have been presumed that Betty would be the bold one, it was she who had initiated their first kiss after all, and the consummation of their love too had been her idea. But she remained frozen. She didn’t quite know why. She wasn’t nervous. She knew what to expect of sex. She wasn’t regretting her decision either. So why was she hesitant? Perhaps it was the awful possibility that she might be disappointed, that making love with Kasey might be the altogether forgettable experience it had been with the Australian soldier to whom she had surrendered her virginity. What if her romantic dream was on the verge of being shattered?

So Kasey made the first move. He kissed her. Not with burning passion, nor in a sexually explorative way, but as he had before, tenderly, lovingly. Then taking her in his arms, he whispered, ‘Let’s dance.’

And they did. In perfect unison. The dance was a foxtrot, but performed very, very slowly as they circled about the table of the little wooden shack.

‘Can you hear the music?’ he murmured, his lips brushing her ear, his breath fanning her neck.

‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘oh yes, I can.’ She could hear the music with utter clarity, the piano, the string section, a full orchestra. Betty was in heaven.

They circumnavigated the table three times before he danced her into one of the bedrooms, she didn’t know which one, and they kept swaying to the music while they kissed and slowly undressed each other. Then as they made love, still slowly to start with, romance steadily grew to become passion, Betty giving herself to him with a fervour that matched his own. And the music was still there, the brass section now joining in, louder and louder and bolder and bolder, rising to an almighty crescendo.

Betty’s first orgasm did not disappoint.