He moves on to my ears, a kiss that makes my nipples stand erect, and me emit little moans that drown out to my own ears the loud, distracting sound of Cumberbatch swiping dock leaves and tearing nettles and long grasses very close to the rickety stoop.

JM’s hands are caressing my breasts, now, and I am allowed to kiss him back, but not for very long, for he breaks off, to give each breast in turn the attention it deserves. As he nibbles and pulls with his mouth, his hands find my bush, and with light fingers he flutters about there, as if he is a moth caught inside a lampshade.

Almost screaming after five agonizingly pleasurable minutes, I make a grab, to put him, now angrily slapping against both our bellies, inside, but he holds both my arms down, and puts his tongue to my core, like a cat lapping up a dish of cream so as not to miss a single drop. I find myself gripping his ears and tugging at the locks curling over them, beside myself, and a strange animal noise escapes from me as the mounting, Wagnerian crescendo overtakes me. I really do hope at this point that all the Spodders are, as requested, attending the meeting about slug clearance or whatever it is.

Jesse Marlon covers my body with his. ‘You should be available on the NHS,’ I say, laughing, and playing with his hair, lying there all soft and open.

His eyes flicker, and I glimpse that look of remote determination flit across his flushed, darkened face. I realize he has plans for me, plans he has carried out to a juddering conclusion on several occasions previously. He turns me over so that I lie face down on the rug. I giggle, but a little nervously, as he pulls me up from the waist so I’m on my knees, ass in his face, at his mercy, before him, braced for what I know will follow. ‘It’s the best form of contraception I know,’ says Jesse Marlon, ‘and easily the most enjoyable.’

‘Please. Be gentle,’ I say, head now buried submissively in the rug.

Outside the straw and cob dwelling, Cumberbatch starts up a sort of strangled bleating, as if in sympathy. I can hear the Spodders trudge past carrying armfuls of brashings cut from the Douglas firs, and hope they cannot hear the rhythmic cries audible from the straw house built by Jesse Marlon. Paces away, home-schooled children are sitting making mud-pies, or playing with the camp kitty, known as Camp Kitty, and darting in and out of each other’s shelters like swifts.

Jesse Marlon’s kettle steams weakly from its spout, and a drip that has been trembling on the spout for ages finally falls, and hisses on the hotplate.

Mimi