And Milton Werner, who for his own sake had only stared, never touched, could hold back no longer as her bosom rose in front of his eyes. He took Frances’ face in both his hands and kissed her more passionately than she had ever been kissed in her life. Then he fell upon her breasts with a sort of strangled cry. To her great astonishment he ripped her dress, actually ripped it in his hurry to get at her.

‘Milton—’ she began, but it was too late. He tore desperately at her dress again as he pushed his face against her large breasts. He sucked and whimpered and then he cried out you are so beautiful. He began heaving and rocking in a most extraordinary manner, Frances was pushed back into the side of the sofa, pinned down by a man in a suit heaving like a rhinoceros. He cried out very loudly and then became completely still.

The whole exercise had taken about forty-five seconds.

There was silence in Frances’ sitting room except for Milton Werner trying to regain his breath and the loud ticking of the Victorian clock on the mantelpiece which Frances had bought long ago from a secondhand shop while playing in a Christmas pantomime at Crewe.

She gave a tiny sigh.

And then despite herself she began to laugh.

‘Poor Milton,’ she said, trying to hold her dress together as she laughed. ‘You’ve come all over your suit, you’ll have to get it express dry-cleaned in the morning before you fly away.’

Milton Werner pulled himself up off the sofa; as he did so he knocked over the cup of coffee, still steaming, that Frances had placed on the floor; it ran all over her light pink carpet. The girl that I marry will have to be as soft and as pink as a nursery, the old, stupid words went round and round in her mind. Milton didn’t know where to look, gestured hopelessly at the stain on the floor, averted his eyes from the stain on his cream trousers.

Frances got up too, pulled her torn dress around her still exposed breasts. She went into her bedroom, took off the dress, put on an old dressing gown, wondered, poor Milton, how to retrieve the situation so that he didn’t feel too humiliated.

But when she came back into the sitting room Milton Werner had gone.

After some moments she took a cloth and some water, rubbed desultorily at the carpet. Then she put some milk in a pot on the stove to make herself a cup of cocoa. She would have liked to phone Emmy or Harry, someone to share such a ludicrous experience with, but decided to wait until morning, till she could laugh more wholeheartedly, she’d feel better in the morning. She would call it My Night With Milton.