‘We’re getting married,’ said Terry, and despite herself Nula felt the world all around her freeze into immobility. Her heart literally sank. But this was reality and she had to take it on the chin. All her dreams of Terry were fruitless, stupid. The fantasy of her ever getting with him was done. Instead, she had Charlie Stone.

It was Charlie for her now, or nothing.

That night, they had sex, proper sex, for the very first time. But while Charlie was doing her, kissing her, caressing her, Nula couldn’t help it: she wanted to, but she couldn’t. She thought of Terry, and her climax nearly sent her crashing through the ceiling.

22

Charlie discovered that there were other things besides dealing drugs; for instance, you could tax the people who did it. Rob them of their stash. After all, what could they do about it? They couldn’t go to the police. Charlie was mob-handed, he owned the manor and he was expanding at speed; he had the toughest crew for miles around. The victim’s only recourse was to tap on some other underworld mobster’s door and hope he’d help – which was unlikely, once he heard that Charlie Stone was involved.

And Charlie had other things taking up his time now. Nula, for one. Nula had come as a shock. He’d never had a lot of time for women, but he actually liked her. Now she’d lost that gigantic phizog of hers she was a pretty girl. She fucked like a weasel and sometimes she had a tongue on her sharp as a whip; he liked that very much. She answered him back and no one did that. No one except Nula.

On the morning of Terry and Jill’s wedding, Charlie was sitting on a chair with his trousers round his ankles and Nula was straddling him, bouncing up and down on his cock with enthusiasm. It had come as quite a surprise to Nula that she enjoyed sex. She thought it surprised Charlie, too.

Nowadays Nula barely went home at all; mostly she stayed with Charlie right here in his house. They had been together all yesterday evening and overnight. Then they’d got up, cleaned up, and Nula had put on the peach gown and the matching ostrich feather hat and the high silver heels she had selected to wear for the wedding.

She was still wearing the hat and the silver heels: nothing else. Charlie had come back into the bedroom saying how fantastic she looked in the dress, and next thing he had it off her, and her underwear, and then they were on the chair and Nula was shimmying up and down on Charlie’s prick.

Charlie was quiet this morning. Usually he was very vocal during sex, shouting ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ as she attended to him, but today he was clearly not himself.

‘Something up?’ asked Nula, panting, stopping mid-bounce.