‘You’re a hot bit of stuff,’ he breathed, nuzzling her ear for good measure.

It was funny, she reflected, how many men had tried to nuzzle her ear and tell her, slavering appreciatively about the chops, that she was a hot bit of stuff. She certainly had small, high breasts and nice legs. There must be a bull market in small, high breasts, she decided, and realised that Jim’s hand, which had up till now been putting in some solid spadework on her left shoulder, was now shuffling hopefully down towards one of the said small, high landmarks.

‘No,’ she said as firmly as she could. She felt mean, but how could she explain that though she usually let boys she particularly liked, after a reasonably plush evening out, get about as far as Camp Five on one of the small, high properties already catalogued, she always insisted on his going the proper way about it. The proper way about it, as far as she was concerned, was arm round shoulders, kiss, stroke back, hand inside blouse and stroke back inside, then bash on to the breast.

‘Oh, God,’ groaned Patrick. ‘Back to square one. Every time I go up even the tiniest ladder I find there’s a ruddy great snake waiting at the top. What’s on your mind, young lady? Don’t you like normal healthy relations between blokes and blokesses? Do you think there’s something wrong with a healthy dollop of good old British snogging?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said quickly. ‘I think it’s nice. It’s just that there’s a Right and a Wrong Way of Going About It.’

‘Oh, God,’ groaned Graham. ‘You’re not going to give me that stuff about your precious virginity, are you? Because you know where you can stuff that, don’t you? Where the monkey put his nuts.’

She snorted involuntarily. She could not be angry for long with a man who wooed her with jokes like that. She let him put his arm round her again. It was nice, she decided. She did not even raise any objection when, after a decent interval had elapsed, he began to push through a tentative programme of ear-nibbling, back-stroking, and knee-fingering. Having her ear nibbled was a nice sensation. She had a nice feeling in her back and her knee.

‘I’ve knocked about a bit in my time,’ he breathed, ‘but cross my heart and hope to die, I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone else in the world – you’re the real cat’s pyjamas, sweetie. No kidding.’

He kissed her, and the kiss seemed to go on for about a million years. A curious sensation ran through her that for a moment she couldn’t find a word to describe. Then, when his lips took off for a brief holiday from the job in hand, she realised what it was.

‘That was nice,’ she said.

A moment later she could feel a dirty great hand fumbling with the moorings of the good ship brassière.

‘Sorry, cobber,’ she said, regretfully hoisting herself into the vertical. ‘But this is where you and I definitely come to the parting of the ways.’