‘How is your dear father? Still on the one day week?’ said Nicky.
Imogen giggled and knew she shouldn’t.
‘Oh come on, darling, you know he’s a pig.’
‘Only to me,’ said Imogen.
Nicky emptied the remains of the first bottle into her glass.
‘Who’s at home this evening?’ he said carefully.
‘No one,’ said Imogen without thinking. ‘Juliet’s staying the night with a friend, and Mummy and Daddy are taking the boys back and stopping for dinner with the vicar of Long Preston.’
Nicky picked up the unopened bottle of champagne.
‘Let’s go then.’
Outside it was pouring with rain, street lamp reflections quivering in the cobbled streets. People huddled in the dorway of the fish shop. The smell of frying fat wafted towards them.
‘Are you hungry?’ asked Nicky.
‘No,’ said Imogen.
The powerful headlamps of his car lit up the cow parsley flattened by the deluge. The rain rattled against the windscreen. In the light from the dashboard she could see Nicky’s profile.
‘I went for that drop shot at the right moment,’ he was saying. ‘I was beginning to get the right length, and make friends with the ball again.’
A vast pile of unopened letters and cables were scattered on the back seat. ‘Goodness, you get a lot of post,’ said Imogen. ‘It’s last week’s fan mail,’ said Nicky.
As he swung up the moorland road leading to the vicarage, he put his hand on her thigh, caressing her through the thick stiff material. She lifted her legs slightly off the seat, hoping to make them seem thinner.
The house was dark and empty except for Homer who welcomed them ecstatically, charging off upstairs and, returning with a pair of old grey pants Imogen had been wearing yesterday, deposited them at Nicky’s feet.
‘Extraordinary pants,’ said Nicky. ‘Not yours, are they?’
‘Goodness, no,’ lied Imogen. ‘They’re probably jumble.’
‘Look as though they belonged to your grandmother,’ said Nicky. ‘Go and get a couple of glasses, sweetheart.’
As Imogen threw the offending pants into the dustbin, she heard the champagne cork pop. She felt like a gas fire that had been left on unlit for too long — Nicky’s touch would be like a lit match, making her explode in a great gushing blue flame, singeing everything around including Homer’s eyebrows.
They sat drinking on the sofa. Nicky had turned off all the lights except one lamp in the corner. She was shaking with nerves again, quite unable to meet his eye.
‘It’s been awfully wet the last few weeks,’ she said.
‘It’s been awfully dry abroad,’ said Nicky, picking up the bottle.
‘No,’ squeaked Imogen putting her hand over her glass.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Nicky, so the champagne trickled through her fingers, and spilled icy cold down her sleeve, meeting the rivulets of sweat that were coming the other way. Desperate for something to do, she drained her glass and felt slightly dizzy.
‘Let’s get down to business,’ said Nicky and took her in his arms. ‘You like me, don’t you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she stammered, ‘I haven’t thought about anything else for a single minute since we met.’
She was achingly aware of him, his mouth over hers, his hands in her hair.
‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s go upstairs, much more comfortable. We’ve got hours of time. Homer will bark if anyone comes.’
‘Not at Daddy and Mummy, he won’t.’
‘They won’t even have started dinner yet.’
Imogen gazed up at Nicky with huge troubled eyes.
‘It’d kill my father.’
‘Hooray,’ said Nicky. ‘I’ll come and sell tickets at his funeral.’
Imogen tried and failed to look shocked. He put his hands round her waist. She came towards him, dissolving into him. He moved his hand under her sweater, and closed it over her breast.
Imogen started to struggle.
‘It’d be so awful,’ she muttered, ‘if I got pregnant.’
‘You’re not fixed up?’ he asked sharply. ‘When are you due?’
Imogen swallowed. She’d never discussed things like this with a man. ‘Tomorrow or the next day.’
‘No problem,’ said Nicky, relaxing, launching into the attack again. ‘That’s why your tits are so fantastic at the moment.’
She was glad to be able to hide her embarrassment in his shoulder. Now she felt his hand on her back. She’d never known anyone with such warm hands. Next moment he’d slipped it under her jeans, and was stroking her bottom.
‘You must stop,’ gasped Imogen as he pushed her back on the sofa, and removed her sweater. ‘I’ve never done it with anybody before,’ she said, emerging from the fluff.
‘I’m not just anybody,’ said Nicky. ‘And you can’t stop, sweetheart, any more than I can.’ Oh, help, thought Imogen, what’s happening to me. But next minute she froze with horror as the back door opened and Homer bounded out with a crash.
‘Yoo hoo,’ said a voice. ‘Anyone at home?’
‘
‘Keep cool,’ he murmured, kicking her bra under the sofa and tucking in his shirt.
‘We’re in here,’ he called.
‘Hullo Nicky,’ said her mother, walking into the room carrying a large marrow. ‘Hullo darling, what a beastly night. Isn’t it a shame, poor Mrs Westley’s got shingles? They tried to ring us but we’d already left. We didn’t stop to dinner, and came straight home. They gave us this.’ She waved the marrow. ‘Daddy’s putting the car away.’
‘Well, have some champagne to cheer you up,’ said Nicky.
Imogen rushed off to get more glasses, her heart hammering, feeling quite faint with horror. Just think if her father had found her and Nicky at it on the floor, in front of Homer too, she thought with an hysterical giggle. Thank God it was her mother who’d come in first.
As she went back into the drawing-room she heard her mother asking Nicky, ‘Do you think there’s any hope of Virginia Woolf winning Wimbledon?’
The rest of Nicky’s visit was disastrous. They’d all gone to bed early and Nicky had whispered to Imogen on the stairs, ‘
But alas, the vicar, suffering from one of his periodic bouts of insomnia, had decided to sleep — or rather not sleep — in his dressing-room, which was equidistant between Imogen’s room and the spare room. There he lay with the light on and the door ajar, pretending to read Donne’s sermons, but actually brooding on former glories, a row of silver cups on the chest of drawers and framed pictures of muscular men with folded arms round the wall.
Imogen lay shivering with terror in bed. And every time Nicky tried to steal down the passage, the vicar, who had ears on elastic, called out, ‘Is that you, my dear?’ So Nicky had to bolt into the lavatory. By one o’clock, mindful that he might rot up his chances in the Scottish Open tomorrow, he gave up and fell into a dreamless sleep. Imogen, who didn’t sleep at all, could hardly bear to look at his sulky face next morning.
‘Well that was a lead balloon, wasn’t it?’ he said, getting into his car. Tears filled Imogen’s eyes. This was obviously good-bye for good. Then, noticing the violet shadows under the brimming eyes, Nicky relented. It wasn’t her fault. If the vicar hadn’t come home unexpectedly, she’d have dropped like a ripe plum into his hands. ‘You couldn’t help it. I shall be much freer once the American Open’s over. Would your parents ever let you come away for a week-end?’
Imogen shook her head. ‘I doubt it.’
‘Have you got any holiday left?’
‘A fortnight in September.’
