The first time, Felicity had sounded surprised.

Oh!

She had sounded surprised, and in a way she was, because Felicity Porcelline would never dream of undoing the zip of the Karakarook butcher. It was simply that, well, here they were, and his zip was undone.

After that first time, she had not bothered to be surprised. It could not be she herself who was doing it, but it was best not to look too closely at the mechanism by which the zip of the Karakarook butcher fell open.

Once the zip was open, Freddy Chang became all of a piece. The bulge of flesh over his hip joined with the V-shaped sling of muscle that ran down into his groin and held his soft organs. The springy hair of his pubic area ran up into a narrow black line of hair to his navel and tapered away up towards his smooth brown chest.

Naked, he was not untidy any more. It was an interesting fact that a naked person did not look untidy. Naked, Freddy Chang was no longer Chinese, either. She never thought about him being Chinese when he had no clothes on, even though she had never done it with anyone Chinese before.

They always did the poses before they did what she liked to think of, vaguely, as the other thing. The poses got her in the mood, and by the time she had done the poses for a few minutes, the Felicity Anne Porcelline who was the wife of the Manager of the Karakarook Branch of the Land &Pastoral Bank, whose floor was clean enough to eat off and who never, ever forgot to moisturise before she went to bed, was not paying attention.

What sat under the lights, doing the poses, was just skin. It did not go by any rules because it did not need to think. It did not seem to care about anything. It did not even wear a wedding ring. That was in the handbag, on the floor near the door, getting dust on the suede. Felicity Anne Porcelline would never put her good bag down on the floor like that to get dusty, but the skin took no notice of the dust on the suede, only arranged itself in various poses, one after the other, peach-like and perfect under the lights.

Marvellous! Yes! Perfect!

His photos were always excellent. Every time she went back, he showed her the ones from the time before. You could have been a professional,he always said. Honest.

The face on the prints smiled back at her: winsome, thoughtful, surprised, serious. It could do all the expressions. And always young. In the photos, you would have thought she was no older than thirty. Younger even. Twenty-five.

Out of the lights, with her clothes back on, there was no way to think about what was happening. Out of the lights, his jokes were not funny, and he needed a haircut, and there was no escaping the fact that she was a married woman having an affair with the butcher. Out of the lights, viewed cold, it was simply an act of madness. In a little place like Karakarook it could only be a matter of time.

There was a kind of sick ecstasy, knowing it was only a matter of time.

The first time, there had been a little crisis, because they had fallen asleep on the couch. That is, after. It was surprising how comfortable that ordinary old couch was, when you opened it up. She had woken up in a fright, hot and sweaty, and seen on her watch that it was nearly ten minutes after school finishing-time. She had raced down the stairs still scrambling into her blouse. Freddy had gone with her to the foot of the stairs, just in his underpants, and given her a big kiss, right there in the doorway, and just as she turned away from him, she had glimpsed, through the open gateway at the end of the yard, a group of boys going along the lane. She had a feeling that William was one of them, although they were out of sight before she could be sure.

She had crammed the buttons into the buttonholes and raced up the hill to the house, and had managed to get there before him. That meant he must have dawdled with the other boys, and she had roused on him for that, and for walking home without her when she repeatedly told him not to. She had just been delayed very briefly, down at the shops, because Coralie needed to have a word with her. About the Museum, as a matter of fact. About Great-Grandmother Ferguson’s old quilt, actually.

It was only after he had gone off to his room, sullen and silent, that she looked down and saw that all the buttons of the little blouse were in the wrong holes.

Now, before she did anything else, when she first got there, she set the clock.

It was twelve oclock. The alarm would ring at a quarter to three. That gave her plenty of time. She left it vague just what it gave her plenty of time for.

What’s the time? Freddy asked.

Twelve o‘clock.

She preferred it when he said nothing, but she had found there was a way of having a conversation without really having one. Your mouth made words, and part of your brain even supplied them, but you did not allow any actual thinking to take place.

Nearly three hours, then, he said. Two and three-quarter hours.

Felicity Porcelline would be embarrassed to be with someone stating the obvious like that. Hugh’s mother had taken her out to lunch before they were married and told her Always start from the outside with cutlery, Don’t let your husband see you in curlers, and Never state the obvious.

It had been good advice, and had stood Felicity Porcelline in good stead over the years. But Hugh’s mother was not here to hear Freddy Chang stating the obvious, and Felicity Porcelline did not seem to be listening. The skin on the couch was the only one there, and it could not care less.

She swivelled on her hip to press herself against Freddy’s warm stomach. He was like a powerful little machine, generating its own heat from within.

Plenty, she said. Enough and to spare.

How many more weeks of term? he asked.

Two, she said. Then it’ll be the holidays.

Actually, the skin found it soothing to state the obvious. We’ll be right, he said. We’ll work out something.

He laughed in a vibrating burr that she felt through her own flesh.

In bank hours, that is.

The couch creaked with his laughter.

No bank holidays coming up, I hope?

He pressed himself into her. He was ready again. So was she.