The Slipkin Papers: 2. Dinner at Seven

Slipkin awoke, not as he had anticipated in a hospital bed, but on a chaise longue in an elegantly over cluttered room. Charles was gazing down at him anxiously; peeping round Charles was Victoria. When Slipkin’s eyes fluttered open she grinned and winked at him.

He started to rise: somehow it didn’t feel right to lie down in the presence of royalty. This showed how little he knew about the history of the monarchy and those who had dealings with them, such as Nell Gwyn and Anne Boleyn: of course, the former had at the time been minus knickers and the latter minus head, while Slipkin currently had both.

“It’s alright old fellow, just take it easy for a few minutes.” Charles straightened up and gazed down at him with a faintly embarrassed smile. Victoria was still grinning at him but, thankfully, no longer winking. Queen Victoria winking was rather like the Pope wolf-whistling: it disturbed too many comfortable assumptions. Slipkin realized that apart from a few old photographs, his picture of the Queen Empress had largely been formed by actresses in sundry historical dramas. Now here she was, hopping from foot to foot while she made eyes at him, like a cross between an over-excited crow and a lecherous bat, her familiar black dress replaced by a tightly fastened bomber jacket and leather motorbike trousers. His brief conversation with Charles had convinced him that the Prince was the real thing, so presumably Victoria was too. But Victoria had been dead for more than a century while, so far as he was aware, Charles was alive and well and plant whispering at Highgrove. His brain pointed out once again that his current circumstances were just as impossible as the way in which he had arrived here. His eyes and ears took no notice, so his brain retired sulkily to a corner of his head and let him get on with it.

Slipkin decided it was time to say something. “Where am I?” seemed too clichéd, although it was of course what he most wanted to know; followed quickly by “Did what happened happen?” and “Who the hell are you really?” He cleared his throat and suddenly felt very thirsty.

“Could I…” his voice came out as a squeak. He cleared his throat again.

“Here, drink this,” said Charles picking up a tumbler of pale amber liquid from a small table and handing it to Slipkin. Slipkin took a grateful gulp and relapsed into a coughing fit.

“Whisky and water” smiled Charles, somewhat unnecessarily. “My Uncle Dicky swears by it.” Much whisky and little water, thought Slipkin, tears streaming down his cheeks as a ball of fire sank down his gullet and fizzed into his stomach. He noticed that Charles had used the present tense in relation to Uncle Dicky, though Slipkin knew that the IRA had blown Lord Mountbatten up years ago

“And after it!” trilled Victoria continuing to dance about. The Prince ignored her.

“You’ll soon be feeling better Mr. Slipkin, look, I say… do you mind awfully if I call you John?”

“And before it!”

“Er, no, not at all” said Slipkin, his voice now back to normal, “though my name’s Eric actually.”

“Of course it is” said Charles “Of course it is, jolly good”

“All the bloody time - actually!” chortled Victoria, with an emphasis on “actually” that made Slipkin redden.

“Victoria.” said Charles sharply, though still smiling encouragingly at Slipkin, “Don’t you need to go and get changed for dinner?”

Queen Victoria scowled and twisted her fingers together like a naughty child. “But there’s ages to go till dinner” she said, “and I wanted to go for another ride on my bike!”

“Fine. Off you go then, there’s a dear.” Clearly Charles didn’t care what she did as long as it was somewhere else. Victoria looked disconcerted for a moment, then annoyed at being outmanoeuvred, but without another word she picked up her crash helmet from a side table and turned to go. She looked back over her shoulder at Slipkin as she left the room and winked at him again. Slipkin took another deep pull at his scotch. He was a bit surprised at the role reversal between the two Royals. Charles had treated Victoria like a naughty child and she had just accepted it. Maybe she had mixed Charles up with Albert. Maybe she had come back without all of her marbles. He looked up from his glass to see Charles staring at him, brow furrowed.

“You’re looking better already,” said Charles. “I suppose this has all been quite trying for you…” As far as Slipkin was concerned “quite trying” was as applicable to what he had just gone through as “rather irritating” was to the sinking of the Titanic, but it was hard to be rude to royalty even when he knew that it was impossible that the creature sharing this room with him could be anything but a figment of his derailed imagination. There was a shattering roar from outside as the motorbike started up and raced away in a clatter of spraying gravel. For a moment a cloud passed over Charles’ face.

“She’s quite harmless really you know,” he said anxiously, as if trying to convince himself. “I suppose when she was on the throne she had a very buttoned up kind of existence”

“Yes, I’d always thought of her as well, you know, quite a severe old lady – very ah…”

“Straight laced?”

“Yes. Straight-laced.”

Also dead for quite a long time, thought Slipkin, but it seemed indelicate to say it. What was it about Royalty that made you want to be on your best behaviour? He didn’t consider himself any kind of monarchist. To the extent that he ever thought about the Royal Family, it was as if they were just another soap opera that he didn’t bother to watch, but read snippets about in the papers. He had to admit though that over the last few years the aura of death, deceit and emotional havoc engulfing the House of Windsor had often intruded upon his rather meandering consciousness. But none of that explained why he was sitting to attention here and now, anxious to please. Perhaps it was just that excessive respect was expected, not least by the Royals themselves.

There was an awkward pause. Charles sat down in an armchair opposite Slipkin and fiddled with his ring. Slipkin remembered a television report that had shown the Prince of Wales on a visit to the Vatican. He was talking to a brown-robed Franciscan monk.

“Do you pray a lot?” asked Charles, with a beautifully crafted look of sympathy and interest.

“Yes.” said the monk. The awkward silence was edited out.

On this occasion a rap on the door that had all the attributes of a discreet cough ended the unedited awkward silence. Hitler entered. He was bearing, with Teutonic dignity, a large silver salver on which rested an intricately interlocked pyramid of chocolate éclairs. Holding the door open for him, hunched and with his thin face working strangely, was Goebbels.

Slipkin wondered why Hitler scared him so much. Enormous droning butterflies swept in formation round his stomach and his heart raced. Adolf in retrospect was mocked as much as hated, with his toothbrush moustache and plastered down hair, working himself up to synthetic fury on old newsreels. Adolf Hitler in what appeared to be the flesh was quite different. Even in the guise of a dignified and respectful butler, he radiated menacing power. It pressed on Slipkin like a force field as he approached. He was surprisingly short and slight, but had the presence of a giant. Did he just accept his current subservient status? His face was a mask, his eyes expressionless. Slipkin glanced over at Goebbels. He had been the Fuhrer’s spin-doctor hadn’t he? He had been one of the true believers who had stayed with Hitler right to the end in the Berlin Bunker, eventually killing his wife and children and himself. It looked as if he was having a harder time adapting to Hitler’s reduced circumstances than Hitler himself. He was muttering to himself in the doorway, his eyes fixed on Hitler with mad intensity. He felt Slipkin’s gaze on him, fell silent and looked down at his feet. Impassively, Hitler walked over to Charles and placed the éclairs on a small table to one side of Charles’ chair.

“Shall I pour the tea sir?” asked Hitler.

“If you would.” Charles visibly brightened.

“Tea?” asked Charles, waggling his eyebrows at Slipkin.

“No, I’ll, I’ll stick with this thanks” said Slipkin raising his tumbler. He would have liked a cup of tea, but the idea of having it brought to him by Adolf Hitler was too unnerving. Hitler just being in the room was bad enough.

“Vill that be all sir?” said Hitler after he had served Charles his tea.

Charles, already half way into his first éclair, mumbled and nodded. Slipkin was sure he saw a slight tic at the corner of Hitler’s left eye as he closed the door, pushing Goebbels back with his other hand.

Slipkin had a bad feeling about Hitler and Goebbels, even though they had been dead for more than sixty years. The point was that they weren’t dead here, wherever ‘here’ was: even worse, he was ‘here’ with them. Despite Hitler’s apparent acceptance of his new station in life, Slipkin felt sure that at some point the little Austrian would want to go back to giving orders rather than taking them. He didn’t want to be around when that happened. Watching Charles’ contented absorption in the cream cakes, he could imagine only one winner if there was a clash of wills.

“Well now,” said Charles at last, his voice still a little cream-muffled, “Jolly good, jolly good…” His hand was already moving in on the next éclair.

“I hope the journey didn’t spoil them…sir” said Slipkin, who didn’t in fact give a pixie’s fart about the condition of the éclairs but felt strangely reluctant to ask anything more pointed in case he got an answer he didn’t like. Besides there was a fragile feeling about the place. Slipkin didn’t think of himself as someone who was sensitive to ‘atmospheres’. After all, in his daily round he unconcernedly travelled around London and bordering counties collecting mysterious creatures and in his spare time there was his confectionery obsession, both of which he just accepted. But here, after his two brief meetings with Hitler he felt as if they were sitting at a little picnic table at the mouth of Vesuvius. Charles didn’t seem bothered though: his love affair with the éclairs seemed to make him oblivious to anything else.

“No – they’re quite delicious. Most kind of you to bring them.”

“I thought I wasn’t going to make it, with that bend…” Slipkin wanted desperately to understand how he had got here and where exactly ‘here’ was. He didn’t have any great hope of a satisfactory explanation from Charles, but there was no one else around to ask. He edged toward the information he was after, like a priest sidling up to a suicide on a high window-ledge. Some instinct made him wary of directness, or maybe it was just his habitual diffidence. He took a deep breath and pressed on. “I just wanted to know… I mean, it’s just that after the car skidded….”

The doors crashed open, making them both jump. Charles hastily swallowed the remainder of the second éclair and brushed the back of his hand across his lips. Slipkin half expected to see Hitler there, foaming at the mouth, unable to contain his urge for power. Instead the figure in the doorway was a tall, though a little stooped with age, balding with silvered tonsure. He was wearing a muddied Barbour jacket tightly fastened to the neck, bloodstained corduroys and filthy hiking boots. He held a shotgun in one hand, and from his other dangled a collection of small shattered creatures, (bird and animal) tied together by their paws and feet with cord. As he flung the bundle of death onto the floor at Charles’ feet in a cloud of feathers Slipkin noticed that among the victims was a large tabby cat. No, more accurately the front half of a tabby cat, wide-eyed in its final surprise.

“Father…” moaned Charles, looking down in horror, “What have you done to Tibbles?”

“What does it look like I’ve done?” snorted the Duke of Edinburgh. “I’ve shot the little sod, that’s what I’ve done! It won’t try and collar any more of my bloody birds now will it?”

The vengeful Duke hadn’t so much as glanced in Slipkin’s direction. On the whole Slipkin was pleased about this; the old monster was glaring ferociously at his son as if he was spoiling for a fight. Once again Slipkin was aware that he looked younger than when he had last seen a picture of him. Charles sat numbly gazing down at his severed pet, then flicked a spot of cream off his knee with studied calmness. Tension spitted the air.

“Philip?” it was a very familiar female voice, floating down from the next floor. The effect on Philip was instant. His shoulders sagged. The shotgun seemed suddenly too heavy for him and he leaned it carefully against the doorframe.

“Yes dear” he replied in a tone that had abruptly changed into a quavering facsimile of Charles’.

“Come here at once. What on earth are you making such a noise about?”

Philip stared down at his muddied boots and his face clouded. “I’ll be up in a moment dear, I’ll just get out of my muddy things”

Slipkin winced, sensing a tactical blunder. The voice from above sharpened.

“And what, may one ask, is one doing wearing one’s muddy things indoors Philip?

He flinched, stepped back and pulled the door closed. As he did so his eyes met Slipkin’s for the first time. He raised his eyebrows at Slipkin and twisted his mouth wryly.

There was a lengthy silence. Charles stirred Tibbles’ front half with his foot, as if hoping for an against-the-odds recovery, and sighed. Slipkin took another mouthful of scotch. A warm glow was spreading out from his solar plexus in a comfortingly realistic manner.

“Well then” said Charles at length; “I expect you’d like to get freshened up for dinner? There’s a room prepared for you in the East Wing.” He reached over to the table and fiddled with what looked like a small pager next to the éclairs.

Slipkin set down his glass. Dinner? He had come up to the house for some tea. To the extent that he had thought about what was going to happen next he realised that he had assumed that with his éclair delivery obligation fulfilled, he would go back to London and his day job. Now he was to stay for dinner. When had that been decided? Charles was behaving as if he had already accepted the invitation. Part of him wanted to leave the house and go back to what passed for normal in his life. He was attracted to that course because it would put a lot of distance between him and Herr Hitler. On the other hand, to decline to stay now would mean going back to his car by the riverbank, getting in, starting the engine and then… what? It would also mean declining the Prince’s offer and, to put no finer point on it, asserting himself. Not only was Slipkin not an assertive individual, but also he knew that he wasn’t. He preferred to ‘go with the flow’ wherever possible. Anyway, there was no-one waiting for him in London, and with the recent penguin job in Pimlico taken care of, he could expect a few quiet days. That was one of the charms of his work. Alright then: he would stay to dinner and then get Charles to tell him how to drive back through Space to North Yorkshire, or maybe even London if that wouldn’t involve any hassle with Heathrow air traffic control.

The door opened yet again and Slipkin looked round in dread to see what specimen of insanity or aristocracy had arrived now. Thankfully it was someone he could never remember seeing before in his life, stocky, balding and undistinguished looking in a valet’s costume.

“Ah good” said Charles. “Bormann will show you to your room. Dinner at seven? Jolly good.”

At just before seven o’clock that evening Slipkin walked along the wide corridor from the East Wing feeling very foolish in the dinner jacket that Bormann had laid out for him in his room. It fitted perfectly; better, in fact than any clothes he had ever bought off the peg. His embarrassment didn’t stem from the fit of the clothes, but from the fact of wearing such formal gear. Since Slipkin lived a solitary life, with no family that he knew of, he never wore suits of any kind. He didn’t need them for his work, since penguins, okapi, possums, gorillas and the rest of animal kind attached no importance to the way you dressed

The corridor was flanked to his right by large windows looking out over the gardens. It was growing dark, reminding Slipkin that he had already been through a shattering day before arriving here. He yawned. He didn’t think that fainting at the sight of Queen Victoria on a motorbike counted as rest, though he didn’t know how long he’d been out.

He had never experienced a room like the one that had been allocated to him for the, as yet unknown, duration of his stay. It was so luxurious and well appointed as to be far beyond Slipkin’s comfort zone and well into his “please don’t let me dribble on the pillowcase” zone. Bormann hadn’t helped him to feel at home: all Slipkin could get out of him were gestures and grunts.

Gesticulate. Grunt.

“You mean I have to wear this for dinner?”

Grunt.

“But I never wear a tie, let alone a bow-tie!”

Bormann’s face pursed up on itself and his piggy little eyes peered at Slipkin’s neck as if looking for the best place to insert a blade.

Grunt grunt: gesticulate gesticulate. (Hand passed swiftly across Adam’s apple, possibly showing him how to tie the bow).

“Oh well, since you put it like that….”

Slipkin had been left to make his own way down. He came to the end of the corridor and emerged into a grand entrance hall with the obligatory grand staircase sweeping up around a grand chandelier. Goebbels was busy on his hands and knees with a dustpan and brush at the door to the drawing room, presumably sweeping up the Duke’s detritus. Slipkin wondered why he had taken so long to get on with that task. Looking over at the scrawny hunched figure, its lips moving silently and unpleasantly, Slipkin decided not to ask. From another wide gilded doorway to his left came the clink of china and cutlery. He walked nervously to the door of the dining room and looked in.

“Bloody pasta again…” it was the Duke at the head of the table, speaking to an impassive Hitler, who seemed totally unperturbed by another of Philip’s little tantrums. “It must be the third bloody night in a bloody row we’ve had bloody pasta”

“I will speak vonce more to Benito, sir and… express your displeasure.”

“And while you’re at it tell him I want those birds properly hung dammit!” snarled the Duke.

As Hitler opened his mouth to reply he went on “And don’t give me all that nonsense about him not liking meat hooks, just tell him to bloody well get on with it. Come in if you’re coming man! Don’t nancy about in the doorway like you’ve come into the ladies by mistake!”

This last was aimed at Slipkin, who hurried to the nearest empty chair and sat down to an approving nod from Charles, who was sitting opposite.

“Jolly good, jolly good. Just get started, we don’t stand on ceremony here you know.”

Slipkin tugged at his collar, trying to ease the choking feeling without dislodging his precariously fastened bow tie. He looked down at the gold-rimmed bone china dish in front of him, on which was a selection of antipasti.

“Vine sir?” Adolf Hitler hovered at his elbow, making the small hairs on his neck get up and crowd together for safety.

“Oh yes. Thanks Mr.…”

“Just call me Hitler sir”

“Ah. Yes. Thanks…Hitler.”

“There, that wasn’t so hard was it?” said a silken voice on his left.

Slipkin looked round and found himself gazing into smiling dark eyes and a wondrous face framed by shining auburn shoulder length hair. The girl’s beauty was enough to dislodge his heart and send it shooting up into his mouth and then, like a squash ball, down to the pit of his stomach. A diamond necklace encircled her neck, flowing down into a breathtaking cleavage, which once noticed was next to impossible not to stare at in awe.

“No. I suppose not, it’s just that I’ve never…”

“…been served wine by a long dead war criminal and fully certifiable maniac?”

She finished for him, watching with frank amusement his struggle not to look at her breasts. Hitler finished pouring the wine and moved away, giving no sign of having heard her.

“Absolutely. No. I mean…no, never.” He finished up, trying desperately to keep his eyes on her face.

“Just try to relax, you’ll get quite used to it in time.”

Slipkin didn’t like the sound of “in time”: he had somehow hoped that he would be waking up quite soon in the hospital bed. As he thought this he looked around at his fellow diners and what he saw drove his neighbour’s breasts out of his mind for several minutes.

Sitting opposite, to Charles’ left was John Fitzgerald Kennedy, engrossed in a conversation with… Marilyn Monroe… that seemed to involve him placing his nose in her ear while nibbling the lobe. To her left, busying himself with the antipasti, sat a thin man, high gaunt cheekbones prominent above a tightly clipped beard: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. After that, there was a vacant seat next to the head of the table, where Philip was glowering and prodding the slices of meat and olives with his fork as if to make sure nothing was hiding there. Nobody was yet sitting immediately to Slipkin’s right, or at the seat beyond. There was someone three down, also engrossed in the food. It was a man whom he didn’t at first recognize and then, when he did, he hoped he was mistaken.

“I’m sorry that Her Royal Highness isn’t able to join us this evening.”

It was Charles, leaning across the table to him.

“So am I” said the girl to his left loudly, “she would have kept the bloody Greek quiet.”

Lenin smaned. JFK and Miss Monroe didn’t appear to notice. The Duke did, if the tightening of his jaw muscles was anything to go by, but he didn’t respond to her goading, revenging himself instead on a rolled up piece of salami. Slipkin was still thinking about the man to his right. It couldn’t be. He was wearing a penguin suit that looked as if it was only just managing to contain his body. Rolls of fat piled up on his shirt collar like sausages waiting to be barbecued. It was the suit that made him doubt his identification, also the fact that he had never seen a photograph of him, for obvious reasons.

“She is somewhat indisposed.” Said Charles firmly, but looking very much as if he wished he hadn’t said anything.

Slipkin intended to say, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

What he actually said was “I’m SORRY!” ending in a mixture of yelp of shock and shout of surprise. A small firm hand dragging very sharp nails from knee to hip of his left leg and then squeezing his crotch were the cause of his shock and surprise. He spun his head to the left. The girl was gazing at him in mock, and mocking, consternation.
“Is there something wrong Mr. Slipkin?” she asked, with such apparent innocence that Slipkin glanced down to check that it was her hand that still rested lightly on his lap. His pulse rate had quadrupled and his hand shook as he closed it over her slim wrist and pushed her hand firmly away. He looked up at Charles,

“Yes. I mean no. No. Nothing wrong.” He became conscious that the girl’s right leg was now pressed firmly against his left leg, thigh to ankle. He couldn’t think how to remove it without using his left hand to push her leg away. That seemed to him to be a dangerous escalation in the …conflict? He became aware that her dress was slashed to the hip, so that it was her bare thigh that nuzzled warmly against his trousers.

Two seats away to the right a young woman had arrived. Hitler hurried across to hold her chair as she sat down next to Fat Man. Slim and dark, in a grey dress that covered her and yet displayed her firm lines, she was very pale. Around her white throat was a thin scarlet choker that made her look as if…

“Ann Boleyn”, said his neighbour, quietly this time. “Not his favourite, that was Jane Seymour, but the best shagger of the six.”

Slipkin felt some small satisfaction that he had identified Henry VIII despite his tuxedo.

“They, er, they made it up then?”

She laughed. “Why not? No real harm done was there?”

Slipkin had a nightmare vision of the woman’s head detaching itself and bouncing away across the table. “How do you define harm exactly?”

“Well it was all so long ago wasn’t it? Long enough to let bygones be bygones surely?”

Slipkin pondered this. A swordsman brought over from France for the purpose had neatly lopped Boleyn’s head. Then her mortal remains had been tipped into an old arrow chest and buried behind the altar in the Tower Chapel where they had lain for over four hundred years.

A thin claw like hand swooped in over his right shoulder and removed his plate. It was Bormann, moving round the table tight-lipped under the leaden gaze of butler Hitler. In a few moments a steaming dish of lasagne thudded down before him

Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn didn’t even glance in his direction, which suited Slipkin, as it allowed him to fend off the increasingly insistent advances of the girl to his left. He didn’t recognize her, and wondered if she like him had somehow fallen through a crack in reality and ended up here. He felt that their sub-table pushing and wrestling had taken him beyond the point where he could just ask her what her name was. He was just mightily relieved that Queen Victoria hadn’t turned up yet. Maybe she hadn’t been able to struggle out of her leathers.

After the main course, Henry and Anne got up and left without a word, hand in hand, so Slipkin felt able to do the same. Like the great Garbo, he just wanted to be alone. After toying with the lasagne, he rose quickly, muttering to the table at large that it had been a long day. The girl gave him a quizzical smile and then turned back to her food. Despite everything, Slipkin felt unreasonably disappointed that she seemed quite unconcerned at his departure. Philip was deeply engaged in a shouted monologue about hunting rifles with JFK, who was rubbing his right temple as if to soothe away a headache. Charles sat grimly silent, examining his dessert spoon. Lenin was talking earnestly to Marilyn Monroe, presumably about the dictatorship of the proletariat from the confused smile on her face.

Hitler held the door open for him.

“Vill you require anything else sir?

“No thank you, I’m just going to turn in.”

“Very good sir. Eva has already turned down the bed for you and put one of those nice little mints on your pillow” Hitler’s face twisted at one side. Perhaps he was trying to smile: then again, perhaps not.

“Jolly good, jolly…goodnight er,” Slipkin hurried out of the room, conscious of Hitler’s eyes between his shoulder blades.

As the doors clicked behind him, he sighed deeply in relief. Maybe he could get some fresh air before turning in. He walked across the entrance hall and tried the front door handle. Despite its size, the door swung open easily and silently. He stepped outside. It was very dark now; with no glow in the sky from neighbouring towns the stars glittered like up-market Christmas tree decorations. A fingernail Moon hung over the trees.

There was a glimmer of white at the foot of the steps. It was the Citroen. For a crazy moment, Slipkin thought of running down to it and driving away from this madhouse: but how and where? He sighed again and walked slowly down to his little car. Even touching it would help; the cold metal would at least be a link with reality. He walked slowly down the steps and across the gravel to his car. He ran his fingertips over the roof and sighed again.

“Very clean now, your car is”

Slipkin nearly fell over with the sudden shock of the voice at his shoulder. He jumped back in alarm, away from the figure that had seemingly materialized at his side.

“Like the Scheisse sandwich it was, with all that Schokolade inside, but I make it all clean.”

His unexpected companion laughed like a snake hiccoughing. It was Goebbels.

“Thank you.” said Slipkin.

“No need for thanks.” replied Goebbels bleakly “I vos only obeying orders.”

Back in his room Slipkin closed the door behind him gratefully before fumbling for the light switch. He flipped it. Nothing happened. He flipped the switch on and off. Nothing happened again, but with greater finality.

Slipkin shrugged, got out of his clothes, went for a pee, in the ensuite bathroom where the light also was non-operational. He adjusted his aim by the volume the splash made in the pan, washed his hands by touch in the sink and made his way naked to the bed. The moment he slid between the sheets he knew that something was wrong. Somebody else was already there.

Many thoughts competed in a sprint across his brain. He was in the wrong room. He was in the right room. He was naked. The person in bed with him was in the wrong room. The person in bed with him was naked. His hand had landed on something warm and soft. And female. She would scream and wake everyone up. He must have made a stupid mistake. She was moving urgently. He had to sort this out quickly, but his throat was constricted by panic. Her lips closed hungrily on his. Fingernails dragged themselves down his ribs. His left thigh coughed politely and told him it already knew those fingernails.

Slipkin’s hands pointed out that they couldn’t care less about what his left thigh thought and set off to find out more about the beautiful silky smoothness of her skin. She moaned in a way that sent electric shocks to his groin. It was his hungry dinner companion.

“I don’t even know your name,” he gasped.

She giggled. “Of course you do, silly. It’s Victoria, but you can call me Vicky.”

She kissed and bit his chest as he lay there in shock.

“Charles told me to change for dinner.”