“Lovely arse,” he said softly, running his fingers down the cleft before he came to the sticky warmth between her legs.

“Christ,” he said, his hand like a burrowing ferret. “You are the most welcoming thing.”

He thought of Hilary’s tantrums, of her vacuum-cleaner kisses, her sharp teeth and scraping hands. He thought of Helen’s cool distaste and he compared them with Podge’s ecstatically grateful gentleness.

“Why don’t you take your clothes off?” she said, turning around and kissing him passionately, as she fumbled with the zip of his jeans and then his briefs. Then, sinking to her knees, she buried her face in the blond hair of his groin, sucking him as pleasurably as a child with a lolly.

“Steady, sweet. I don’t want to come yet.”

As he turned to remove his trousers, she seized the camera. “Now it’s my turn to photograph you!”

Giggling hysterically, she photographed him as he was turning, then caught him again as he was coming towards her half laughing, half angry.

The next moment he’d caught up with her, pushing her down on the grass, parting her legs, and kissing her damp bush. She writhed, tensed, gave a gasp of pleasure, and came. So blissfully quickly, thought Rupert. Recently, Hilary seemed to come later and later, like the Christmas postman. He turned over, lay back, and pulled Podge on top of him, feeling her muscles, so tight but so oily, gripping him, breasts swaying like party balloons when the front door opens. Really, she was gorgeous.

The sun had disappeared behind the ashwood by the time they had finished, sated with pleasure and exhaustion. Podge rinsed herself out in the stream, startling several minnows. As they walked home up the sun-drenched valley, Rupert picked grass seed out of her hair.

“There isn’t time to see Gemini’s foal,” he said. “I’ve got to go and give the prizes at Cheltenham Flower Show.”

They were greeted in the yard by Tracey and Phillips. “Mrs. Campbell-Black’s just rung from London,” said Tracey. “I couldn’t find you. Will you ring her back?”

“Just been up to the oak meadow to photograph Gemini’s foal,” said Rupert coolly.

“That’s funny,” muttered Phillips, bitter with jealousy, to Rupert’s departing back. “The grass was so poor, we moved them up to Long Acre this morning.”

Rupert went off to Rotterdam two days later. The day before he was due back, Helen drove into Cirencester to shop and bumped into Hilary in the market, crossly buying cheese for the dinner party she’d been forced into giving the following night.

“Rupert is going to be back, isn’t he?” she demanded. “Not that he’s a great asset at dinner parties, always making fascist remarks and falling asleep. But I’ve got ten smoked trout and I don’t want my numbers messed up.”

Helen, who found herself increasingly irritated by Hilary, said you could never be sure with Rupert, but she thought it’d be 99 percent certain.

“Well, make sure he’s there,” said Hilary. “No, about an inch more Dolcelatte, please.”

Hilary had realized by the time she got back from the Black Forest how much she was going to miss the excitement Rupert provided in her drab life. She must get him back. It would be too cruel if he didn’t turn up tomorrow night.

Leaving her, Helen popped into the chemist to pick up the rolls of film she’d found lying around on Rupert’s dressing table. He’d actually taken some of Marcus last time he was back and she was dying to see them. Mr. Wise, the chemist, had popped out and hadn’t checked the photographs as he normally did. He always liked to look through the Campbell-Blacks’ folders; they often contained pictures of famous people and interesting places abroad.

The drought didn’t seem to be deterring the trippers at all. Stuck in a holiday traffic jam on the way back to Penscombe, Helen couldn’t resist looking at the photographs. That was a gorgeous one of Marcus, but she wished Badger wasn’t licking his face, and a lovely one of the rose bower, and a rather boring one of the Jack Russells and Arcturus. Why must Rupert always photograph animals? That was lovely of the herbaceous border, and the valley; how yellow it was now. That must be Gemini’s foal. She’d finished one folder and shook the photos out of the next. The first thing she saw was a plump, topless girl. Mr. Wise must have given her the wrong set of photographs. Here was another one of her full length, legs apart, in the most disgustingly provocative pose. Helen looked closer, and stiffened. The girl looked like Podge. She looked at four more pictures, all disgusting. Yes, they were definitely Podge. The next one, taken at an angle, half cut off the man’s head, but the rest of him looked decidedly familiar. The next, also naked, was definitely Rupert, full frontal and roaring with laughter.

A second later, Helen had rammed the Porsche into the car in front with a sickening crunch. She banged her head hard, and the bonnet of the car just buckled up like the face of a bulldog in a cartoon film.

“Why don’t you look where you’re going?” yelled the driver of the car in front. He found Helen crying hysterically, trying to collect together the scattered photographs before anyone else could see them.

Rupert flew in from Rotterdam around six the following evening, tired but once again victorious. He’d left the grooms to bring back the horses. Phillips met him at the airport in Helen’s Mini and gleefully told him that Mrs. Campbell-Black had pranged the Porsche the previous afternoon. Serve the bastard right, he thought, as he saw Rupert’s look of fury. Shouldn’t go down in the woods with Podge.

Helen walked up and down her bedroom, wondering how the hell to tackle Rupert. By some miracle, in four years of marriage, she’d never actually caught him being unfaithful. She’d suspected other women — Marion, Janey, Grania Pringle, several of Rupert’s exes, but never in a million years Podge, with her fat legs, her cockney accent, and her plain homely face. It had come as a terrible, terrible shock. Helen couldn’t stop shaking. It was so revolting, too, taking photographs of her in one of their own fields, where anyone might have walked past. She wished she had a girlfriend to pour her heart out to, but Janey was still on the way back from Rotterdam with Billy, and, anyway, Janey wasn’t safe. She thought of ringing Hilary, but Hilary would just say, “I told you so.” She still had a blinding headache from yesterday’s shunt in the Porsche, and a huge bruise on her forehead beneath her hair.

The usual frantic barking told her Rupert was home. For once, instead of going to the stables, he came straight upstairs into the bedroom.

“I hear you pranged my car. Are you all right?”

“Perfectly, thank you.” Helen gazed out of the window, quivering with animosity, refusing to look around.

“How the hell did it happen?”

“I was in a jam, looking at some of your photographs just back from the drugstore.” She swung around, handing him the folders. “They’re kind of interesting. Have a look.”

Casually Rupert picked them up. When he was feeling trapped, his eyes seemed to go a darker, more opaque, shade of blue and lose all their sparkle.

“I thought I’d taken some nice ones of Marcus. That’s good, and so’s that, and there’s a gorgeous one of Badger, and Arcy. Christ, he’s a good-looking horse. Pity you shut your eyes in that one.” He gave a low whistle. “Who’s that?”

“You know perfectly well,” screamed Helen. “It’s that slut, Podge.”

“Phillips must have borrowed my camera. God, she’s got quite a shape on her.”

“It was you who took them,” hissed Helen, “and your hand is remarkably steady, which is more than can be said for Podge’s when she took photos of you.”

Rupert flipped through the photographs, playing for time.

“Who’s that headless chap? Got a cock like the post office tower.”

“It’s yours,” said Helen in a choked voice, “and I guess you can’t deny the fact that the next one is you.”

“I’m afraid it is,” said Rupert. Then he committed the cardinal sin of starting to laugh.

Helen lost her temper. “How dare you go to bed with her!”

“Who says I’ve been to bed with her?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. And I suppose Janey and Billy know all about it. How could you, how could you?”

Rupert scratched his ear, looking at her meditatively. “Do you really want to know?” he said softly.

“Yes, I bloody well do.”

“I fucked her because she was at home when I got back, and she wanted me.”

Helen flinched.

“And she’s a bloody miracle in bed.”

“And I’m not, I suppose?”

“No, you are not, my pet. If you want the truth, you’re like a frozen chicken. Fucking you is like stuffing sausage meat into a broiler. I’m always frightened I’ll discover the giblets.”

Helen gasped, unable to speak.

“You never react, never display any pleasure, never once in four years of marriage have you asked for it. If I want you, I have to sit on the street with a begging bowl, and I’m bloody fed up with it. Every time you part your legs a degree, you behave as if you’re bestowing a colossal favor. It’s not your fault. Your bloody mother instilled it into you: ‘Behave like a lady at all times.’ My God.”

Helen gazed at him, too stunned to say anything, just watching him strip off his clothes in front of her, down to the lean, beautiful suntanned body that was so terribly reminiscent of the photographs. For a horrifying moment she thought he was going to pounce on her, but he merely went off into the shower, to emerge five minutes later dripping and rubbing his hair dry with a big pink towel.

“Have you got the message?” he said. “I don’t get my kicks at home so I get them elsewhere.”