Summer Things [antikvár]

CHAPTER ONE 'Lick/ he said out loud and into thin air. 'Lick me.' Norman Furnish was sitting at his desk in the largish and decidedly dated workroom that he shared with his sort of colleague, Katie: not really quite an office, as such - no, not really. The desk itself was very much in keeping -mahogany veneer, ex-Civil Service issue, could be; scarred and green old leather surface, blind tooling nearly eradicated now: In tray. Out tray, just the one phone. 'Lick me,' he said, staring dead ahead now at the calendar they received every bloody year from a struggling firm of quantity surveyors. Ann Hathaway's Cottage, this time: made quite a change from Monet's poppies. A low and gurgling laughter from the girl beneath his desk and between his knees just then thrilled him immediately, but this was as nothing compared with the prickled and rippling sensation that soon overcame him, causing his eyebrows to jerk in their attempt to fly right away from his face. 'Urgh! Oh, urgh, good God!' came out of Norman now, as a rhythmic drumming assumed its place in the w^ay things were going - this from the energy in Katie's strappy and so-high-heeled shoes beating back against the modesty board on this good and commodious, fine old desk. Katie was really warming to her task - quite regularly cracking her head on the imderside of the central drawer, she was, and Norman's eyes were raking the room, almost as if beseeching mercy or aid from some unseen deliverer, and as he took in spliced and glancing images of brovm