Free The Penultimate Chance Saloon by Simon Brett

between them. She wore a light silk print dress and high heels which flattered her slender legs. There was a lot of gold jewellery, which didn’t include a wedding ring.
    She had worked in PR – or maybe still did work in PR Bill hadn’t quite got that clear. Maybe he hadn’t been concentrating, or maybe Maria had deliberately left such details obscure.
    Obviously she recognised him as Bill Stratton from the television. Everyone over a certain age did. And within minutes of meeting, she had mentioned his ‘by way of contrast’ catchphrase. Again, everyone over a certain age did.
    This prompted him to tell her a few choice gems from the BWOC collection. They were mostly lines he had trotted out on chat- shows when promoting the books, but he was surprised how well he remembered them. Maybe Sal’s idea of his converting them into after-dinner speaking material wasn’t so daft after all.
    Maria didn’t seem to know the other guests very well, though she had the social skills demanded by her profession, and could clearly maintain a conversation with anyone about anything. But in fact she spent most of the pre-dinner drinks being amused by Bill. And when it came to eating, the serendipity of the seating plan also put him next to her. As he drank more and presented his BWOC lines to a more general audience, he was aware of showing off for Marias benefit, of gauging her reactions, and feeling gratified when he gained a big laugh from the assembled throng.
    The insistent feeling came to Bill that perhaps life with Andrea had suppressed his social skills. Her circle of friends never wanted to hear anything funny and, since all he knew of NHS iniquities was what Andrea had told him, he rarely had much to contribute to their conversation. Whereas at Sal Juster’s dinner party, the consensus seemed to be that Bill Stratton was rather a witty fellow.
    Maria certainly seemed to appreciate his company.
    Bill couldn’t believe how quickly the evening passed – he seemed only just to have arrived when the young wife and her haunted husband began murmuring about babysitters and leaving. Then the other guests started looking at their watches too.
    Nor could Bill believe how smoothly things were going between him and Maria. When it came to Sal calling cabs, geographical logic dictated that, since they were both going South, Bill and Maria should share one down as far as her flat near Marble Arch, from whence he would continue to Pimlico. But then, when they arrived outside her block and she suggested his coming in ‘for a final drink’, continuing to Pimlico didn’t seem so important. Any disquiet the cabbie might have felt about the shortened trip was dissipated by an absurdly generous tip (although that still didn’t wipe the smug, knowing smile off his face).
    Bill didn’t care, anyway. In the lift Maria seemed to stumble against him, and it made sense to put his hands on her shoulders to steady her. Then her fragrant hair seemed very close to his face, and giving her a gentle kiss on the forehead was entirely natural. When her face turned up to his, their lips automatically engaged.
    The interior of Maria’s flat had recently been done by a very exclusive designer, but Bill didn’t take in much of the makeover. The minute they were inside the door, Maria’s mouth and his re-engaged, their hands started to scrabble at the frontiers of cloth and flesh, and all he was really aware of was overpowering lust.
    He tried to remember when he’d last felt lust on that scale. The routine of sex with Andrea had regulated his passion to a kind of twice-a-week supply-and-demand basis. When she showed reluctance to continue, he had reconciled himself to the ending of that particular phase of his life. And though, like most men, he could still be suddenly inflamed by a cleavage on a poster or a flash of thigh on the tube, most of the time his lust was subdued into a kind of