Chapter 20

Veronica finished her last glass of wine and thankfully realised that she had at last got her errant body under control. The tissue was cold and clammy beneath her, but the embarrassing and shameful seepage had ceased at long last. As she glanced across at Miss Prosser, once more clad in her sensible clothes, she had difficulty believing that the two of them had just passed such a strenuous and very articulated time together. As for her having so thoroughly enjoyed herself, that, too, seemed quite unbelievable.

"I understand that I still have one more thing to do for you, Sir."

"Indeed you have, my dear. I so hope that your sojourn in this, my humble dwelling, has enabled you to recover fully from your recent distressing encounter with the Law, in all its corrupt and bestial brutality."

He cackled in his wheezy manner. Veronica became almost alarmed for his safety and wondered if she should go to his aid. Miss Prosser, also, seemed to be trying to fight down her mirth. Her shoulders were shaking with suppressed and increasing merriment. Oh, dear! What HAD this old bastard got lined up for her this time?

"Go home on foot, my dear! That is your next and final task. Sounds so easy, does it not?"

"If I knew the route, it would indeed. I guess I'm not too far away - close enough to be back home well before dawn."

He wheezed and croaked his mirth again for some moments, Miss Prosser snorting into her glass.

"Have no fear, my lovely young friend. I will let you study a map before you leave and that fine and powerful mind of yours will memorise the details, which will, I doubt not, be stamped indelibly upon your inner eye from this time forward, until the very end of your days."

"Good. That should be no problem, then. I'm pretty tired, but I'll make it OK. Frankly I'd expected something rather harder than..."

And then it struck home! Of course - how stupid of her! She was to walk back home naked! Oh no! It had been bad enough on the train, clad as she had been, in a thong and nothing else, but that was a total breeze compared to walking through London's streets in the absolute, unvarnished unadulterated altogether! Oh, fucking, bloody Hell!

Resignedly, she reached for her shoulder bag and prepared to leave. But Andrew Vane-Clatworthy, full of surprises to the very end, had yet more bad news for our heroine!

"Not the bag, my dear. A vulgar accessory in any case, an unworthy accoutrement for a fine young woman of your undoubted good taste. I think the rather garish nail varnish can also be removed before you leave. It will be merely you, in all your natural sweet loveliness, that will venture into the cold and dark night to wend a weary and footsore way back to Happy Hampstead!

"But - my keys!" stammered a despairing Veronica. "Just supposing I did make it without either being caught or freezing to death, how am I supposed to get in to my home?"

"You will just have to sleep outside your front door until, in the morning, your things are returned to you! Fear not, my sweet, I do not expect you to gain entry as a condition of your fulfilling your mission. Suffice it that you make it back to your front door!"

As she busied herself with the varnish remover, something inside Veronica snapped. She had been progressively and humiliatingly denuded all day of clothes which she had been ashamed to be seen wearing in the first place. She had been drenched with rain and battered by hail. She had been terrorised by a pair of gruesome uniformed dykes and finally debauched by this despicable old bastard's frustrated retainer. And now, to cap it all, she was expected to walk back in the freezing cold, half way across London, to a flat, whose front door key she was forced to leave behind with this horrible couple!