Chapter 26: Her Lovers' Touch, Part 8, Cave Man

JAMES

I follow them towards the house, to see Michael looking back....

.... Checking they're out of sight of the guests...?

.... then turn and make a grab for Charlotte. She shrieks as he hauls her in by the waist and slings her over his shoulder.

"Michael! Charlotte?"

He turns, his expression somewhere between severity and laughter.... "Madam here has a debt to settle." Then he spins back to march away through the house, Charlotte dangling upside-down and ponytail swinging down his back,

Christ, is she alright?

He looks like he's really going to lay into her....

But as I follow, she looks up to me with a happy little smile and a wriggly wave of the fingers.

Michael turns back to me again from the bottom of the stairs. "Hold the fort back there will you. This won't take long."

And what can I do but laugh?

Thirty seconds later there is a wumph - the kind of noise that might be made by - to take a purely hypothetical example - a body being dumped unceremoniously on a bed.