"I'm perfectly restrained," Toffee called back suspiciously. "And who's playing games ... and what kind of games? I'm just waiting for the lights."
"Then who's this on top of me?" Marc wailed, cagily fighting his way into a position that left him completely impotent against his unseen attacker.
"Why don't you ask him?" Toffee suggested helpfully through a jumble of scuffling, gasping sounds. "I'm sure I don't know." Swiftly, she started in search of the illusive light switch herself.
"I don't think he's interested in formal introductions," Marc wheezed with what sounded like a dying gasp. "Hurry and get those lights on before he kills me. He's strangling me!"
As though in instant answer to his command, the room suddenly blazed with light, and Marc, seeing his assailant, almost nose to nose, turned deathly pale. His eyes snapped lightly shut, and turning his head to one side, his lips began to move feverishly, although his voice seemed to have deserted him. On his chest, face down, and in an immodest state of disorder, lay the lifeless figure of the woman on the beach.
Toffee gazed wrathfully on this grotesque display, and the usual hand moved threateningly to the usual hip. "Well, you might at least have the decency to stop whispering to her!" she hissed contemptuously. "The lights are on, you know! I can see you! I'm not blind!" She paused for a moment, and seeing no change in the distressing tableau, went on. "Tell that shameless wench to get up and get out of here! You never miss a chance do you? The minute the lights go out, you've got to be frisking about on the carpet!"
With a tremendous effort, Marc partly opened one eye and looked pleadingly up at her. He managed to force out a few wretched words. "She's ... she's not a ... a shameless wench," he whispered half-hysterically. "She's ... she's a ... a ... a body!"
"I can see that for myself!" Toffee retorted hotly. "And not such a hot one, either, if you ask me. Now, tell her to gather up her flabby old body and drag it out that door, before I practice violence on it. Don't just lie there staring up at me like a wall-eyed clam!"
"But ... but she can't!"
"Sodden drunk, eh?"