‘Yes, you do. But in a very nice, ladylike way.’
‘Oh, really? Thanks so much for the compliment.’
There was a pause.
‘Lill?’
‘Yes, Ella?’
‘What would you do if a man asked you to…you know…before you were married?’
I remained very still.
‘I’d chop his head off! Or better yet, I’d turn him over to Patsy!’
Ella gasped. ‘That? Just for a kiss?’
My head whipped around. It was even darker in the room by now. I couldn’t see enough of her face to see if she was making fun of me. But, knowing Ella, I highly doubted it.
‘A kiss? Only a kiss?’
‘Well…yes.’ Now Ella sounded puzzled. ‘What did you think we were talking about?’
My silence was answer enough. Or at least it would have been, for anyone whose mind was not as blissfully innocent as that of my little sister Ella.
‘Well?’ she persisted.
I cleared my throat. ‘I was referring to, um, congress.’
I could practically hear Ella’s frown. ‘Isn’t that some assembly of delegates in America?’
I cleared my throat again. ‘Amorous congress.’[5]
The gasp that came out of the darkness was pure horror.
‘Lill!’
‘Um…sorry. But it’s true.’
‘How could you think…I would never…I couldn’t…I wouldn’t!’
‘Yes, of course not. Sorry.’
I had to apologise half a dozen more times before Ella had calmed down enough to speak in complete sentences again. When she was finally lucid once more, she said: ‘I certainly did not want to ask your advice about that.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Because, of course, you wouldn’t know anything more about that than I do. You’re just as innocent as me.’
In that moment, I was fervently glad that the room was pitch black. I wouldn’t have liked Ella seeing my ears turn red.
A hard body grinding against mine, pressing me into the mattress, buttons popping, hands moving, lips meeting in a frenzied dance-
‘What I wanted to ask you,’ Ella continued, blessedly interrupting the torrent of my memories, ‘is a
bout, um…well…kissing.’
She somehow managed to endow the word with the forbidden lust of original sin.