''Here we are,'' he said, pulling open the passenger door.

Reluctantly Pippa got out of the car. He came with her to the front door.

"See you tomorrow," Luke said, giving her a brief peck on the cheek. In a moment his taillights were vanishing around the corner, and she was left standing there, muttering some very unladylike words.

Pippa was proud of being a modern young woman, unshackled by the prejudices and restraints of outmoded convention, free to enjoy worldly delights on equal terms with men. If she wanted to smoke, drink and pursue the pleasures of the flesh, she had every right to do so.

That was the theory. The practice was more difficult. The only cigarette she had ever tried had been in a pub with a party of friends. She'd promptly had a violent coughing fit, upset a bowl of peanuts all over the floor and been ordered out by an exasperated publican. She hadn't tried again. It had tasted disgusting, anyway. So much for smoking.

Alcohol was also a problem. She could twirl a glass bravely, but more than a little of the cheap plonk, which was all she could afford, upset her stomach. So much for drinking.

Which left sex. And that wasn't working out brilliantly, either.

She'd naively imagined that London would be filled with attractive, lusty males, all eager to meet a liberated young woman. But a depressingly large number of them were middle-aged and boring. Too many of the young ones were studious, married or gay. They talked too much. Or too little. Or about the wrong things. It was like being back in Encaster.

She wasn't short of offers. A tall, delicately built young woman with a daft sense of humor, laughing eyes and legs up to her ears was always going to turn heads. It should have been, as the song said, a matter of picking "the height, the weight, the size." But the height was too often awkward, and the weight was usually excessive. So she passed up the chance to check the size.