I glance up at the clock above the door. It’s not far off the time that’s frozen on my watch. I think suddenly of that piss-take sales line the old man gave me: How else will you know when the clock strikes midnight? A flicker of that strange feeling I felt in the pub passes through me, but I’m too tired to properly examine it.

Daff nuzzles further into my neck. ‘This should feel weird,’ she says, sleepily. ‘I mean, I hardly know you. But it doesn’t.’

I feel my eyelids starting to droop. ‘Yeah,’ I murmur. ‘The fact that it isn’t weird is, in itself, weird.’

We both laugh softly. I pull her even closer and gently kiss her forehead.

And before I know it, I’m asleep.

Chapter Twelve

I must have been dreaming about that kiss in the maze, because now, as I stir suddenly awake, it’s like I can still hear the rustle of the leaves around me. I can almost taste Daphne’s lips on mine.

For some reason, I feel dizzy and slightly winded, like I’ve just been flung from an out-of-control merry-go-round. I didn’t even feel that drunk last night, but I guess those pints of snakebite were stronger than I thought.

With my eyes still closed, I groan softly into the pillow and flip it over to the cold side. I lie groggily under the duvet, still half asleep, feeling a weird combination of things: warm and fuzzy and happy after what happened last night, but also – somewhere in the pit of my stomach – fraught and scared and anxious. Because as right as it felt – as perfect as we seemed for each other – I know exactly how things will pan out. How sour our relationship will eventually become.

I nuzzle my face further into the cold pillow, wishing I could get my head around what’s happening. I half open my eyes, remembering that at any moment now, Harv will be pounding my door down, demanding one final bacon-heavy fry-up before we head home for the Christmas holidays.

I reach across instinctively for Daphne. But she’s not there.

I open my eyes fully and squint at the daylight streaming in through the curtains. The first thing I focus on, propped up against the lamp on the bedside table, is an advent calendar. Nearly every window is already open on the front of it, but rather than revealing badly drawn images of the infant Christ, they contain cut-out magazine pictures of an actress I used to have a major crush on: Larisa Oleynik.

For the second time in as many days, I shoot bolt upright in bed, suddenly wide awake and breathing heavily. I stare wildly around the room, which is much more instantly familiar than my university dorm, but feels far less comforting to be waking up in right now.