He thinks about the last time he had sex. It has been at least two years, probably three or four if he’s honest, and it wasn’t anything to write home about. A drunken fuck on the sofa at a house party with a woman he didn’t know and never saw again. Not that he was sure he would recognise her even if she walked past him on the street.

He is never going to be anyone’s romantic lead, he thinks. And his mind flits to Ingrid and her apartment by the river. The pale pinks of the cushions on her sofa. The soft lighting of the lamps she has dotted around her room.

There are no bare bulbs hanging pitifully from the ceiling in her world, he thinks. He thinks of how her home smells. A mix of floral scent, of her apple-scented shampoo. Clean, comfortable, warm. He thinks of how her dressing gown felt on his skin while she dried his clothes for him. The thought that it had also touched her skin – maybe her naked skin – stirs his limp dick into action. He feels it start to harden and he wonders whether or not to have a wank. It might lift his dark mood, to imagine the things he could do with Ingrid. The things he could do to Ingrid.

She’d annoyed him last night. She’d been cold. Angry. He knew he probably shouldn’t have called at her home again. It was stupid, but the thought that she had spent some time with Niall had set him on edge. He had to check she was okay. Actually, he had to check that Niall was not in her flat. Or in her bed. That would’ve been too much for him. If Niall got her, too.

Had he not warned her about him? And she went anyway – met him in spite of what he’d said. And then he’d heard about that incident at the Doherty house and that seemed like the perfect excuse for him just to call in. He was only watching out for her.

She was his. She had been so kind to him when he’d bumped into her last week. Chatting to him. Taking him for a cup of tea. Treating him like he was someone important. Someone of use to her.

And she had been kind to him back then, too. When they were children. He remembered that, even if she didn’t any more. He remembered how, as they had all walked to the chapel for Kelly’s funeral, lines of children walking in pairs, Ingrid had slipped her hand into his and given it a little squeeze.

‘Just be brave,’ she had said to him.

He thought then, looking at her, that he could be. He could be brave. He could stop being scared for just a few minutes.