I looked over at the boys’ dorm but there was no one coming, there was no Joe, he was locked in. Jacques turned my face to his with one finger and kissed me again. He pushed my hip bones with his thumbs and I lay back on the cold granite.

What happened next cut me to the bone. He bent his head between my legs and started kissing me there. I tried not to make a sound. He was kissing me so softly, French kissing me, and I didn’t even have to join in. This was NOT in the Girls Growing Up book! Sister Dolores had definitely NOT mentioned this kind of carry-on inside or outside holy matrimony! What chapter would it have been in? A clean mind in a clean body? Did I miss that class?

I felt a pulsing start in my legs, I thought it was because I’d held them rigid for so long but, when I looked down, my legs were actually flopped out to the sides and Jacques’s head was still moving slowly over me. His hair tickled my stomach. I was lost. I felt something inside me break free and start to swirl and swirl. And then he was inside me. Just like that, no real pain, no fear and no way back.

He moved slowly at this too and after a while when he put his thumbs on me down there I crashed on to him like a wave while he cried out and threw his head back. I didn’t make a sound. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and kissed me briefly on the lips before he rested his head on my breastbone. He seemed happy, content. I felt like I’d been handed a gift, a beautiful gift which even now was turning cold as it ran out of me. All the girls fancied Jacques Bernier but it was me, ME, who got him in the end!

I put my arms on his shoulders and moved him away. He zipped his trousers and lifted me on to the ground, light as a feather with a ton of guilt already starting to pull at my heart. I had just cheated on Joe Loughrey. I had replaced him in a heartbeat after years of longing. I was a T.R.A.M.P. after all.