She nods, unable to trust herself to say anything more. There are tears in her eyes, and she lets them gather there, blurring her view, before she wipes them across her cheeks. She feels make-up stinging the inside rims of her eyes and knows it will have smudged coal black across her face, making her look polluted and messy and out of control.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘Well … I did actually think about it afterwards and I felt bad about it.’

‘Bad about what, Scott?’ Say it. Say it to my face.

‘We’d kissed for what, like, a few seconds or something? And then I went straight to trying to get into your pants. I opened your jeans and I was going to put my hand down there but then you obviously didn’t want to, so I stopped. I’m really sorry if it upset you. I was just … To tell you the truth, I just wanted to do it so I could say I’d done it. I didn’t even really want to.’ He looks at her, concerned. ‘Can I get you some water? You don’t look good.’

‘Keep talking.’ She can taste something sour in her mouth. It is bile rising from deep inside her, or it is something bitter that has been in the membranes of her mouth for as long as she can remember that releases itself now that she is biting down hard.

‘Um … then we did a pill each and things got really messy. I mean, they were really strong. I got them off my sister’s dealer. I hadn’t done one of those before. It was fun, but then we both got sort of spaced-out. I think you were quite pissed when we started? I don’t know. It seemed to hit you a bit harder.’

‘And then what?’

‘I don’t know. We hung out in there for ages. And the rest of the party went downstairs. I think Amy kicked everyone out of the bedrooms but she didn’t find us so we were like … own private Narnia. We had fun.’ He reaches for her hand and she flinches back. ‘I am so sorry if I crossed a line, doing what I did.’

‘And then what?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Tell me everything that happened.’

‘You basically passed out. I think mostly from the booze. I was still up and quite awake. And then I needed to go home so I was like, do I leave you there on the floor or what? So I put you in the bed in the main room.’

‘Don’t miss things out. Did you take off my clothes?’

‘Becky, what—’

‘Come on.’