‘I didn’t say that,’ says Becky. ‘I didn’t ask you to get into my bed.’ Becky puts her hand to her mouth, then wonders if the movement has betrayed her.

‘I got in with you and you sort of snuggled up to me and I thought, or at least I think I thought: oh my God, she likes me that way as well. And then I kissed you and … you were obviously really wasted, but so was I and, I don’t know, I really honestly thought …’

‘Get to the good stuff, Adam.’ She cannot take much more of this scene setting, this underpinning and drapery. She just wants him to say it now.

‘I don’t remember if we said much. I just remember really, really wanting to be with you and thinking you wanted that too. And so we took off our clothes.’

‘We?’ She presses her fingers firmly together, imagining Adam’s skin caught in her pinch.

‘I took them off,’ he says sheepishly. ‘But you didn’t seem unhappy about it.’

‘Unhappy? So, what, I was smiling? Opening my legs and asking you to fuck me? Is that what I was doing?’ Now her words land like daggers in him. And she wills herself not to cry.

‘You didn’t seem unhappy. I swear to God. I swear on my life.’

‘At least swear on something I give a shit about.’

‘On Maisie’s life then.’

She holds onto the bed-head then, for balance. ‘Hurry up, you’re making me want to vomit.’

‘Then we had sex. And afterwards we cuddled up.’

‘We cuddled up? So I put my arms around you?’

‘No, it wasn’t that exactly.’ His face strains. ‘You just, you kind of fell asleep in my arms is what I’m saying.’

‘I don’t remember that, we didn’t do that.’

‘You were so wasted. But we both were.’

She swallows down her words. She never wants to hear him speak again, and yet she wants to hear it all, every last detail.

‘And then I realized how late it was,’ he continues, ‘I had to go home. So I put your top and pants back on you.’

‘You tidied up your mess. What a polite boy,’ she says, her teeth clamped, like gates holding back the hungry, decimating energy inside her. She wants to tear his fucking head off. She imagines the grey fleshy structure of his brain lying under her foot, the maggot shapes it would make pressed outward under the pressure, a series of little grey balloons holding sixteen years of his memories.