I slide my body slowly down the bed frame until I have sunk onto the immaculate carpet, the thick pile tickling the undersides of my bare thighs, my head pounding in time to a rhythm that no one else can hear. Scrubbing my hands over my eyes, I take a deep breath and look up – I am naked from the waist down, and that needs to be rectified before I can go anywhere. I need to get out of here. Something flutters in my stomach at the thought of the door opening and someone walking in, finding me like this, half naked and vulnerable. Getting to my knees, and squashing down the horrid, shameful thoughts that lurk at the outskirts of my mind at the soreness in my thighs, I crawl towards a tangled mass of black, bunched into the corner of the room, against the mahogany of the chest of drawers. Reaching out a hand, I pull the bundle towards me, unravelling it to reveal my black wet-look leggings. Thank God. Relief floods my veins as I recognise the snarl of black fabric as my own clothing, but that fades as I shake them out, searching for my underwear. It’s not there. I turn the leggings inside out and back again, hoping that I’ve pulled everything off in a drunken state last night, but my underwear is definitely missing.

And are you sure that YOU took them off, Rachel? A stern voice whispers at the back of my mind, the bruising on your thighs . . . the fact that you can’t remember anything . . . what does that tell you? I hunch forward over the bundle of cloth in my arms, fighting back tears and the ever-present urge to throw up. What the hell happened to me last night? What did I do? And who else was involved?