I wondered whether he, too, was remembering how the man’s penis looked when he rose from the bed; how it wavered half erect, uncertain of what it was doing; a grey-beige neutral shade not unlike the carpet.

‘I felt sorry for her.’

‘Don’t,’ he said, accelerating once the light went green. ‘They probably overcapitalised.’

‘No, not – I meant Cilla.’

Pete paused, genuinely surprised.

‘Why?’

‘She was so…’

‘Weak?’ Pete supplied. ‘Scared?’

‘I guess.’

‘You don’t have to pity her, Amy. Now I know why you hated her.’

‘I never said I hated her.’

‘Oh, you hated her. I can tell. And I can see why. That voice, that face – she’s creepy. Makes my skin crawl.’

‘She can’t help it.’

‘Like fuck she can’t,’ said Pete. ‘That tongue – Christ – why the fuck’s she never had that fixed?’

‘What do you mean?’

He did an impression of Cilla’s voice. ‘Er ung,’ he said, quietly, childishly.

‘Don’t be cruel.’

‘I’m not being cruel, I’m being accurate. She’s tongue-tied.’

‘Tongue-tied?’

He glanced at me, incredulous, before turning his attention back to the road. ‘You didn’t know?’

‘Know what?’ I said.

‘Tongue-tied. You’ve never heard of it? Seriously?’ He went into nurse mode. ‘It’s when the membrane holding the tongue to the floor of the mouth extends too far. The tongue has restricted movement. Don’t tell me you didn’t see it? The spittle? The dry lips? The little handkerchief?’ He laughed in disbelief. ‘You never knew?’

I felt a weird crawling feeling at the back of my skull.

‘Of course I didn’t fucking know.’

Pete shook his head, then shook it again. ‘They used to do them at birth,’ he said. ‘Nurses would keep one fingernail long and sharp so they could cut the frenulum.’ He swished his thumb through the air. ‘Her parents should have had her fixed,’ he said. ‘But now she’s an adult. Now she can fix it herself.’

I thought of all the times I’d spoken to Cilla, every time I’d seen her stumble and shrug her way through my class.

‘Maybe she doesn’t want it fixed,’ I said.

Pete drove in silence for a few minutes, speeding in a straight line down the highway.

‘I don’t understand weird people. Why would anyone want to be weird?’ he said.

He could have been talking about Cilla. Or the couple crawling around on the carpet, grabbing up their things. He could have been talking about the hoser-downer, or the owners who installed the hideous pine panelling. The one person I knew he didn’t mean was me.

I lied about the bat. To Pete, I mean. I’d lied when I said I’d been decisive, taken action; that this was the nature of my error. The truth was too embarrassing to tell.