As I nursed the boy off to sleep, I thought the night could only be made worse by one thing – my sisters finding out that my daring walk on the wild side had led me straight off a cliff. There’s nothing bad about sisters that sharing personal and intimate details won’t aggravate.

No, I swore to keep the whole catastrophic encounter to myself. I’d never give my siblings the comedic satisfaction – never, ever, ever. I’d rather chew off my own tongue.

12

Total catastrophe! I WhatsApped both sisters, pre-dawn, my head hanging over the toilet bowl. I couldn’t chew off my own tongue now as promised, as it was stuck to the roof of my mouth, coated in fur. From mojito to finito in, like, less than one hour.

One thing I’d learnt is that a separated, middle-aged woman who gets drunk enough to sleep with a boy toy will be rewarded with the sight of herself vomiting up five martinis in the middle of the night.

I’d woken an hour earlier with a vague recollection in my fuddled, muddled brain, that I’d brought home a souvenir from the disco; a two-legged souvenir. I cautiously began to roll in his direction, wondering what kind of small talk could save me from the crippling humiliation of our unconsummated evening. What did boys his age like to talk about? Football? Surfing? Instagram influencers – whatever the hell they were?

When I discovered the other side of the bed to be empty, the wave of relief that washed over me felt tsunami-like in scale. But it was quickly followed by a wave of nausea so strong it propelled me to the bathroom – where I’d been lying ever since, my hot cheek pressed up against the cold tiles.

When I finally felt confident I could stand without listing starboard, I eased my way into the shower to wash off all remnants of the night before. I showered with my eyes closed to avoid the too-bright light. It hurt to walk. As I was dressing, I also noticed a raised welt the size of a crockpot on my shin, a bruise rapidly turning the colour of an aubergine on my ankle from where I’d whacked it during my diva dive onto the bed the night before, and a stiffness in my hips which could only have been from some overexcited disco moves, rather than the horizontal tango, as I’d hoped.