There had been many boys and men after that first time. Despite all the promises you made to yourself never to do it again and the desperate prayers to have such feelings taken away, you let yourself be pulled into the game again and again. First the eyes would catch the gaze of another and linger; they were always holidaymakers, playing such games with locals would be too dangerous. After stares that seemed to loiter there would be quiet smiles and perhaps a nod of the head, then one or the other would lead the way into a public toilet where you’d stand for longer than was possible if it had been just for a pee. When each was confident of the other’s intention – a kind of knowing that you came to understand and which became more certain with experience – a place would be negotiated; a tent or a beach hut, even the rocks and caves at the bottom of the cliffs. Caravans were best of all because the curtains could be drawn and the door locked. Failing these options, and if you both were desperate enough, it would be in a toilet cubicle against walls smeared with lurid messages and cartoon phalluses.

Sometimes, when you let yourself remember, the shame suffocated you. At such times you tried to recall what legacy these liaisons and encounters left you to be grateful for. Sex education at Ysgol-y-Traeth, its curriculum barely discussed by the embarrassed, middle-aged, respectable chapel-goers on the governing board, had failed to acknowledge the real world of AIDS and unplanned pregnancies. It was these men and boys, in holiday shorts and suntan cream, who’d taught you about using condoms and safer sex. Some had even shown tenderness.

Others had been brutish, especially in the days of your inexperience, taking what they wanted by threat or by force… Not that you’d ever been beaten up… You’d never had to lie about a swollen lip or a black eye. Even those who’d said yes to your nos hadn’t been violent in that sense; they’d just held you down more firmly than was comfortable and pushed harder. You’d soon learned that clenching the muscle as tight as possible only made it hurt more so your no was usually interpreted as a yes because you relaxed to save yourself the pain. After learning about KY or using loads of spit, with the boy from Wolverhampton – the one you’d seen every day for a fortnight because you’d liked one another, it became easier and more convenient to say yes even though you never liked it. And so any possible nastiness had been avoided.

The alarm clock ringing out from your parents’ bedroom breaks through the thoughts and the seagulls. Your attic bedroom, with sloping ceilings and sea view, is still stifling from the previous day’s heat. The white tee-shirt you’d worn the night before, stained at the armpits, is lying over the back of a dining chair that looks curiously out of place next to the small chest of drawers. On the chest, amid the clutter of deodorant cans, after-shave bottles and tubes of creams for spots and athlete’s foot, the two ten-pound notes are where you left them. You try again to remember a forgotten errand or any other reason why they should have been in the back left-hand pocket of your jeans. You don’t want to accept that the slightly drunk American with the snake tattoo coiled around his thigh, its head questioning at his pubic hair, must be the source of such munificence. Twice you’d told him that you didn’t take money and that as long as he used a condom with plenty of lube you didn’t mind. He must have put the two notes into your pocket when you went to the toilet in the cramped camper van after you’d had sex. You wonder why the snake man had felt the need to pay for something you’d been willing enough to give.