Monica sighed and shook her head. ‘It’s not looking good, Laura, if you don’t want to have had sex with him. A man like that, naked in bed with a girl, who was also naked, I presume?’ Laura nodded. ‘The chances of him not having had his evil way with you are slim. And no sign of a condom – very irresponsible.’

‘But surely I’d remember if we had?’ Laura asked quietly, looking down the lane towards the pub where this whole sorry situation had started. She sighed and pulled her coat round her more tightly.

‘Not if he put Rohypnol in your drink,’ said Monica matter-of-factly.

‘He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t need to.’ Of this Laura was absolutely sure.

‘You don’t know that, sweetie, you know very little about him,’ Monica reminded her, albeit gently.

‘I wrote my bloody dissertation about him! I know everything there is to know. And besides, where would he get Rohypnol in Ballyfitzpatrick?’ She doubted they’d even heard of it here.

Monica chuckled again. ‘You have a point, and you may be able to quote his books by heart, but you don’t know about his sex life, now do you? I got the impression from Charles that he’s quite a ladies’ man. You can never be too careful, you know.’

‘It wasn’t mentioned in the author biog in the back of the books, no,’ said Laura. ‘You do have a point.’

‘You’re really worried about this, aren’t you?’ said Monica, touching Laura’s arm, serious now.

‘Well, yes! I, the last virgin in the Northern Hemisphere over twenty-one, may or may not have had sex. I would kind of like to know.’

‘Do you want to go home? We could leave early . . .’

Laura shook her head. ‘Oh no. We can’t go before his other session – and I’ve got to get him to say definitely that he’ll come to the festival. There’s more than just my virginity at stake here! Besides,’ she went on in a small voice, ‘I can’t pass up a chance to see him again.’

Monica patted her hand. ‘Of course.’

‘But I also need to know what happened last night. Otherwise how can I speak to him about the festival, make arrangements, stuff like that?’

‘I see your point. We need to find out.’ She stood up, putting out a hand to pull Laura up. ‘Come on, it’s freezing out here, let’s go to the café and warm ourselves up.’

‘But, Monica, how? I’m certainly not asking him,’ said Laura as they walked towards the café where they’d had their first Irish breakfast what seemed like days ago now.

‘OK, then I will,’ said Monica.