A sigh. ‘Here we go.’

‘Where?’

‘To the place where your body is so precious and special it needs to be locked away in a fucking vault.’

‘Wow.’

He lifted the silver cover off the tray, put it on the bedcover, not even checking if there was sauce or something clinging to it. ‘Listen, you have a nice body. Gorgeous. I mean it. But hot girls are everywhere. People on the internet don’t care about your hot body. That dude out there doesn’t care. Stop acting like the world’s going to end if someone sees your precious tits.’

Lena perched on the edge of the bed, picked a chip off her plate. It was barely warm, soft and soggy. She ate it because otherwise she might scream so loud that the people in the next room would call security. She might punch Josh until his face looked like the chopped salad in front of her. She ate another chip and then another. She hadn’t eaten potato for years. Hadn’t eaten anything fried for months. The chips were starchy and salty and slicked with fat. She had to concentrate on chewing and swallowing each one completely before picking up the next. If Josh wasn’t there she would have been shoving them in by the handful. I’m so fucking easy. Josh’s hand on my leg and I’m a senseless whore. One not-even-good chip and I’m a greedy pig.

Josh was making fast work of his burger. He didn’t look like a greedy pig, though. He looked like a man with a well-earnt appetite. A man in a hurry, but not so much he couldn’t enjoy his food. He was near naked, too, and not self-conscious about it. Not self-conscious about anything. In his skin and in this room and everywhere else. What must it be like, to be so at ease?

‘So, ah, I think my brother knows.’

He stopped mid-bite. A millisecond but she saw it. Ha. Good. He chewed, swallowed, said, ‘About this?’

‘About the video.’

‘Shit. Should I be scared? Is he gunna come at me? Bash me farkin’ ’ead in.’

‘What is that accent?’

Josh took another bite. Chewed aggressively. Swallowed. Smiled. ‘That’s how he talks, right? Like you, when you get upset or turned on and forget to posh up.’

‘And the way you talk when you’re turned on? Is that how your family speaks back on the porn set where you grew up?’

He laughed at that, loud and surprising and real, a bolus of burger flying out and landing on the bed, all red and brown and wet and gristly. He covered it with a napkin and swept it out of sight like it was nothing. Everything was nothing with him. It was a superpower.

‘Is your brother as funny as you?’

‘God, no. He’s earnest as fuck.’