Eventually I said, ‘What about you, what are you most proud of and most ashamed of?’ He responded immediately, launching into his story with a small, self-deprecating snort, and any hint of unease I might have felt vanished. ‘When I was eight,’ he said, and his hand began to pick up my hair again, let it fall between his fingers, ‘we had to do a project at school, a really long one, British birds I think it was, we were supposed to work on it every week, you know, a bird per week or something, and on the last week before half term, we all had to put them on the teacher’s desk as we left the classroom. Well, I hadn’t done mine, of course, I was a lazy little bugger, so I sneaked out of the classroom without leaving anything on the teacher’s desk, and the whole of half term I worried about the first day back and what she would say to me, and it was only as I was going into the class that first day back that I hit on the solution.’ He had a coughing fit that jolted me from his shoulder and I sat up to let him raise himself a bit.

‘Yes …’ I said, by way of encouragement, as we both lay down again.

‘Well, I waited until the teacher had handed out all of the projects, then I put my hand up, and the teacher said, yes Matthew, and I said, Miss, where’s mine?’

‘You didn’t …’

‘I did, and she said, oh I’m sorry Matthew, I’ve handed them all out, perhaps I’ve left yours at home, I’m so sorry, I’ll look tonight and bring it in tomorrow I promise, and I went all quiet on her, and the next day she came in and came up to me in the playground and actually knelt down and said how sorry she was, she’d spent all evening going through her whole house but she couldn’t find my project anywhere … At parents’ evening that term, she even apologised for losing it in front of my mum and dad.’

I raised myself up on one elbow. ‘Matthew! That’s awful!’

He smiled. ‘Yeah, I do feel pretty bad about that. Miss Harrington. I actually really liked her as well.’

It was only the next weekend that it occurred to me to ask him, ‘So, you never told me, what are you most proud of …’ We were in bed again, but before sex, not after, and he took my arms and pinned them above my head and pushed between my knees and sank his mouth to my neck, entering me with a swift, firm movement that jolted my head against the headboard as he murmured, ‘What do you think …?’ I could never get him to answer any question seriously when he was turned on, I learned that very quickly.

*