He’d borrowed Jason’s car, a beaten-up Volkswagen with dings and scratches all over it and a greasy smell inside. There were old McDonald’s wrappers and empty cigarette packets under the seats. Not exactly the Ferrari of Dean’s dreams.

“We’ll buy one of our own soon, babe,” Dean said as I kicked the wrappers out of the way. He picked at a stain on the steering wheel. “I’ll buy a new one for Jason too.”

And we were off, away from Grace Tower, away from the town, away to … well, a Travelodge fifty miles away where we could lie low.

I get myself another coffee. I’ve got time. I’ve got nothing to do, really, besides worry about Dean. The breakfast room doesn’t close until eleven, so I may as well make the most of my quiet time.

The machine spurts out a cupful for me, and adds a little bit of milk. I take three sugar sachets and another spoon and, back at my usual seat at my usual table, I pour the sugar in, one slow sachet at a time.

Certainty number five: I am a person who likes three sugars in my coffee.

It’s not as big as any of the other potential Certainties I would like to know about myself, but for now it’s as undisputed a Certainty as I’ll get. Maybe that’s all right, though. Maybe it’s OK that right now I’m a person who likes three sugars in my coffee.

Dean asked me, about a year or so after I’d met him, when the make-up had become routine, and he’d decided to buy me a dress from Primark – actually buy one, legally with money. He handed me a bundle of red polyester, the two of us hidden away in the gulley between Grace Tower and the garages, and as I unravelled it I gasped. A sundress: strappy at the top with a flowing hem, tiny blue flowers scattered on the fabric.

“You’re a girl, then?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I just like dresses.”

I’d unfurled it and I was holding it against myself, twisting my hips so the skirt flounced around.

“Do you mind?” I asked.

“Not really.”

He pulled the skirt of the dress around my waist and kissed me.

It was kind of just the look, that’s the thing. I’m into the make-up and the fashion but it sort of ends there. It never really bothered me when people called me Nicholas or referred to me as a boy. Not much, anyway. I’m just not sure I’ve ever felt like a boy. Though then again I don’t even know what you’re apparently supposed to feel.

As a kid I liked playing with Transformers as well as my friend’s Barbies, but that doesn’t mean anything.

In the curve of the spoon I’ve been stirring my coffee with, I’m just a blurry smudge.

Perhaps I’m a girl, really, under all of this. Or maybe I’m a boy, and I’m just a boy who doesn’t have facial hair and likes to wear make-up. Or maybe I’m neither, maybe I sit somewhere in between or just outside of the whole system entirely.