The box-sized bedroom I wake up in the next morning is so tiny that I can reach out and touch the wall from anywhere in the single bed. Navy curtains hang loosely on a long narrow window as condensation drips down on the inside, and a radiator below is lined with multi-coloured socks and white boxers that sit in a zig-zag row. I can smell burnt toast and hear muffled voices downstairs.

Where the hell am I?

I peep under the covers, afraid of what I might see, but I know by the heat in my body that I must be fully clothed. I’m wearing a Ramones T-shirt that is definitely not mine, a pair of old-school tracksuit bottoms and a pair of mismatched fluffy men’s bed socks, which explains why I’m so cosy and toasty. I check the time on my phone. It’s just gone ten in the morning. Gosh, I slept like a baby.

‘Knock, knock. Can I come in?’

Tom pops his head round the door, enters the room and sits on the edge of the single bed as I run my hands through my hair, trying to recollect coming in here in the first place last night. Everything about this room, everything about him, is so new yet so familiar.

‘Tom?’ I say.

‘Still me, Charlie,’ he replies. ‘You sleep OK? Were you warm enough?’

I go to speak but I can’t. He keeps calling me Charlie even though I’ve warned him it could get him a slap on the wrists if he ever meets my parents again.

‘Where the hell are we?’ I ask. He laughs a little, and then leans over beside me. I can smell his aftershave. It’s very … oh God, he looks even better in daylight.

‘You told me last night you’d wake up and ask me that,’ he says, resting his hand on top of mine. I want to move it, but I can’t. ‘Don’t look so scared, babe. We had fun, but nothing more happened. Well, lots of good stuff happened actually, now that I think of it.’

I take a moment and have a good long look at him, feeling myself relax a little now as the night before unfolds in my hazy hungover memory.

‘I remember,’ I whisper and close my eyes, recalling now his muscular strong arms and the musky smell of his soft skin, almost feeling again now the way he touched me so tenderly.

‘I practically carried you to bed here in my deluxe spare room,’ he says and we both burst out laughing. ‘I carried you right over the threshold and even gave you some clothes to sleep in. So much for a hot-blooded night of making up for lost time. You were very tired.’

I can’t help but giggle at the thought of it all.