Awake, I feel the space between our bodies and am relieved to find the wetness hasn’t spread to her. She is fast asleep. But like a bird, Ruth can be woken by the smallest disruption. I stare at her profile in the low light from the curtains. I know that if I move she will dart her skinny arm towards me, in the anxious way she does, and ask, ‘Are you OK, baby?’ Or something like that. Something nice, concerned. She would want to take care of me, to get out of bed and change the bottom sheet, ring the doctor, take the morning off work. I’d have to explain what happened.

I’m always fucking expected to explain. I flip on to my side and get out of bed. I realize I am automatically heading to the shower. ‘Are you OK, baby?’ says Ruth, still half asleep. I don’t respond. I shut the bathroom door behind me and lock it. In the shower I run the dial all the way to hot, just a notch under. I masturbate angrily under the jet.

When I am done, I take her hot-pink scrubbing glove from the soap dish and drag it roughly across my chest. It leaves a hot-pink scratch. I think about the incidence of my nocturnal disease: I know it spikes at times of great distress. My parents signed the divorce papers the year I turned fifteen. Whenever my father rang, which was always in the evenings, my mother would continue to do the dishes, her hands in Marigolds up to the elbow. I had to pick up. Then puberty. Whatever that was. Fucking hell. The time we had sex in my childhood bed and Ruth fell asleep after getting what she wanted. These episodes are easy to pin down, easy to analyse. What has happened this time? What is happening? Nothing’s happening. And that’s it. I can’t stand it.

I stand in the shower and watch the water collect in the drain. A sliver of beige soap gets trapped in the metal and I bend over to retrieve it. My vision blurs for a moment. I steady myself against the wall. Like water, Ruth trickling into all things. She’s drowning me. The details of the night terror are finally coming to the surface. I close my eyes and it all comes back to me.