A lightweight, that was what her boys had teased each other about being, when they were teenagers and one of them had too much to drink. It had been a running joke: which of them would throw up each Friday and Saturday night; John had even started a Chunder Chart at one point. What would they say now, those lads of hers, if they could see their own mother like this, drunk and dishevelled, desperately trying to get the taste of vomit out of her mouth, a young barman waiting for her on the hotel bed? They would be horrified. Embarrassed of her. God, Mum, she imagined John saying, what are you playing at?

‘Can I help?’ Luis asked tentatively through the door. ‘Or would you like me to go?’

Trying not to sob out loud, Jeanie shut her eyes, but the room was spinning and she had to jerk them open again before the nausea returned. ‘I think you’d better go,’ she said faintly. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m really, really sorry.’

She was saying the words to Harry as well, of course, not that he could hear her. Not that he had any idea what his dreadful wife had been getting up to behind his back, either, thank goodness. She sank to the floor and sat there on the cold ceramic tiles, leaning against the bathtub until she heard Luis saying goodbye and that he hoped she felt better in the morning.

Then, when she was quite sure he had gone, she crawled through into the bedroom, clambered up onto the bed and fell asleep.

If she had felt bad the night before, then to wake the next morning, cold, hungover and tortured by fragments of memory replaying how badly she had behaved . . . well, that was a whole new level of awful. That was down there at the bottom of the dustbin, with all the potato peelings and stinking fish packets and bin juice.

Her mouth was dry and foul-tasting. Her head thumped abominably. Both her throat and her stomach hurt from all the retching. Worse than the physical complaints, though, was the feeling of hot and terrible shame that pressed down on her like a rock. She had brought Luis up here to her bedroom, meaning to seduce him, throwing herself at him like a randy old goat. And instead of being sophisticated and cosmopolitan, she had made a complete and utter show of herself. He had probably told all the other bar staff, and they’d no doubt had a good old laugh at her expense. Sad British granny, can’t handle her drink, thinks she’s a cougar – yeah, right!

And if she hadn’t thrown up at that moment . . . if she hadn’t pulled the plug on their prospective night of passion – what then? Would she really have gone through with it, really have slept with a man young enough to be her grandson?