‘I know a place,’ he’d informed her as she pulled the seatbelt across her chest, thrilling to the fact that they were alone together in the Mercedes in a way that was so different from the driving lessons in the little Toyota. Back then she’d felt the flirtation to be one-sided – a stupid schoolgirl crush. Now they were both complicit.

‘I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,’ he’d remarked, shaking his head at his own audacity as the car sped further outside the suburbs, taking the back roads towards the Wicklow hills.

He didn’t say where they were going, and she didn’t ask. And when he pulled off the darkened road on to an uneven track, she felt the quiver of nerves as the car lurched and rocked over the rough terrain.

‘I’ll bring the Land Rover next time,’ he’d remarked, his brow furrowed in concentration as he brought the car safely to a halt, and a jolt had gone through Eva at the realization that already he was planning on a next time.

With the engine cut off, the car filled with silence. They turned to each other. Nerves made her giggle.

‘Is this where you bring all your dates?’ she asked, and he looked confused, then stricken.

‘No, of course not,’ he replied with conviction. ‘There hasn’t been anyone before you. Not like this.’

‘Good. I’m glad. I was just kidding anyway.’ She looked about at the darkness of the trees, the whisk of scrub bushes skirting the crumbling walls of an old shed, its corrugated tin roof collapsed. ‘This place is so … hidden.’

‘I haven’t been up here in years. I didn’t know if it would still be here, still the same, or would the place have been bulldozed and some McMansion built here instead.’

It was only later, when she replayed the whole evening in her head, that she realized he must have come up here with Becca, when they’d first started dating. But right at that moment, Eva wasn’t thinking about Becca. Too focused on Ross’s mouth against hers, his tongue exploring her mouth, his hands tugging at her blouse, pulling it loose from the waistband of her jeans. When he guided her hand to the buttons of his jeans, she said:

‘Can we go in the backseat?’