‘No, I wouldn’t like to go for dinner with you,’ I said. You’re boring, I wanted to add.

‘That’s a shame.’

The beautiful Swedish girl walked past, down the corridor – she must have been staying on my floor – but Jonas didn’t look at her, he didn’t even glance in her direction. He only looked at me, so I changed my mind. I said I’d go for dinner with him.

We went for dinner in the à la carte restaurant – Mexican – and it was fine, and we had a laugh, actually, and he let me put tiny pinpricks in his ego, just for fun, and he seemed to quite enjoy it, as though it were a massive novelty, and I allowed myself the luxury of thinking that he looked at me with lust and interest and curiosity in his eyes. I had Badges again in the morning, after all. And after we had got through the best part of three bottles of wine, I took him back to the room he had followed me to earlier and this time he fucked me, just the once and terribly – so so terribly – and then I kicked him out.

I saw him, in the morning, although I didn’t want to, as I was nursing a bruise as big as my birthmark on my inner thigh and a head that was constantly yelling, ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid!’ at me, and I had been, hadn’t I? I was doing Badges and I had to walk from Meeting Room 2 to the lobby and he was waiting for me, outside the loos.

‘Hey, beautiful,’ he said.

‘You hurt me,’ I said.

‘You let me.’

‘I was drunk.’

‘You didn’t say “no”.’

‘I did say “no”, at that point – and you know which point I am talking about. I said it until you finished – but you wouldn’t get off me.’

‘You let me,’ he repeated.

‘I could report you.’

‘Are you going to?’ I realized he was holding something in his right hand.