‘No …’ He grabbed my hand and looked at his bedroom window.

I made him go first. No way was I going to fall through the roof and land arse over tit in the hallway if he wasn’t going to crash down with me. Fraser sat on the windowsill and took my hand to help me through. I bashed my forehead on the frame. Jesus. We crept over the flat porch roof and he crouched down before levering himself onto the lawn using one hand, as if it was a specialist Olympic sport. He’d definitely done that before. Wiggling forward, my skirt totally riding up to my crotch, I leant down and he just about got me around the waist and I fell into him, almost taking us both out.

Being a cat-burglar fugitive was quite a turn-on. I kissed him, teeth clashing, and ran round to the back of the house. The booze had sluiced my brain, sugar and acetic loveliness. Fraser appeared and I slammed him against the wall and kissed him again, my hands under his T-shirt. He was breathing my name and swearwords into my mouth and trying to get me off him at the same time. I got my fingers to his belt buckle and knelt down in the gravel and his hands were in my hair and he was still hissing at me but I carried on anyway, and pulled him out.

Light flooded the garden and there was a squeak of a door handle. A woman was there, looking at me with her son’s cock in my mouth.

When I was nine, I climbed up to the tall diving board in our local swimming pool, having thrown a strop at Dad, who’d said I wouldn’t like it. I got to the edge and vomited, ten metres up, a waterfall of sick that caused swimmers to shriek as though they were being murdered.

At the Year 7 disco, Bryn Hannaway planted both hands on my cheeks and delivered a kiss worse than a goldfish dying on my face. I broke his nose and had to write a letter of apology and mow his lawn for the summer.

At thirteen, I was besotted with a lanky footballer two years older than me who wore an Afro comb in his hair and walked like he had a limp. I made him a Valentine’s CD of sarky chart rock and stoned-sounding hip hop tunes, ruining it all by ending with James Blunt. After that, Olayemi laughed behind his cupped hand every time he saw me for the rest of the year. As did all his friends. While singing ‘You’re Beautiful’ and miming handjobs.

Getting locked out of a German exchange dorm wearing only my pants and a pair of fairy wings. Flashing my arse at fresher’s ball. Letting a PhD student shag me because I was too drunk to care and her throwing me a coming-out party before crying in a corner of the English department. Trying to drag the driver of the student bus out of his seat so I could take everyone home.