My room was at the far end of the house. Baby-pink flower noodlings on the bedding, NHS-tight. A shiny chest of drawers in the corner, a mirror with a studded frame on top. And a white orchid with black-green, rubbery leaves on a small table between the twin beds. All it needed was a crucifix on the wall and my get-thee-to-a-nunneryness would be complete.

A single window faced the garden, full of ferns and plants that looked like they were dancing at a rave – arms up, ecstatic. You could just see a dark corner of the loch behind the branches at the edge of the lawn, past the bleak misery-memoir sky.

The guy who lived here seemed to be into angling, big, fuck-off mountains and pints that made him red-faced and greasy-looking. His interior design skills were seriously lacking. The living room was a disaster of clashing colours – salmon-pink sofas, tangerine rug and blood-coloured shagpile. There was an exposed stone wall, a tiny telly up on a bracket, and a cabinet full of mismatched glasses and retro cameras. The bathroom had an impressive patch of mould in the top corner. The outside slowly working its way in.

The small study next to my room was probably meant to be private. It smelled woody and a bit like fermenting apples. There was a desk, a beaten-up leather chair and more overexposed photos of the owner with his arms wrapped round massive, spent fish and a dirty grin on his face. The night before I had slid open the top drawer. Fountain pen, collected business cards and a tin of Mint Imperials, which rustled softly when I shook it.

Angling, mountains, pints – and weed. Loads of lovely weed. I decided that this guy wasn’t so bad after all and slotted the tin into my back pocket for a rainy day. Which, conveniently, was every day.

We got a drink in before the imminent welcome party dive-bombing by Bev and Adam. The hotel was a mile away, at the near end of the village, some little boats docked low in the loch beside it.

So this was going to be my den of iniquity. More pine panelling than you could shake a stick at, a log fire, swords on the wall, and a carpet that looked as though it had once been the kilt of some giant Highland man with thighs you couldn’t get both your hands round.

I worked out my Sex Order as we took a table in the corner. Sex Order had always been Stef’s game. Wherever we were – pub, gig, tube carriage, school playground back in the day – we’d chart all the guys, deciding that if you had to sleep with all of them, no vetoes, who’d be your first choice all the way down to the last, the ickiness factor getting higher. I’d be incredulous at some of the men that Stef would have at the top of his list. Thick necks, black fingernails, workboots, guys with uneasy smiles and hair sticking out of their collars.