Anyway, I don’t think I’d like it at his house. Too much like cheating. And I’m not a cheater. Except I am. I’m stealing someone else’s husband. What’s wrong with me? How can I even live with it? Never mind like it. God. I don’t want to think about this.

In her pocket were five tea-lights, stolen from the emergency power-cut kit. If there was a power-cut in the next two hours, her dad would go to the box and open it and realise the tea-lights were missing. Somehow he’d divine from this that she was up to no good, not at some undefined point in the past or future but right now, this minute, and he’d come raging out of the pub towards the café, unerringly drawn to the spot where she cowered in the darkness.

Except that, in a whole lifetime of being caught – exposure of everything from stolen biscuits in bed to stolen kisses at the back of the playing-field – this was the one thing she’d kept hidden. Maybe her father wasn’t infallible. Maybe she was cleverer than she imagined. The thought gave her confidence as she lifted a chair down and set it in the centre of the tea-lights.

It’s like I’m two people. Alicia that hangs out with her mates and texts under the covers and wonders about sex and doesn’t know how to talk to boys. And Alicia that sneaks out and meets a married man and does… things. And loves it.

When I was going out with Ewan and we’d kiss or touch or whatever, I was worried the whole time about how it looked. Like, if my legs looked fat, if my stomach was sticking out, if I looked sexy. So it was dead hard to concentrate on what it felt like. I mean, I remember that I liked thinking how I probably looked really cool and sexy for this imaginary audience. But I don’t remember ever thinking about if I was enjoying it.

But the stuff I do now…

Sand stuck to his shirt and his jeans and he brushed it off, unselfconscious and at ease in his skin. His hair was untidy and his chin was covered with stubble, black flecked with grey. He seemed completely unconcerned with how he looked, and because of this, she found he looked beautiful.

I mean, my generation’s got sex on tap. We’ve grown up with it. The other day there was this clip going around - My Little Ponies having sex, for God’s sake. We’ve probably seen more sex than any generation before. But I still only just found out sex isn’t about how it looks on camera. It’s about how it feels. How messed up is that?

He was watching her by the candlelight, his hands by his sides, waiting to be told what to do. She felt the blood beating in her ears. What would happen if she did nothing at all? If she just stood in silence, watching him watching her, until the tea-lights burned out and the darkness swarmed back in and it was time for them to leave?