I am grown up. I am allowed to kiss men.

‘Hey, hey!’ There is a banging on the door.

‘Go away, it’s taken!’ Who on earth has had the gall to invade my parents’ en-suite?

I close my eyes and put a finger to my bruised lips. Whatever Dad thinks, I can’t regret what just happened though.

I’m never going to be the same again. Obviously, my mouth will recover, but how do I go back from this? A kiss that was close to orgasmic.

And I still had all my clothes on.

It’s worse than that though, much worse. It was the moment before, those minutes before he kissed me. When we could have been the only two people that existed. When there was this frisson of anticipation between us and I’d felt closer to him than I ever have to anybody else in my life.

I hug my arms around myself.

‘I know you’re in there, Rosie, open this fucking door before I kick it down.’

‘I know you wouldn’t do that.’ I open the door with a sigh. ‘Hi, Bea.’

‘Hi back at you, Rosie girl.’ She grins. ‘I didn’t think you could move that fast.’

‘Nor did I,’ I say glumly.

‘You two were getting cosy!’ She raises an eyebrow.

‘Don’t! Oh Bea …’

‘Is that an “oh Bea, what a lovely kiss I’ve had”?’ she says in an airy tone, totally interrupting my revelation that my absent parent has reappeared, ‘or an “oh Bea I think I’m falling for him”?’ Her voice has dropped to a sultry growl and she’s clutching her chest with her hand.

‘Sod off.’ I am trying not to grin, it’s not working.

‘Haha! I knew it!’

I close my eyes. Noah’s ‘am I right’ sayings from that very first evening are loud in my ears.

‘You’ve got it bad, girl. I prescribe a light buffet and several of your mum’s toxic cocktails. Come on.’ She holds out a hand. ‘This is for your mum, not you. We’ll scrape you back together again later.’

I sigh and let her haul me to my feet. She’s right. I do need to get my act together for my mum’s sake. Dad has done his normal trick of sneaking in round the back so that he can pretend he arrived on time. Hell, she probably doesn’t even know he’s here! ‘You’ll be fine, girl. At least you know what a proper snog is supposed to feel like now, instead of a snuffly sloppy one.’

‘Robbie was not snuffly!’

‘Well, he wasn’t like that, was he?’ She raises a knowing eyebrow. I glow red hot and decide it is safer not to object further.

‘I think I’ve OD’d.’ I sigh. ‘It was incredible.’ And Dad managed to spoil it.

‘And now you’re just trying to make me jealous. Come on, your mother was asking where you’d got to.’

I groan and pull my big girls pants up, metaphorically. In reality I’m wearing indecently skimpy lace things that couldn’t contain a big girl if they tried.