I couldn’t go through with it the first time. My stomach had been a tight ball of nerves, my heart banging against my chest and my head screaming at me to run. In the end, with enough wine consumed to numb my emotions and free my inhibitions, I’d simply closed my eyes and tried to go with the flow, hoping it would allow me to escape from the pain of my husband’s infidelity. It hadn’t. The pain was still there, pressing down on my chest as heavily as the stranger on top of me. Mercifully, he’d been understanding. He might not have been. I’m aware of the danger.

My ‘date’ pulls me closer, indicating he’s interested in more than the dance. For now, in this moment, he wants me. I am desired, needed, if only for one night. And when the night is over, we will go our separate ways. He will move on, another piece of me will be gone and I will go home to my children.

I try to detach from my emotions, to lose myself on the dance floor, where I can be anyone I want to be. Anyone but me. But as I raise my arms in the air, desperate for the enticing rhythm of the music to transport me to another place, I am seized by a crushing sense of anxiety. The thud of the bass coming through the huge sound system grows too loud, each thump causing my heart to pump manically, my blood to whoosh through my temples. The strobes are too bright. Searing white light. The overabundance of beer and perfume too cloying.

With my heart feeling as if it might burst from my chest, I push myself away from the man opposite me and squeeze through the throng of bodies now gyrating as one. My legs are like butter beneath me. One hand against the wall, I squint, trying to gain some equilibrium as I make my way to the toilets. Rough hands grab me, righting me as I reel. Someone laughs, a loud, raucous laugh, right next to my ear. He shouts something unintelligible. I can’t hear anything now but the boom, boom inside me, can’t feel anything but the panic that claws its way up my throat. I can’t breathe.