Dark and cocooned in the windowless room, he could barely see her, just a dim glow from her hair and, close up, the whites of her eyes. There, alone, with her facing him, he realised how tiny she was – she only came up to his chin – and he felt as if he could scoop her up and into himself. There was a moment when he saw himself standing in his stockroom with Muriel. A fisherman’s daughter! He wished he was half-cut, but then her soft little fingers felt along his jaw and he emitted a small groan. His own rough skin found the triangle of smoothness and he felt, as gently as he could, along her collarbone. Her body juddered and shivered and reached up to him.

Muriel’s mouth was warm and alive; her tongue flicked his as he drew the tip of it along the edges of her teeth and he bit, gently, her lips and her neck.

She helped him take off his shirt and he pulled at her blouse. Her coat and hat were already in a heap on the floor. Their fingers were a flurry of buttons and braces and clasps, of cold metal on skin, and then sudden warmth when all at once there was nothing else left; they were stuck together. He wished for a second he could see her clearly but then it didn’t matter because he could feel her and that was enough, too much.

Her body was soft and hard at the same time and he couldn’t believe he was touching this perfection, the curve of her back, the smoothness of her shoulder. He didn’t trust himself to touch her chest, he felt them, her improbable breasts, pushed against him and he fell into her, still holding her body tight to his. And then he was almost bent over double, she precarious, as he tried to lower her down to the floor. She started to laugh. ‘Stop,’ he said but he was laughing too. She nibbled the finger he had put to her mouth and her hand reached down and there was no way he could stop himself. His knees buckled and they collapsed onto the floor and he pushed her down with an urgent need to capture and possess the salty, smoky, living flesh of this girl who was giving herself to him. He no longer knew who or what he cared about and it didn’t matter that he was on top of Muriel on the dusty, cold floor of the storeroom. The only thing that mattered was the violent need to push and push until he could be released. He gave himself up. He was here and yet not here, somewhere else entirely where neither Verity nor Jack nor his dying mother existed.

‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Oh fucking God.’

*