That was her first time: not the Novotel with M. That was it. The scumbag teacher. Her first one. David thought again of the way she had told this story, as a colourful harmless episode, something to brandish in the pub, to trump a competitive interlocutor, produced from her sleeve like one of the Body Shop lipsticks her so-called friends had commissioned her to steal. Oh, no, they’d never had sex. It was all so chaste. At pains to impress this upon him. She had convinced herself that losing your virginity was nothing but the simple mechanical act of admitting a penis into your vagina, which allowed her to believe that she had not lost it to the teacher. No wonder her first time hadn’t felt like an event! That had been the event: the first total nakedness, the first mutual willingness to do anything, do it all, successfully or not … But she’d told herself it wasn’t, on a stupid technicality, all this time.

What toll had it taken on her, the teacher’s failure to see it through? She must have blamed herself. Even twenty years later, writing this entry, she was determined to describe her own sexual inadequacy – that she hadn’t known how to give a blowjob – without considering his. She probably still thought she’d done something wrong. Scumbag cunt. Not even to talk about it with her! Not to reassure her in the night! Probably the teacher couldn’t get it up because he was afraid of what he was doing. Had this occurred to Claire? That he knew it was wrong? Or maybe it was a chronic problem for him. Maybe he was so fucking inadequate he couldn’t keep it up with anyone at all, and he’d thought sleeping with someone inexperienced was the only way to get through it. Maybe the new bra made her look too grown-up.

David could hardly begin to consider the implications of Claire’s mother taking her to buy underwear for this outing. He’d never liked Anne, though it was not unusual to dislike one’s in-law; but this new information made him dizzy. Almost euphoric. Not only had Anne known that her daughter was being abused, not only had she allowed her abuser to take her away for the weekend, but she had bought her daughter lace and satin underwear for this assignation, like a brothel madam taking her newest acquisition to the lingerie shop. Now he could not picture the scene – Claire and the teacher in bed – without also picturing Anne there too, standing by the window in her shiny apron, waiting to clean up the mess.