She heard the flush of the loo from next door and with only a faint hum of irritation, her brain proceeded to clock Si’s movements in the bathroom and their inevitable consequences: tomorrow before work she would have to pick up the wet bath mat left askew on the floor, the towel stuffed across the bar, the tiny splashes on the mirror from his electric toothbrush, detritus left unrinsed in the sink, the small drops of pee around the toilet – the minute but continual daily male trail. After all these years, these things had only just begun to consciously bother her. She had always felt it was her problem, her fastidious tidiness, how difficult she must be to live with. Was it Connie who had awakened her to protest? With closed eyes she reached out and turned off her light.

She was nudged out of sleep by a hand resting on her hip. She was aware of the darkness of the room, the clicking of a radiator, the coolness of his fingers on her skin, making soft almost imperceptible movements that could only mean one thing. Wearily she knew that she had two choices: she could feign sleep, which would hardly even be feigning because technically she was asleep; or she could respond in an infinitesimal way and thereby give him permission to make love to her – she might not even have to open her eyes. She should choose the latter; she should try harder. Then in that murky shapeless twilight, neither awake nor asleep, another choice stepped out of the shadows: she thought of those smooth artistic fingers on the handlebars of his bike, the way he stood there on the towpath in his Lycra, and she remembered how he had once looked at her many years ago; she recalled the night of that party when his knee had been pressed against hers on the sofa – she could even remember the sofa’s fabric, a thick brown corduroy – of course he had been aware of the fact that they were touching. When she left the party he had followed her and hovered around to say goodbye and if she had had more confidence, she could have let it be known that she wanted to be kissed by him, but instead she had scurried off.

But supposing she had not scurried off – supposing he had kissed her, those full lips gently brushing her own. What if she had changed her mind and stayed on at the party; if they had returned to that sofa, carried on drinking, thighs touching until they crashed out on that soft corduroy with all the other teenage bodies scattered about the room. She might have woken in the night to feel Dougie’s hand on her hip, just like this; his fingers stroking her skin, awakening every nerve in her body, setting off this sharp throbbing between her legs.