Fortunately, Si needed little encouragement and he took over. He undid his trousers, pulled off her knickers and was trying to get inside her, his hands up under her T-shirt. It hurt a little – she wasn’t wet enough – but they both knew what the protocol was: he spat on his fingers to ease things along, then he bent down to take her nipple in his mouth and sucked hard. She let her head fall back and sighed, as was the appropriate response. She was determined to stop judging herself, to stop being part of the audience, and told herself to just feel his mouth on her breast. As she did so, somewhere, deep down beneath the veneer of pleasure, a peculiar sorrow had been triggered. She was glad that the position was uncomfortable for him, that his mouth had to move up her body. She should kiss him now, she really should, but he was not expecting it and to her relief it was not on his agenda, so they made love intensely in the way they knew how, only this time she was trying to be someone else.

This is good, she thought, hearing her own gasps – she was making all the right noises. This is spontaneous. She didn’t mind the smell of beer because it created a distance, almost like a third person was present, something ‘other’ than just the two of them. It was less exposing. But I ought to kiss him. Bravely, her lips sought out his. The thinness of his lips was something she had never got used to; their tongues met and explored but it felt cold and wrong – reptilian. Instead, she tried to concentrate on him inside her and managed to discreetly pull her lips away from his, burying her face in the safety of his neck as they moved together to the rhythm. She looked past his shoulder out into the garden beyond while the rain gusted against the windowpane. She cried out, partly because he was deep inside her now, and partly because it felt like the right thing to do. She was almost convinced by her own performance, but not entirely. And the audience wasn’t either. She could feel them shifting in their seats, a few low titters and then, quite distinctly, someone began to laugh. She recognized that laugh. Yes, Connie Mortensen was laughing her head off.