Her head fell to one side. I saw I’d stung her, and sat in silence, feeling a bit guilty, waiting to see if she was OK. Finally she looked up at me with total honesty. “I liked boys wanting to have sex with me. That’s different from liking having the actual sex. Well, that’s not true. Hang on...” She drained her glass again. “I love everything about sex right up until the actual moment they’re inside me, you know what I mean? The chase of it. Is it going to happen? The look men give you when they want you so much. The power of it. The will we/won’t we of it. And, I always think, right before that moment, maybe this will be the time it feels really good...it’s the best feeling, the anticipation...and then...” she slammed the wineglass down “...the moment they’re inside you, nope. It just feels...like a dick inside you. And the guy always sort of goes away in that moment, don’t you think? And the power has gone, cuz, all of a sudden, it’s switched, and they’re just...poking your body and getting so much more out of it than you. It didn’t always feel bad...but it rarely felt...amazing. Especially with all the shit men want to do with you once they’ve got access, and you’re constantly having to make a million micro-decisions in real time about whether it’s OK they’re slapping your arse, or flipping you over, or trying to finish on your face, or slip it into your arse, or fucking...spitting on you. Brendan spat on me once. Spat! On his wife! And I didn’t make the decision in time that I didn’t want to be spat on, because, well, it wasn’t something I’d given any thought to until the moment my husband, who I really fucking loved, said, ‘Can I fucking spit on you, you whore?’ I was in such shock that I just half nodded, and then I’m lying there, with gob in my fucking FACE, Fern. In my eye! Horrified that it’s just happened, and wondering if I’m going to get conjunctivitis. And yet, I did sort of agree. And that sort of thing is always going on, them always wanting to take it to some...dark, weird, painful fucking YouPorn place, and you don’t want to deny them anything, but also, a lot of it hurts. Actually physically hurts. And you’re wondering if it hurts for just you, if there’s something wrong with you, and other girls are... I dunno...and, so all of this is going around your head, always trying to get the reins back from the horse that bolted, the horse that, until moments ago, you were totally in charge of...and then you’re supposed to come somehow? HOW? I don’t fucking get it. I don’t get why I’ve done any of it. Fuck them. Fuck them fucking all. If Isobel wants to get spat on for the rest of her life, well be my fucking guest.” She leaned over and poured the rest of the bottle into her glass, not offering me a top-up. All I could do was stare, my mouth unhinged, brain cluttered with the total cabinet reshuffle of everything I thought I knew about Jessica.