Head is too full of panic, regret and whisky buzz for me to sleep. Stare up at the ceiling. Listen to Tiffy’s breath. Play out all the ways it could have gone: if we’d kissed and she’d stopped me, if we’d kissed and she hadn’t . . .

Best not to pursue that one. Thoughts becoming inappropriate.

Tiffy turns over, dragging the duvet with her. Half of my body is now exposed to night-time air. Can’t really begrudge her, though. Important that she gets warm after near-drowning.

She turns over again. More duvet. Now only my right arm has coverage. Absolutely cannot sleep like this.

I’ll have to just pull it back. Try it gently at first, but it’s like playing tug-of-war. The woman has the duvet in a vice-like grip. How can she be this strong when unconscious?

Going to have to opt for an assertive yank. Maybe she won’t wake up. Maybe she’ll just—

Tiffy: Oww!

She came with the duvet, rolling over, and I seem to have migrated towards the middle too, and now we’re face to face in the darkness, tantalisingly close.

My breath quickens. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes heavy with sleep.

I belatedly clock that she just said oww. The movement must have jerked her ankle.

Me: Sorry! Sorry!

Tiffy, confused: Did you try and pull the duvet off me?

Me: No! I was trying to get it back.

Tiffy blinks. I really want to kiss her. Could I kiss her now? She’s probably sobered up? But then she winces at the pain in her ankle and I feel like the world’s worst human being.

Tiffy: Get it back from where?

Me: Well, you sort of . . . stole it all.

Tiffy: Oh! Sorry. Next time, just wake me up and tell me. I’ll go right back to sleep.

Me: Oh, OK. Sure. Sorry.

Tiffy shoots me a half-amused, half-asleep look as she rolls back over, pulling the duvet up to her chin. I turn my head into the pillow. Don’t want her to see that I’m smiling like a love-struck teenager because she just said ‘next time’.

45

   Tiffy

I wake to the daylight, which is much less pleasant than people make it sound. We didn’t close the curtains last night. I turn my face away from the window instinctively, rolling over and realising the right-hand side of the bed is empty.

At first it feels totally normal: I wake up every day in Leon’s bed without him there, after all. My sleepy brain goes, oh, of course – no, hang on, wait . . .

There’s a note on his pillow.

Gone out in search of breakfast. Back soon, bearing pastries x

I smile, and roll back the other way to check the time on my phone on the bedside table.

Shit. Twenty-seven missed calls, all from an unknown number.

What the—

I scramble out of bed, heart thumping, then yelp with pain as I knock my ankle. Fuck. I dial voicemail, a bad feeling blooming in the base of my stomach. It’s like . . . yesterday was too good to be true. Something terrible has happened – I knew I shouldn’t have—

‘Tiffy, are you all right? I saw Rachel’s status on Facebook. Did you nearly drown?’

It’s Justin. I go very still as the message rolls on.

‘Look, I know you’re in a mood with me at the moment. But I need to know you’re OK. Call me back.’

There are more like this. Twelve more, to be precise. I’d deleted his number after a particularly girl-power-inducing counselling session, so that’d be why the calls came from an unknown number. I think I knew who it was going to be, though. Nobody else has ever called me that many times before, but Justin has – usually after a fight, or a break-up.

‘Tiffy. This is ridiculous. If I knew where you were I’d come out there. Call me, all right?’

I shiver. This feels . . . I feel awful. Like yesterday with Leon should never have happened. Imagine if Justin knew where I’d been, and what I’d been doing?

I shake myself. I can feel that that doesn’t make sense even as I think it. I’m scaring myself again.

I tap out a text.

I’m fine, I lightly sprained my ankle. Please don’t call me any more.

Within moments, he replies.

Oh, thank God! What are you like without me there to look after you, hey? You made me so worried. I’ll be good and stick to your rules, no contact until October. Just know I’ll be thinking of you xx

I stare at the message for a while. What are you like. As if I’m such a klutz. Yesterday Leon pulled me out of the sea, and yet this is the first time all weekend I’ve felt like the girl who needs rescuing.

Fuck this. I hit block and delete all the voicemails from my phone.

*

I hop to the bathroom. It’s not the most dignified method of travel – the chintzy lamps on the walls are vibrating a little as I go – but something about the general stompiness is quite therapeutic. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Stupid, bloody, Justin. I slam the bathroom door with satisfying force.

Thank God Leon went out for breakfast, both because he avoided witnessing this mess of a morning and because he will hopefully return with something highly calorific to make me feel better.

Once I’ve showered and redressed in yesterday’s clothes – which, because they’re covered in grainy, shingly grit, also ticks exfoliating off my to-do list – I hop back to the bed and launch myself on to it with a thud, burying my face in the pillow. Ugh. Yesterday was so lovely, and now I feel all horrible and mucky, like the voicemails left a taint on me. Still, I blocked him, something I would never have been able to bring myself to do a few months ago. Maybe I should be glad of all those voicemails for pushing me to do it.

I sit up on my elbows and reach for the note Leon wrote me. It’s on hotel stationery; The Bunny Hop Inn is traced in jaunty letters across the bottom of the paper. The handwriting is just the same as ever, though – Leon’s neat, tiny, rounded letters. In a moment of embarrassing sentimentality, I fold the paper in half and reach to slip it into my handbag.

There’s a quiet knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ I call.

He’s dressed in a giant T-shirt with a picture of three sticks of rock on the front, and BRIGHTON ROCKS in big letters underneath. My mood immediately improves about tenfold. There’s nothing like a man in a novelty T-shirt to brighten up your morning – especially when he’s holding a very promising paper bag with Patisserie Valerie written on the side.

‘One of Babs’s finest?’ I say, pointing at the T-shirt.

‘My new personal stylist,’ Leon says.