Then reaching a crescendo, ‘For FUCK’S SAKE! The fucking bastards. The fucking… fucking, fucking, dirty, fucking… BASTARDS.’

‘It’s only new.’ (In some versions.)

‘It’s not insured.’ (In others.)

‘My father doesn’t know I’ve taken it.’ (In Chris’s.)

I soothed and shushed. I calmed and crooned. I offered to go to the peelers, ring the insurance people and kill the person or persons unknown who’d stolen the car. What I actually wanted to do was get a taxi home, go to bed and forget all about Chris and his disaster. But for some reason I felt honour-bound to stick with him.

Eventually he said ‘Well, there’s nothing I can do, we might as well just go home. I’ll ring the filth in the morning.’

I breathed a sigh of relief that nearly uprooted some nearby trees.

‘Sorry about this,’ he said, with a wry smile that I recognized of old. ‘Do you still want to come back to my place?

‘My folks are away,’ he added.

My stomach juddered and I said casually ‘Ah, sure, I might as well come back with you. The night is young, hahaha.’

What are you doing?

Get off my case! He’s just a friend.

Even though I lived at home with my parents, I couldn’t help a stab of scorn that Chris did too. After all, he was in his thirties, I was still in my twenties.

Just.

But he was a man. There was something very namby-pamby about a man living in the family home. As if he should still call his mother ‘Mammy’. As if he had to hand over his wage-packet every Friday evening and ask permission to go down to the pub for a couple of pints with the lads. As if the mother was a religion-crazed lunatic who kept the curtains drawn and had little red lights burning to the Sacred Heart in every one of the tiny, musty, whispery, lace mantilla packed rooms.

Luckily, the Hutchinson ancestral family home was nothing like that. It showed signs of suburban affluence. Extensions and conversions, conservatories and patios, microwaves and camcorders and not a red light burning to the Sacred Heart in sight.

Chris took me into the kitchen and, while he boiled the kettle, I sat at the breakfast bar – of course, they had a breakfast bar – and swung my legs to show that I was relaxed and not sick with a combination of half dread, half anticipation.

I knew I’d die if something happened with him. And that I’d die if something didn’t.

I could hear Josephine’s voice warning me ‘Your instinct is to look for someone to fix you. A man. Probably any man.’ But then I looked at Chris, at the way his jeans hugged the back of his hard thighs and I thought ‘Fuck Josephine’.

Chris wasn’t just any man, he was far more than averagely attractive. And he and I had so much in common, so much shared experience. If we were allowed to have a relationship, we’d be perfect together.

He sat on another of the stools at the breakfast bar and pulled himself very close to me. We sat with our knees touching, then he made me jump by shifting his thigh so that it was positioned between both my knees, just nudging in. I was embarrassed by how loud my breathing sounded.

We’d sat that way many times at the Cloisters, and it had been perfectly safe. But we weren’t in the Cloisters anymore, I realized with a frisson of alarm. As if I’d just jumped out of a plane and realized I’d forgotten my parachute.

‘Now then,’ Chris said with a smile that made my intestines curdle, ‘there’s something I’ve been meaning to do for the past two months.’

And then he kissed me.

64

I knew it was the wrong thing for both of us, I strongly suspected that he didn’t even fancy me. But I was determined to do it anyway.

I shouldn’t have.

It was one of those nightmare sex sessions when you both realize about three seconds into it that it’s a terrible, terrible mistake.

And, in those circumstances, with twelve stone of grunting male pinning you to the mattress, how do you make your excuses and leave?

You can’t pretend that you’ve just seen someone you know on the other side of the room.

Oh no.

You can’t just look at your watch, gasp and mutter something incoherent about your flatmate having no key to get in.

Fat chance.

You’re there for the duration and you’ve just got to grin and bear it. Grit your teeth and get on with it.

As soon as we both took our clothes off, which was an ordeal in itself, I instantly felt all the passion ebb away. I knew, I just knew that he’d gone right off me. I could almost smell his panic.

And I’d gone right off him too. He was all wrong. Too small. No matter what I felt about Luke, there was no denying that he had a fine body. In comparison, Chris was lacking in every department. And I mean every.

We were both too polite to call a halt to proceedings.

It was like having had a massive dinner, then turning up at your friend’s house to find that she’s prepared an elaborate eight-course meal for you. Which you have to eat even though you feel as if you’re going to puke with each mouthful.

Sick with misery, I watched him do the condom thing. If you’re not slightly delirious with passion, a grown man covering his lad with a piece of clingfilm just seems plain mad. Then we both reluctantly indulged in a short bout of play-acting. Nipple sucking, that kind of thing, very half-hearted. Then he clambered on top of me for the main event.

It felt very, very wrong to be penetrated by a penis that wasn’t attached to Luke. But at least events were moving on and it would be over soon.

Wrong.

It lasted for ever.

Will he ever come, for Christ’s sake, I begged the universe, as he pounded away on top of me. Naturally, there was no chance that I’d come, but I faked and faked in the hope that if he’d been waiting for me, that he might just hurry up and bring it to a conclusion.

And still he pumped and pumped and it started to hurt. I’d probably go home with blisters.

Then it occurred to me that he might be one of those men who feel they haven’t satisfied a woman until she’s come several times. So I faked a couple more to speed him on his way.

And still he kept going.

And a long, long time later he stopped…

Not with a deep groan, a few death-throes spasms and wearing an expression like he’d just got an almighty kick in the bollix. But with a slowing down and a marshmal-lowesque texture to his willy, that was nothing less than an admission of failure.