I try to coax myself back to sleep, pulling the duvet over my head to hide from the daylight that’s warming the backs of my eyelids pink. I’m not ready to confront what I’ve done yet, who I know is asleep next to me, weighing down the mattress so that my body rolls into him. Eventually I dare myself to look at his face smushed against the pillow, a tendril of spit flickering in the air with every breath out, mousy hair fluffing from his head in all directions, the deep seam of his back ending at a pair of Calvin Klein boxers, below a tattoo that says ‘Rimmer’ in swirled script because of a joke between him and his home friends that I’ve forgotten. James Stanley.

What the fuck have I done?

I open the Uber app on my phone. I need to get out of here before he wakes up and we have to do the whole ‘Hah last night was crazy! I can’t remember anything!’ routine as a way of letting the other know that we didn’t mean for this to happen without explicitly having to say it.

Eight minutes. Okay.

The floorboards groan under my feet as I stand up from the bed. It’s loud, but when I look over he’s still out. He sleeps in the same position I do, on his belly, one leg cocked up, although I’ve been trying to teach myself to sleep on my back because it’s better for wrinkles. I go to take a picture of him. I’m not sure why. Perhaps so there’s evidence that this actually happened, proof that I’ve not gone mad. But before it captures, I remember that’s a weird thing to do, so all I get is the golden blur of his wooden floor.

Two minutes.

I’m just going to go home in the clothes he lent me. The thought of getting dressed right now is gross — the seam of my jeans scraping over my skin, tits falling out of a baby-blue halter neck. He’ll probably want this stuff back. I’m in a Hackney Half finisher T-shirt that I imagine has sentimental value. The tracksuit bottoms are so soft on the inside they must be new. Although he’s probably used to women taking his stuff when they leave in the morning.