Chapter One

      I don’t know quite how it happened, I honestly don’t. All I wanted was a little privacy, a little space so I could have a bit of a meltdown after my boyfriend wrote a detailed essay about our sex life on the aptly named ratemyshag.com. He gave me two stars. One of those was for keeping the lights off.

      So there I was, sobbing my rage into a used tissue in the back office, when Cal Bailey walked in and caught me and I discovered that there was something even more humiliating than having my lack of sexual skills described on the internet for the whole world to see, and that was having someone I work for knowing about it.

      ‘Oh,’ he said, as I dissolved into another crying fit and he stared at my laptop screen. ‘Fuck.’

      The irony of it wasn’t lost on me. ‘If only I could,’ I said.

      He looked at me, just looked. ‘I’m having a party at mine tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come?’

      The irony of that wasn’t lost on me either. I laughed into my wreck of a tissue, then I realised he was serious. He scribbled his address on a piece of paper and put it on the desk, next to a crystal vase filled with sweet peas, and then he left. I spent the next twenty-four hours talking myself in and out of it.

      And then my page on ratemyshag.com reached 248 comments, and I decided enough was enough. Before I could change my mind, I changed my dress and brushed my hair and went to Cal’s house. You see, his parties have a reputation. And in some tangled part of my brain, that tempted me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, wondering what it would be like. Wondering if there was, in fact, a fundamental difference between me and other women. I wanted to know what it was. I needed to know. And I thought that maybe, if I went to the party, I might be able to find out.

      I made it inside his front door before I lost my nerve. I stood there, clutching my bag, feeling like a complete outsider, wondering what I was doing. The courage I’d had deserted me, draining away like sand through a sieve. To my left was a sprawling living room, with big squashy sofas and a lovely rug, full of people talking, drinking, mingling, nothing more. A couple of them noticed me, then turned their gazes away. I felt so foolish, so clumsy, so unwelcome. What had I been thinking? No-one really has sex parties at their house. They’re just a story invented by dirty old men, the kind who have moustaches and read Penthouse.

      I should have left then. The front door was right behind me. But for some reason, something to do with embarrassment and panic, I didn’t. Instead, I opened the door to my right and darted through it.

      Which is how I found myself here, trapped in a room watching two people going at it on the sofa. And by two people, I mean two girls, though they aren’t really girls, more like grown women. And by going at it, I mean kissing. They’re just kissing, I tell myself, as I press back against the wall, back into the shadows. Just kissing. Even if one of them is sat on a man’s lap, and that man has his hand inside her blouse.

       You’re intruding on a private moment, Verity. You should leave.

      But I can’t seem to make myself move. Like a deer caught in the headlights, I can’t do anything but stand there and stare. And then the door eases open, and someone else comes in. I drop my gaze to the floor, try and press myself even further back into the corner, as if I can hide there. As if I can hide anywhere. I hold my breath, but my heart is thumping so hard I swear everyone in the room can hear it.

      Then I sneak a glance at whoever just came in. Oh, god. Oh my god.

      It’s Cal.

      He’s leaning back against the wall with his sleeves pulled up to his forearms and his dirty blond hair hanging over his forehead and a bottle of beer in his hand. He keeps swigging on it, watching the people on the sofa as if this is perfectly normal, as if he does this sort of thing all the time. Which based on the evidence, he does.

      I don’t, though. I once accidentally clicked on a porn site when I was looking up something on my laptop, and I was so shocked that I dropped the damn thing on the floor. It’s never been right since. So I can’t be in here right now, because the chances of me breaking