Leah had started drinking at home. There was plenty of alcohol left over from the weekend’s party, so by the time she left the house, she had already drunk almost a bottle of wine and a couple of canned cocktails she’d found at the back of the fridge. She didn’t really know where she was going; she didn’t really care. She wanted to forget for just a few hours at least: about Keira, about Leighton, about everything. After the first pub – a place usually packed with students, but strangely quiet now the summer had started – she ventured further towards Pontypridd, alcohol fuelling her pace as she hurried past groups of teenagers lurking around shops and couples holding hands as they waited for late-night buses.

The evening air made the effects of the alcohol all the more potent, and by the time she got to the next pub, she found herself ordering a pint of water with her glass of wine, trying to rehydrate slightly before beginning the next round. She didn’t want to sober up. She wanted to get obliterated; the kind of obliterated that would wipe away everything else, if only for the next few hours. She sat at the bar and downed the water at record speed, then realised she needed to use the toilet. She asked the man behind the bar to keep an eye on her drink for her.

In the ladies’, she leaned on the sink and studied her reflection in the mirror. She knew she was nothing special. She had never been the smartest or the prettiest or the sportiest. There had never been any superlative that could have been accurately used to describe her. But there were ways to make herself prettier and smarter, and as she’d got older, she’d worked out how to make those methods increasingly effective.

She knew how to get what she wanted.

She wiped beneath her left eye, where her mascara had smudged, then returned to the bar. She felt a pair of eyes watching her as she walked to her seat, and turned to look at the man whose gaze had followed her there. He was sitting with a group of men who all looked to be around his age; the attention of the others was distracted by football highlights being replayed on the TV screen near their table. He was good-looking, in a subtle, unobvious sort of way. Older than Leah by quite a bit, but that had never been an issue for her before. She wasn’t interested in boys her own age.

She threw him a smile and it was instantly returned. Moments later, he left his friends and joined her at the bar.

‘You on your own?’

‘No,’ she said, aware that the slur in her voice was evident with just one word. ‘My friends are all invisible.’

The man smirked, apparently finding her sarcasm amusing.

‘Can I join you?’

‘Free country.’

He pulled up a bar stool and placed his drink next to hers, watching her with eyes that seemed impossibly blue. ‘Bad day?’

‘No.’

Her sulkiness apparently wasn’t deterring him. If anything, he seemed to regard it as a challenge; something with which to break up the monotony that must have shaped the rest of his evening.

‘My name’s Eddie,’ he said, waiting for Leah to return similar information. When she didn’t, he finished the remains of his pint and asked the barman for another. ‘Want one?’ he asked, gesturing to her wine glass. It was still half full.

She shook her head.

‘Not very talkative, are you?’

‘What should we talk about?’ she said. ‘The weather? The football results?’

He turned further towards her, leaning in close. ‘Your anger is very sexy.’

She smiled. ‘Do you want sex?’

For a moment it was as though Eddie’s confidence had been pulled from beneath him. He hadn’t been expecting her response and now seemed unsure of how he was supposed to react. He was probably wondering whether she was winding him up, Leah thought; whether this was building up to some embarrassing moment in which she would attempt to humiliate him in front of his friends.

‘Is that a trick question?’

Leah shrugged. ‘Depends how you like it, I suppose.’

Eddie grinned, now responsive to her flirtation. ‘You want to come back to mine and I’ll show you how I like it?’

‘No,’ Leah scoffed. ‘I don’t want to go to yours – I don’t even know you. What about through there?’

She nodded in the direction of the toilets. Eddie looked at her in disbelief, still not quite believing his luck. It wasn’t even going to cost him the price of a drink, let alone a taxi fare home.

She stood from her bar stool, wobbly on her feet. ‘Give me a couple of minutes. I’ll be in the ladies’.’

In the toilets, she sat in a cubicle and held her head in her hands. A swell of headache was surging at her temples and blurring her vision like the onset of a migraine. She pulled the skirt of her dress up past her thighs, checking the smoothness of the skin beneath. She wanted to feel something, but she wasn’t sure what.

A minute or two later, she heard the door to the ladies’ open. She was the only person in there, and when he pushed open the door of the cubicle, she stood, sidestepping to let him into the narrow space. He grabbed her at the waist and tried to kiss her, but Leah turned away from him, her back to him, and pressed a forearm against the wall. She used the other hand to lift her dress.

‘Jesus,’ Eddie said. She heard him unzip his trousers. ‘You are filthy.’

‘Do me a favour,’ she said. ‘Stop talking.’

Her instructions only served to heighten his urgency. Within seconds he was pressed against her, his erection thrusting hard inside her. Leah felt her mind shut off. Thoughts of Leighton left her. Thoughts of Keira evaporated. She stopped feeling. For those moments, she could have been anyone; anywhere. The more forceful he became, the more she responded, pressing herself back against him, losing herself in the rhythm of his drunken enthusiasm.

‘You on the pill?’ he grunted against her neck.

‘No.’

‘Fuck.’ He pulled out of her sharply and came in his hand, then fell against her, his weight holding her against the wall. She could feel his hot breath on the back of her bare neck, where her hair had fallen over her shoulder, leaving her skin exposed. His heavy breathing was warm in her ear. He was immediately repulsive now that the act was over. They all were.

She stood straight, pushing her elbows back to shove him off.

‘What do we do now?’ he asked pointlessly, leaning against the cubicle wall as he tried to catch his breath.

Leah adjusted her underwear and pulled down her dress. ‘You can go back to your friends,’ she suggested.

She stepped back, inviting him to leave first. He looked at her suspiciously for a moment, still wondering whether this was some kind of trick to catch him out; whether she was about to reveal the hidden camera that was going to broadcast the incident to the internet. When she raised her eyebrows as though to question why he was still there, he straightened his clothes and left, leaving Leah alone with the white noise of all the thoughts that had returned to her now it was over.