Hamish was almost beside himself with excitement. This was the reason he had come into the house. Like Moon, he wanted to have sex, and then he wanted everyone to know about it. With Kelly, preferably, but frankly any female partner would do. He felt a hand stroking his back, gently teasing his sweaty spine, gently running all the way down to the cleft of his buttocks. Was this the one? Should he turn about and try to make love to whoever was touching him?

He heard a whisper in his ear. “Sally?” It was David’s voice.

“You’ve been in this house too long, mate,” Hamish whispered back.

“Fuck!” David barked, snatching his hand away as if Hamish was a red-hot stove.

“Shhh!” whispered Jazz from nearby.

David was annoyed. His mistake made him feel vulnerable. He wondered if Kelly had heard. All his doubts flooded back once more. Was she laughing at him in the darkness? Was she thinking to herself that Boris Pecker would not have minded at all who he found himself feeling up? Would she tell? Would she suddenly blurt it out and tell? David wanted to leave the sweatbox there and then, he wanted to run. But perhaps that in itself might provoke Kelly.

“Funny how he couldn’t take a bit of sex,” she would say. “I would have thought it would have been right up his street.”

“Up his arse, more like,” Gazzer would say after Kelly had explained, and then David would be a laughing stock, a national joke. David decided he had better stay put. He reached for one of Geraldine’s artfully placed plastic bottles of warm, strong booze and drank deep.

Hamish was not going to make the mistake that David had made. It was a woman’s thigh he was holding, for sure. So soft and smooth and not too firm. Kelly? he thought. Possibly, but just as easily Dervla or even Moon. Not Sally, he was delighted to conclude, and probably not small enough for Dervla, but you couldn’t be sure. Whoever it belonged to it was fun to touch and squeeze. Hamish was feeling much better about himself now. Kelly’s kind gesture earlier in the game had truly put his mind at rest, and now he felt safe and powerful and ready for anything.

He let his hand slip around from the outside to the inside of the thigh that he was holding. The flesh was hot and slightly clammy, it seemed almost to tug gently at his fingertips as he slid them across it. Whoever’s thigh it was, and he was sure now it wasn’t Dervla’s, she seemed quite happy to be touched. Her opposite leg was moving, her other inner thigh gently brushing against the back of Hamish’s hand. Hamish’s lips brushed against a soft shoulder. He kissed it.

There were hands on Hamish now. Someone was stroking his buttocks, but he ignored it. The girl he was holding was the one he wanted.

Kelly was now very drunk. As drunk as she had been the week before, when she had passed out. She had had to get drunk in order to get into the sweatbox, and she knew that if she didn’t get into the sweatbox she would lose the game. Now that she was inside and this hand was touching her she no longer really felt a part of her body, it was as if she was hovering above it and some other Kelly was being touched and caressed. It was not an unpleasant feeling, just slightly detached and uninvolved. This was how Kelly always felt about sex, possibly because she was always drunk when she did it. She liked sex, she was pretty sure of that, but somehow she always ended up wishing that she liked it more. Secretly she was sure that the missing ingredient was love, and she knew that she would have to wait for that. You couldn’t plan it.

The hand was being more daring now, working its way up to the very top of her thigh. Kelly didn’t think she minded, although she knew that she would probably stop him quite soon, whoever he was. On the other hand, why not let him play? This was what you did, wasn’t it? If you were a top bird, a mad-for-it, gagging-for-it personality like she was? You didn’t bottle out. That wasn’t what it was about at all, was it? You went for it, you lived it large. One thing you weren’t was a killjoy.

Now the hand was brushing at Kelly’s most intimate self. Now she would stop him, move the hand away. But she didn’t. She had become distracted. Something in her memory was stirring.

Hamish moved his hand and touched the little metal ring hidden within the folds of Kelly’s private flesh. And now he knew who it was he was touching. He was thrilled: this was who he had hoped it would be: Kelly, the one he fancied most, the one who had named him as her choice if sex were on the agenda. Well, sex was on the agenda. This was his chance.

He found her ear and whispered into it and as he whispered he gave the little ring the gentlest of flicks with his finger.

“Kelly,” he said, with a big broad smile.

And at that moment, in that very instant, they both knew.

Kelly was certain that she had not told a soul about her pierced labia, not even the girls. She had been specifically holding the information back to use as a triumphant, sexy revelation at some strategic moment later in the game, when she felt the need to shine.

But the voice in her ear knew. The voice of Hamish. Hamish knew because the moment he had touched that tiny wire he had whispered her name. And now Kelly saw the truth. The bastard had touched her vagina before. The half-formed suspicions that had troubled her aching head the morning that she had woken up in that horrible little sex cabin were suddenly turned to cast-iron facts.

“My God!” Kelly breathed, momentarily more surprised than angered. “You felt me up when I was passed out. You fingered me. You knew I was pierced.” Her voice was a whisper; the shock of the revelation was still sinking in. All of the other people in the box were busy with their own affairs.

Nobody heard her. Nobody heard.

Like Kelly, Hamish had realized the moment that he said it, in the instant that he breathed those two giveaway syllables “Kell-y”, that he had made a terrible, terrible mistake. But as yet it was still a secret. Only they knew; the others were all too busy with their own giggling, their own fumbling.

“Please,” Hamish pleaded into Kelly’s ear. “Don’t tell them.”

But in the way her body recoiled from him he knew that she would. How could she not? Why should she not? She would tell the others, she would tell the world, and he would be finished. Of course, he would deny it, it was her word against his, but people liked Kelly, they would believe her. The minimum he could expect was national shame, and the worst… prosecution for sexual assault. For digital penetration. His career was over, that was for sure. Doctors could not afford that kind of scandal. What woman would trust him with her body now?

He almost laughed. Here they all were, pawing at each other like animals in muck, and he was in danger of being prosecuted for sexual assault! Hamish’s blind black vision turned red with fury. The slag! The disgusting fucking slag! She had been happy enough to let him feel her up just then, to let him finger her. And yet now she would ruin him utterly for having done exactly the same thing before.

Hamish’s rush of fear and fury were fully matched by what Kelly was feeling. She was outraged, disgusted. She wanted to be sick. This bastard had mauled her while she lay unconscious! Put his hand inside her. Had he raped her? He could have raped her. Probably not, Kelly’s fevered brain was telling her. If he had raped her she would have known, for sure. But would she? Perhaps he was small, perhaps he had been very careful. She remembered the sensation with which she had woken up. That discomfort, the sudden overwhelming urge to dive into the pool. Had he put it in her? How would she ever know?

“Please, don’t tell,” Hamish whispered once more, and suddenly his hand was at her mouth.