“We can’t”, I said.

“Why not?” she said.

“It’s wrong”, I said.

She shook her head, sticking out her cute little tongue. “That’s not what you said in Oxford!”

I feel myself begin to turn a peculiar shade of pink as I protest vehemently that Oxford was different.

“Damn right”, she says. “You were wearing less clothes!”

The electrifying tension in the room is immediately dispersed. We both start to giggle, reliving that unfortunate episode in the shower block, and from there it is such a short step to finding ourselves in an embrace.

For a splitsecond we teeter on the brink of insanity, oppressed by that which is yet can not be. Then, uninvited, the midday Angelus gong shatters the silence of our private world. We both jump, unnerved, and clinging to each other, fall over the edge.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

The first touch is light, awkward; the second already firmer, more self-assured. By the third and fourth it has become more urgent, a desperate attempt to savour an unrepeatable moment. The weightless joy is balanced by the heavy guilt and I am the first to break away and end this forbidden pleasure.

This cannot happen; not here, not now, not ever. And yet it has.

In retrospect, it was a mistake to do it there, by the window, where the wandering eyes of inattentive students would catch sight of our display as they gazed idly out of classrooms.

Later, my cheeks burned crimson on the school bus as my sister asked why people were pointing and calling me a lesbian.