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We were promised a ban from attendance for the remainder of the week. When we came to the biology classroom, the lesson hadn’t actually started and we were mere seconds later than the last students to have got in before us. Yet Rashid took one look at Carmencita, must have smelled her defiance bubbling beneath the surface, and denied entry to both of us, slamming the door shut. It was likely pure bad luck that I was included.

There were no classes after biology that would compel us wait in the school, so once we notified the secretary of our situation – and promptly received a half-hearted lecture on conscientiousness and discipline – we were free to leave and go home.

I left Carmen in front of the secretary’s office without a word, and set out for the lockers to get the rest of my stuff. I felt it wasn’t an odd thing to do. We were once close friends, but after the relationship was spoilt by my infatuation the formalities sort of dropped. It was a way for her to keep things cold, I think.

When I came back, Carmencita was just outside the school, standing awkwardly by the great mauve double doors, her back turned to it. She swung around when she heard my footsteps, and I saw her deliberately slackening her features. The fact she was clearly unsure of herself quickly overtook my surprise at her having waited for me.

“You left me half-done again, Frankie.” It was spoken like an attack, and her voice on its own suggested another rant like the other one earlier, but everything about her posture toward me, and the look on her face made it look like a request, a plea even. I stood staring at her for several seconds, trying to work out what she wanted, and waiting for her to move for the kill, but it never came. She looked down, and looked like she might bolt any moment.

I knew I had to make some move. Acting completely blind I went to replicate the gesture that had de-fanged her as she raged, reaching up to touch her shoulders, then nudging her closer. Carmen practically threw herself at me, and caught me in another kiss faster than I could think any further. She held me there, squeezing our bodies together, flattening her bare chest against me.

The kiss was over soon and rather abruptly, but it lasted long enough to note one key development: it no longer had anything of the power previously demonstrated. Carmen’s lipstick was long gone, and the foreign agent beneath was laid bare, sticking out from the other tastes in and around her mouth conspicuous in its impotence. It was that, rather than the fact of Carmencita snogging me out of the blue, that distracted me so I didn’t immediately realize she’d walked away after the kiss. At once perplex and cautiously optimistic over my new immunity, I set out for home.

All over the city women had taken to modifying their clothes to expose their erogenous zones. It didn’t matter what they were wearing, overcoats, jackets, wool or synthetic stuff; there were holes in the chest and crotch. That it was awfully cold and sometimes snowy out seemed completely of no consequence. The nipples of almost every woman I passed whose body didn’t show overt signs of recent sexual activity were soft, not erect. It was as if the sensitivity to low temperatures was reduced to nearly nothing in that area.

As I neared Mother’s I was reminded of the Twins and how they had obviously fucked within minutes of entering the cantina. It occurred to me they may very well have fucked each other, brazenly, in public. What if indeed there was no refuge at all from this change in sexual norms, and even the taboo around **** had bowed down in retreat? At once this hardened my nether regions anew and frustrated me. I would have no shortage of sex but also no place existed anymore that I could truly think freely of what was happening, and I did need to think. My behaviour was still informed by the previous paradigm, and that made me a massive outlier, a renegade, and a completely ignorant one. What would happen should my true state of mind be revealed? Was there any negative consequence to being ousted as such? Only to identify whatever **** was behind the change could provide such answers, and constantly being on my guard to convince others of my conformity would be a nuisance to that goal.

The front door was unlocked, and so I was able to make a comparatively stealthy entrance – the lock would have been very loud and a dead giveaway of my arrival to anybody in either the kitchen or the living room. When I was inside and got my bearings I found the soundscape to be also conducive to discretion: there was a lot of noise from the living room. Unfortunately, the nature of the noise made me conclude all that was implied by the Twins’ disposition was true: it was a lot of moaning and loud breathing.

The voices were unmistakable. Mother and my sister Gillian were going at it, most likely on the couch, such that, unless they were both completely up each other’s arses, one of them would see me creep by trying to reach the end of the corridor to my room. Unless I was incredibly lucky, there was no way of avoiding this situation.