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You wouldn't think that there were still women who could be ruined. Perhaps there aren't any more, but fifteen years ago, in that university town by the sea, there were. It was quite an old-fashioned place. He was quite old-fashioned too. Cast himself as a latter day Dorian or Valmont, sinned the old sins.

He knew how I felt, of course. I'd soon stopped even trying to conceal it.

Her?

Yes, she'll do, he said.

Clinking pint glasses with her friends, she'd caught his eye when she leapt up in the air and shrieked at her lucky shot on the pool table. He gave me twenty pence to stake his claim. A stake which could be raised; he'd honed his technique during his teenage years, his apprenticeship. Better that she'd lost. Her taste for games was unlikely to match his.

I'll play you, I said, laying his money on the table. If you want.

You're on, she said.

I have to warn you, I'm not very good.

How about doubles then? You and your pal against me and Diane.

Perfect, I said, smiling at Diane as I went to select a cue.

Back then I had an epicene quality that suited my tender years. Women found it non-threatening, attractive even, if I'm not flattering myself too much. I indulged it because finally I could. As you've probably guessed, I wasn't some middle class social climber, far less the Honourable real thing. No, I was emphatically working class. And so was he.

But you're wondering about the girl I was talking to, while he went to the bar to buy shots of tequila all round. I feel obliged to start with something shameful. I don't want to manipulate your sympathies, lead you to believe I was cruelly done by. Her name was Lucy (short for Lucinda, though she tried not to let on). I recognised her from one of my philosophy options. She always came in late, bells jingling around the ankles of her 14-hole Doc Martens, sat in the back row of the old wooden-benched lecture room picking her cuticles or trying to bring everything back to Nietzsche even when we'd moved on to Heidegger.

It was good timing. There was still an hour's drinking to be done, but her friends were fading fast, apart from loyal Diane, whose heavily mascaraed eyes, slightly magnified, peered through her specs at me with mistrust. I sensed a little crush on Lucy, who remained high and bright and on a roll. Going by the white-girl braids in her hair, the five silver hoops in each ear, the barbell through her right eyebrow, she was rebelling within her confines. That was the fashion back then; I understand that generic honey-blonde hair and an English-rose complexion are more aspirational now. For him it was enough to know that she'd graduate, swap tie-dye for beige cashmere, let her piercings heal.

I'm Richard, by the way.

Lucy.

Yes, I know. Philosophy 2a.

I knew I recognised you from somewhere! Who's your friend?

That's what they always asked, I thought, as I watched him weave towards us, a brace of shot glasses in each hand. Who's your friend?

***

Looking back, I was avaricious. The sensation of greed was lodged so deep within me that it I could feel its throb against my aorta. I was not content with my lot, another quality which set me apart from my fellows, though not necessarily from the rough, tough kids hanging about by the blocked-up mine shafts because there was nowhere else for them to go. They knew their destiny but chose not to dwell on it, falling prey instead to a desperate, hopeless accidie. In their imagination, maybe, they cultivated their dreams, nourishing them with solvents and liquor and brown, wakening to see them withered and pitiful. The others, they wanted all right, things and stature and wedding photos in the local rag. Four or five Highers, maybe a Sixth Year Certificate or two, and those from the bought houses were out. Up, up and away, to study accountancy, chemistry, maths. The doctor's daughter went to do medicine, the son of the solicitor, law. They accepted those years with the resignation of novices, looked forward to the day of grace when they would earn and spend, marry and procreate, holiday and consume. Follow my leader, to a detached house with a double garage.

And I, I didn't fit into my little niche at all. It cramped my limbs and bent my spine. I knew my place all right, but I harboured a passionate desire to get above myself, having read enough to know that there were those who were born to it, with their classical educations and old world colleges, their inherited letter of introduction. Abracadabra, open sesame, the doors thrown wide and the butler bows. If that's your background, you can slum it, no problem. But if the boot's on the other foot, you cannae scale the heights.

When I was about twelve, I remember, my mother and sister and I went on a day out with my gran, to a National Trust country house. Ooh, how the other half live, eh, she bleated, as we passed through room after luxurious room of gilt-edged porcelain and glistening mahogany. At university it wasn't the other half, it was 80% at least. They came in different guises: the third-generation colonials fresh from boarding school, the east-coast Americans paying through the nose, the scruffs with their artful poise whose real vowels suddenly slipped through and showed just how scruffy they really were. I could've become mousier and mousier, lurking in the corner at lectures, skipping tutorials, head hung low like the others, had I not found an ally, and heard his call to arms. The chip on his shoulder was so big he might as well have been carrying a rough-hewn wooden cross around with him. I sidled up beside him, felt skelfs from his burden sink into my shoulders.

That day in the stately home, we spent longest in the kitchen and the servants' quarters. I imagined at the time it was because my mother liked cooking and my gran was interested in seeing the butter patters and wool carders and whatever else they had when she was a girl. But now I'm convinced it wasn't that, it was a forced feeling of unworthiness. Afraid the tread of their shoes would soil the hand-knotted oriental rugs in the rooms above or their fingertips sully the silken wallcoverings, they took comfort in the low ceilings and institutional paintwork below stairs.

There must, I suppose, have been a point of no return. It would be overly romantic, and lazy, of me to say it was the first moment I laid eyes on him, which was also the day I left home.

But will it get you a job son? my father had asked.

Oh yes, of course it will, I replied, and in a flash I was gone.

Not quite a flash, actually, as I got the bus. It was, as everyone insisted on saying with a frequency that soon became irksome, a long road for a short cut. My parents drove me to the terminal and we said our farewells, much to the interest of the local jakey, who seemed to believe I was going off to war. Must've been all the time he spent propped on the bench by the war memorial, or perhaps he'd spotted me one Saturday, scrubbing the white gravestones of those he assumed were my comrades in arms. And who knows, maybe they were.

It was a tedious journey from the 'Leck to Drumrigg, from Drumrigg to the city, from there across to the coast and down. I almost wished I'd allowed my parents to drive me all the way. But as my route became less familiar, the boredom was leavened by that sense of anticipation that starts as a delicate throb in your chest then flutters through your stomach, brightening your eyes and refining your senses. Something's coming, I thought, something is on its way. And indeed it was. As the coach grew warmer, an unmistakable smell emerged. Vomit. Sharp as though a sloppy puddle of spew lay rank and undiscovered under a seat not so very far from my own. I felt nauseated, obviously, but then gradually I started to imagine the odour permeating my clothes and skin. A remarkably vivid flash-forward saw me arriving at university and instantly earning the nickname of Boakboy, which would stick to me like, well, sick, until graduation. Which seemed a very, very long time in the future.

No, this was my New Start, as the Job Centre liked to call it, and I'd have sold my granny (she was in a home by then, she'd never have noticed) rather than let anything smear its lustre. Boakboy may have been sheer paranoid fantasy, but by the time I reached the city I thought, sod this for a game of soldiers. Gathering my backpack and unwieldy case, I dragged myself to the railway station and the expense and comparative luxury of the train. That was where I met him, my dirty-haloed angel. It must have been fate that brought us together, chance was never so precise.

There were plenty of seats, but, loose-limbed and smoky, he chose one across the table from me. When he stretched to squash his rucksack into the luggage rack his t-shirt rose, allowing me to glimpse a dark curl of hair above the waistband of his jeans, the very tip of an appendectomy scar. I was smitten. I wanted to unbutton his fly right there and then. Here was a test of valour, a Nemean lion. I'd felt, as I put on my new clothes ready for the journey, that I was slipping into a new skin, becoming truly me. No more pretending. Sexual experimentation at universities was rife, or so they always said, but my gayness was no experiment. It was the conclusion, ready to be published and peer-reviewed.

Are you going to university by any chance?

Brave of me to start a conversation; chicken to do so in my deepest, straightest voice. It was as if I'd suddenly got stuck in a lift with Coco from the 6th year, though I can't think of anywhere in Leckie that had a lift for us to get stuck in, unless it was a Stena Stair Lift, and that wasn't exactly what I had in mind. A dream come true and an agony both at once. I wanted to impress this person who had sat down opposite me, to coax him into liking me. Revealing too much too soon seemed an unnecessary risk.

Yes, he said, yes I am.

***

We went to Lucy's room in the end. Part of the appeal, I suppose, that it would happen in her narrow, single bed, under the gaze of her childhood teddy bear and the photos on her pinboard of friends, family, pet dog. A red setter, if memory serves, bounding through an herbaceous border towards a wholesome mother in gardening gloves, clipping stems with her secaturs. He examined the pictures with care, asking for clarification as to who was who amongst her school chums and those from her gap year.

How sweet, he said, smiling his guileless smile. Boys don't do that, display photos of their loved ones. Boys aren't as nice as girls, really, are they? Not that there's anyone I'd like to have a photo of by my bed. Not a close family.

He passed his hand over his face, as if wiping away a mist of troublesome midges. She melted almost imperceptibly more.

Do you need all the details? I'm not sure I remember well enough, what with the drinks, the joints of pure Moroccan grass (he was always good at that kind of thing, I never had a clue), that oddness when things get out of hand and you know there's no point in going back, so it's as if you're sleepwalking, not really there. Until the morning, when it's crystal clear, and you try to layer that gauziness between your waking self and the memory that you can't afford to give house room.

There were conversations in which she tried to show off her liberal attitudes, her half-formed grrl-power feminism, but was soon left out of her depth and feeling she had something to prove. And he knew just how she should prove it. She couldn't match his easy, acerbic worldliness, her attempts to hide her privilege were pathetically transparent. He'd invite further confidences - about her house at school, her pony club rosettes - then trample over them with the lightest, most devastating footfalls. Until she lost ground, needed reassurance, realised there was one way she could get it, the oldest way, the easiest way. I thought of my little sister then, so eager to please, hiding her lovebites under polonecks.

At that point I had done it with a woman, a girl, precisely once. After an evening of cider in the swing park back home, I had ineptly penetrated Wendy Skilling. This rite of passage (by which I mean Wendy, who had been around the class, rather than the attempt at intercourse) facilitated my acceptance into the sixth year, and my nickname of Poof fell almost out of usage. Amazing how perceptive teenagers can be. The slightest scent of weakness and they root at it, exposing it in all its pallid glory. I didn't enjoy it, with Wendy, managing to fake what I hoped was a respectable heterosexual orgasm before I flopped out of her. Going by the way she snorted, scowled, then swiftly adjusted her clothing, she didn't get much out of the encounter either.

So before that night in the room with the photo pinboard and poster of Kiefer Sutherland in The Lost Boys above the bed, I had certainly never attempted anything more adventurous with a female. I hesitated, though how long for I can't recall, but I did what he said. And Lucy, why did she go along with this? (Did she go along with this?) There must have been a fair bit of pressure, though he had, of course, chosen carefully. I don't mean she was a slut, though I don't like that kind of term applied to girls. That's rich, in the context, isn't it? But it's the truth. I've been called it myself, and I didn't like it much either. Let's say rather that she was the kind of girl who talked a good game, pornography as liberation and all that, the kind of girl who thought keeping lube in her bedside cabinet was a statement. But not all our fantasies work in reality, and she had not done what came next.

First things first. With your new knowledge of the Wendy incident, you may be wondering how I managed to stay firm enough to achieve my, or rather his, aim. The first twitch of an erection came when we sat so close together that his taut, denim-clad thigh was pressed against mine. I excused myself and when I came back from the dingy communal bathroom he was on top of her, kissing her, his shirt discarded on the floor, his hand up her skirt and edging its way inside her white cotton panties (it sounds like I'm saying that for effect, I know, but I'm sure they were white cotton).

I'm sorry, will I leave you to it? I said.

He rolled over so that I could see the full length of his cock against those dark denim jeans. In my imagination it is huge, eager, pulsing, ready to spring through the fabric, uncannily reminiscent of the Incredible Hulk cartoons I used to like as a child. The reality wasn't quite that, but to my attuned eye, it seemed so.

No, we don't want you to go. Do we Lucy?

She struggled to prop herself up on one elbow, wrenched her glazed gaze from his pale chest and said:

No, we don't want you to go.

There was even a time, later, when I recalled the way she'd picked a stray hair from her swollen lips, that I wondered whether he had drugged her drink. But perhaps he didn't need to, and besides, I don't think that was quite his style. He had some scruples, though they were selfish ones. Anyone can be compromised, after all. The important thing was that there had to be something for him to get inside, some padlocked box sunk deep below the surface. His conquests reached it themselves, that was the key. He just eased them overboard and unfurled the line.

And so, and so. Let's cut to the chase. The three of us balanced on that narrow metal-framed bed, its starchy sheets stamped with the blue logo of the college linen supplier. She didn't consent, not in strict legal parlance, but she didn't say no, of that I can be absolutely sure. As for me, I did what he said, lubricating myself thoroughly, closing my eyes and gently pressing until I gained ground.

Even now I'm not sure what he was thinking. He'd spun her some story about me being gay and having this great wish she could help me fulfil, I don't know, made it seem both safe and some kind of special privilege. All the while kissing her, touching her, tender and firm. The next step was to gently guide her round to the idea that this was the way I was used to, the way it should be. I played my part well, it seems, struck exactly the right balance of innocence and yearning. He just pushed a little more, and a little more, to see how far she would go. All the way, it seemed, and then some. While I stayed still but still hard in position, he eased himself in from the front, so we were touching though separated. He began, slowly, to move, and I thought I would explode then expire for the pleasure of feeling him so close to me.

His pace quickened, I had to match it, I did match it, perfectly, wishing it could last forever. When I opened my eyes he was looking at me, looking at my face with awful wonder in his eyes, and he smiled, as if he would have kissed me. As if he would have pressed his dry lips to mine, touched the tip of his tongue to mine. Had she not been between us. He reached over and stroked my hair back from my face, and his touch, his touch, the feel of him against me, made me come, shuddering, into him, no, not him, into her. As I relaxed I saw his beautiful face contort, as if it was the sight, the sound, the feel of my ecstasy that had brought on his own, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood to stop myself saying out loud what it was I felt.

What of Lucy, did she enjoy it, did she get those kicks she said she was after? He said yes, she loved it, and he knew more of these matters than I. Trust me, he said, she'll get hot every time she thinks of it, under the covers at night. Maybe so, maybe we all relive our darkest, most degrading moments for our guiltiest, most secret pleasure.

When I revisit that evening, she is not there. Except afterwards, occasionally, when I remember looking back into that single room, at her perched on the edge of her rumpled bed, her arms wrapped around her raised knees, hands clasped. I don't suppose she'd ever felt so alone.