We ate dinner in a silence that I thought was uncomfortable. Lee had cooked it – slices of turkey, roast potatoes, gravy, even a jar of cranberry sauce. He was wearing a paper hat pulled from a cracker and watching me steadily while he drank.

I felt angry without really knowing why. I’d looked forward to this, to Christmas Day, thinking about how lovely it would be to have someone to share it with, and yet now I was half-wishing he wasn’t here at all. I wondered if there was anything I could say that would get him to leave, without it provoking an argument.

Was it what he’d said, about women liking it rough? I tested the thought, but it didn’t provoke the spark of anger. He might even be right. I hadn’t particularly enjoyed it, that was true, but under other circumstances I might feel differently about that.

No, it wasn’t that. It was the feeling that Lee was taking over.

I’d gone upstairs to get dressed and came down to find he’d shut me out of the kitchen. He’d told me that we would open our presents to each other after dinner and not before. I just had to sit on the sofa with my glass of champagne and be patient, he’d said. I ended up feeling like a guest in my own home.

My solution to this discomfort was going to be to get as drunk as I possibly could, and I was making good progress towards that aim.

‘It’s delicious,’ I said at last, more to break the crushing silence than anything else.

Lee nodded. ‘Glad you liked it.’ He topped up my glass.

‘Can I open my presents now, please?’ I said as soon as he finished eating.

I was so unsteady on my feet that he had to take my hand to help me up from the table. I collapsed into a giggling heap on the floor by the tree and he sat next to me.

‘I’m going to have to help you, aren’t I?’ he said, handing me a small, rectangular present, beautifully wrapped.

‘No,’ I said, gripping it a little more forcefully than I needed to. ‘I can manage, thank you very much.’

It took ages, in between more glasses of wine, opening them – a couple of CDs by people I’d never heard of, a bracelet that sparkled on my wrist, a new leather purse and a silver fountain pen with my name engraved on the side – and Lee lit some candles in the fireplace and drank his wine more slowly than I did, and opened his presents too. He had fewer, mainly because I had presents from the girls to open as well. I watched him as he opened them – clothes, mainly, some aftershave, and a new phone. He looked pleased with them, really pleased… or maybe it was the wine, my judgment clouded by it.

Then I opened a box and found lingerie buried within sheets of tissue paper, and of course I had to try it on immediately, stripping off clumsily, pulling at my jeans with wine-numbed fingers until he helped me, and of course I never got the new underwear on because we ended up making love again on the floor under my pathetic excuse for a Christmas tree, three feet high, a half-hearted display of white lights and a few glass baubles.

While he was pushing into me and I was gasping for air, my shoulders grazing the carpet, I felt out of myself, nauseous, and it reminded me of fucking people I didn’t really know at the end of all those nights out.

I wondered with a moment of sudden startling clarity if this was right. I wondered if he was the right person for me to be with. Wasn’t this just the end result of too many nights coming home drunk with a man I’d just met? Fucking someone downstairs on the carpet, my fingers and lips numb with too much alcohol? Faking it in the end because I was too goddamn tired to carry on much longer, waiting for him to hurry up and come because I wanted to be on my own, wanted to sleep. Wanted to be sick.

Lee must have sensed my discomfort because he slowed, pulled my cheek round to his face. I opened my eyes. He was directly above me, his expression unreadable. His hair was damp with sweat, the sheen of it on his forehead, the light from the candles throwing shadows across his cheek.

‘Catherine,’ he said, a whisper.

‘Hm?’ I thought he was going to ask me if I was feeling alright, and I was preparing my best encouraging smile to get him to finish fucking me quickly so I could go and get a drink of water and go and lie down somewhere quiet and feel the room spinning in peace.

‘Will you marry me, Catherine?’

The words shocked me as much as anything he could possibly have said.

‘What?’

‘Will you marry me?’

Afterwards, hours later, lying in bed with another thumping headache, I realised that the perfect answer would have been to kiss him, take control and make him carry on with what he was doing, delaying tactics to give me time to think. But my brain was full of wine and instead I hesitated a moment too long.

He moved off me and sat up, his back to the sofa.

I pushed myself upright unsteadily. ‘Can I think about it?’ I asked.

Lee was looking at me and to my horror there were tears on his cheeks. He was crying – this tough guy who had a job that involved pushing people around in alleyways, this man who grabbed fistfuls of my hair and told me that women like it rough – he was actually crying.

‘Oh, Lee. Don’t cry.’ I sat astride his lap, wiping his cheeks with my finger, tilting his face so I could kiss him. ‘It’s okay. I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.’

But I underestimated the force of his shame. A few moments later, he got dressed and kissed me goodbye. ‘I’ve got to work tomorrow,’ he said, his voice gentle. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

‘But you’ve been drinking, Lee, don’t drive home.’

‘I’ll walk to town and get a cab,’ he said.

It was what I’d wanted, after all – a few minutes ago I’d been wishing for him to get up and go home, leave me in peace, and now he’d gone. Be careful what you wish for, Catherine, I told myself.

Be careful.