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“So - on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is ‘awake all night’ and 10 is ‘slept like a log’, how would you grade last night’s sleep?”

She was sitting on the chair by the open window wearing Ollie’s Destroy Rock ‘n’ Roll T-shirt and bumblebee socks, her red hair pinned back in a secretary’s bun with Liv Tyler glasses to complete the fantasy. Despite all this, she wasn’t his usual type at all. Even the fact that she was awake before him was out of the ordinary. It was just after 8am, and somewhere in the city a lorry was reversing.

Ollie’s first thought – beyond trying to remember who she was, where they’d met, any clues or prompts at all from the previous evening’s adventure – was that she must be joking. Something witty to offset the embarrassment of waking up in a stranger’s flat. He recognised that of old, and was about to respond in kind (“I just discovered the scale goes up past 11”; this was no time of day to be striving for originality) when something in her expression, or perhaps just the way she held the clipboard at a serious angle from her knee, put a finger to his lips.

“Please take as much time as you need to consider your answer, we’ve got all day after all.”

“Erm… a 7?”

“A 7, good.” She marked it down, her eyes flickering from the clipboard to him then swiftly back. “Now – thinking about the amount of alcohol you consumed last night… would you say that was below average for a Friday, about average, or considerably above average, based on what you normal imbibe–?”

“Imbibe?” Ollie wasn’t sure whether the headache that was scratching at the inside of his skull with a penknife was related to last night’s imbibing or this morning’s inquiry – but he had a fair idea.

“To consume liquids, orally – drink. Would you prefer it if I simplified the language of the questions as I go along? You did register a university-level education in the preliminary—“

“Yes, I went to university – no, I don’t need you to define the word ‘imbibe’. I was just… playfully questioning your word choice, considering what I thought was all a bit of lighthearted… I mean, to overcome any awkwardness that might… since I’m assuming neither of us remembers a great deal about how we ended up back here last night, or what might have occurred in the… erm… interim.” God, now he was doing it. Since when did he use words like ‘interim’ this early on a Saturday morning?

“That’s interesting, Oliver – though you are kind of skipping ahead to question 3: Again, considering the amount of alcohol you… drank… last night, how much would you say your memory of the evening’s events has been affected? I’m guessing we’re somewhere between options 4 and 5 – considerably: that is, you don’t remember much; and entirely: you don’t remember anything. What do you think?”

What Ollie thought was, ‘Oh no – not again. Not another one. Not another nutter. Why do I always end up with the nutters?’ The frustrating thing was, you couldn’t ever tell by looking at them. Often they were really hot, they were the hottest girls he met – but maybe that in itself should have been warning. After all, if they were that hot, why didn’t they have a boyfriend, husband, or significant other? There had to be a reason. Women who looked as unconventionally fantastic as… whatever his interrogator’s name might be… they weren’t just waiting round to be picked up in a bar. Common sense dictated: if they were single, there had to be a reason. And when he was sober, Ollie could pick up on that reason within five sentences. The clues were always there:

“It’s a moon rock pendant, blessed by the goddess to bring me happiness and good fortune all year round…”

“Thankfully, you don’t look anything like me ex… you haven’t got any tattoos and you’re not carrying any visible weaponry for a start – ha ha!”

“Oh, did you see that one film with Tom Hanks…?”

But while some men’s beer goggles blinded them to falling into bed with supermodels who woke up looking supernatural, Ollie’s worked a slyer kind of duplicity. His own brand of inebriate eyewear made the nutters seem normal. At least until morning. So there had been Annabelle, the aerosol junkie, whom he found in the bathroom snorting the gas from his shaving foam. She’d wasted half a can too; there was foam everywhere. Then there was… Mandy? Mylene? Something with an M - the one who wanted to exchange views on responsible parenting prior to any exchange of bodily fluids… just in case… And what about the one who went all hufferty because he didn’t have any Coldplay? She couldn’t do it unless she had her Coldplay. Ollie managed to find one track on a compilation, and put it on repeat – but hearing ‘The Scientist’ eight times in a row had a detrimental effect on his own performance, and then even the CD player had thrown a hissy fit, spluttering and hiccoughing until it finally tripped into the next track: the Stereophonics - and nothing killed passion faster than a head-on blast of whiney Welsh dad-rock. He’d given that CD to the Oxfam Shop the very next morning. It was still in the window six months later.

“Ollie…? Can you focus, please? We’ve got a lot to get through today…”

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