At that moment Hannah was feeling not so much naughty as wretched - and a little bit angry. There had indeed been certain things going on in her life which, uncharacteristically, she hadn't told Rona about yet - but she hadn't told Alain about them, either; indeed she had no idea that Alain knew anything about her private life.

For indeed it was private, what had been going on in her life recently. And in fact, it did involve Alain: it had all started on that night when she and Alain had hit the town - or rather, the town's bars. She'd got drunk and kissed a girl on the dancefloor, and then fled the scene - a case of mistaken identity - and had forgotten about it altogether fifteen minutes after it had happened. She would have been quite happy to leave it there. But then one Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago she'd been walking along Brunswick Street when she'd felt a tap on her shoulder.

It wasn't particularly surprising: people came to Brunswick Street from all over the city every weekend, and a lazy stroll down there was a sure-fire way for Hannah to meet at least one person she knew on most occasions. What was surprising was when she turned around, and didn't recognise the face of the young woman who was smiling back at her. Hannah was all ready to put it down to a misunderstanding, and was waiting for the woman's smile to quickly fade with the realisation that Hannah wasn't who she thought she was, but instead the woman spoke the words Hannah dreaded hearing:

"Don't you remember me?"

The quick answer would have been "No", but that wasn't exactly the answer that Hannah gave. Nonetheless, she was sufficiently blank-faced for the woman to spell it out for her: a few weeks ago, the woman explained. We met in a bar. On a dancefloor. I was there with my boyfriend. You kissed me.
In a way Hannah was flattered that a drunken kiss - not even a one-night stand - should be so memorable for the woman, but all the same she didn't feel like it was the kind of thing she wanted to relive. "Oh" she said a little apologetically. "Well I'm sorry about that. I was probably drunk." And she turned to continue her walk down the street.

The other woman, however, kept step with her. "I'm Janine" she said. And, in a crucial mistake made all-too-easily in her slightly hungover state, Hannah replied:

"I'm Hannah."

It was like reaching out a hand to a drowning woman: Janine clung tight to Hannah for the next half-hour, following her into shops, chatting endlessly about her life, about how much that kiss had meant to her, and Hannah - too bewildered by this barrage to be blunt with her - couldn't shake her, could only smile and nod and give one-word responses to everything Janine said, which Janine seemed to take as some kind of encouragement. More errors of judgement, slips of the tongue, followed: Hannah revealed where she lived, more or less, and the fact that she was frequently in Fitzroy, hanging out on Brunswick Street or visiting friends. Hannah knew by the end of the half-hour that she would be seeing a lot of Janine in the future.

"It's like she's some kind of stalker!" she complained to a friend who happened to telephone her the next week. "Every time I come to Fitzroy, there she is. 'Hey Hannah! How are you Hannah?' God, I'm gonna have to go into hiding or something." Hannah had put up with her share of besotted women - and men - before, but none as tenacious, as unerringly, cheerfully relentless, as Janine. She managed to avoid leading Janine on too much, but then one fateful night just after her most recent visit to her family, when she was at a particularly low point, she was dug into the plush, relaxing corner of her favourite bar, approaching the bottom of her fifth drink, when who should walk in but Janine. And Janine was all too willing to provide the one thing Hannah desperately needed at that moment: flattery.

The next morning, Hannah awoke with a raging headache and with Janine, naked, snoring in bed next to her.