There was mainly unused furniture, a few boxes, and other some other old stuff in there, and there was a double bed against the window, with the moonlight shining through onto it. The granny flat had a bedroom, but it was full of files and old displays from my dad's hardware store, so a spare bed he got from somewhere had been put against the wall in the sitting room. For some reason, my mother had put a bottom sheet on it, but it had no other bed linen, and just a couple of spare pillows.

Ashley flicked the light switch, but nothing happened, and I said, "The power's switched off in here."

"Oh," she said, looking back at me in the half-light.

"So this's the granny flat," I said, "full of junk. Not very interesting, is it?" I smiled.

Ashley stood for a moment and looked around, then looked at me. The silence was deafening.

"Rick," she said, looking at me, "are you okay?"

"What do you mean?" I said, genuinely puzzled.

She took another look around, and said, "We're in here, all on our own, and no-one knows we're here." She looked down at my feet, and said, "Most guys would have tried something by now." She looked back up at me.

"Tried something?" I said. I knew what she meant, but I wanted her to say it out loud, because I wanted to be one hundred and fifty percent sure, at the very least. The last thing I wanted to do was make a total fool of myself.

"You're not silly, Rick," she said, looking at me with a smile forming on her face, "you know what I mean."

"I guess I'm not like most guys," I said. I smiled a little, so it wouldn't sound sarcastic.

"Maybe I can make it easier for you," and she took a step towards me, and went to put her hands on my sides, just above my hips. Then, she paused, cocked her head slightly, and said, "You do like girls, don't you?" The look on her face there in the dark was priceless.

"Yeah, of course I do," I said, "I was just a little surprised."

"Surprised," she repeated, and then added, "In a good way, or a bad way?"

"A good way," I said.

Once again, Ashley went to put her hands on me, but she looked me in the eyes, and said, "Inside, you said you had kissed some girls before. That was true, wasn't it?"

I nodded. My mouth and throat were feeling very dry.

A look of realisation came over Ashley's face, there in the dark. "But," she paused, "you're a," pausing again, searching for the right way to say it, "you're a virgin, aren't you?" Her face was a little more serious.

I swallowed and said, "Yes."

Ashley bit her lower lip, and turned to look back at the door behind her. For a moment, I thought she was going to turn and walk out, but she looked back at me and said, a little more quietly, "That puts things in a new light." She put her hands on me, just above my hips, as she was about to do before, and said, looking at me seriously, "It's really important to me that you understand this, Rick. I'm not 'easy.' I'm not a slut."

"I didn't think you were," I said, but I was a tiny bit disappointed that my chance might have been lost.

"It's just that, ... ... well ..." she looked towards the wall between the granny flat and the house, took a breath, and continued, "everybody else is in there, getting busy," she smiled, "and, well, you haven't got a girlfriend, I haven't got a boyfriend. I thought, what harm would it do if we got together? No-one knows."

I didn't speak. My mouth was too dry, and I had major butterflies in my stomach. Ashley was still holding me with her hands at my waist. I was acutely conscious of this beautiful girl, someone I had fantasized over many times, standing so close, and actually holding me, there in the dark.

"Then, you said you were a," she paused, "you'd never," she stumbled for words, as though for some reason she didn't want to say the word, then she swallowed, and said, "... you were a virgin."

Ashley looked down at the clothes she was wearing, her school uniform, with no shoes, and looked back at the door again, and finally back at me. She made eye contact, with her face close to mine because of the position we were standing in, and said, quietly, "Rick, you walked in that door a virgin. You don't have to be, when you walk out." She paused again, and added, "If you want to, I mean. I promise I won't do anything to embarrass you."