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It didn’t take long for the wedding dress to lull her into another deep sleep, but then the dress did its thing. In the next dream, Abel appeared silently in front of her once more, but Temperance wasn’t going to let him be in charge this time: she stood and went to him without an invitation, weaving her hands into the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him down to her, pausing when their lips were just millimetres apart.

‘Now you stay,’ she murmured against his mouth, feeling a flip behind her navel as he smiled a wolfish grin in response. She kissed him softly at first but then ran out of patience, her mouth wanting more, wanting everything, her tongue exploring boldly, her teeth holding his bottom lip until he groaned to be released. They moved hard and fast against each other like this was a frantic dance they knew from muscle memory, and yet it was all so electrifying and brand-new: Abel’s hand pulling her hair back to angle her neck to his lips, the other strong hand on her bum, dragging her in flush against him. Not wanting to lose the upper hand, Temperance pushed him back, back up against the door, but clearly Abel wasn’t going down without a fight. He turned on his heel and span her around with him so that her hands were braced against the rough wood and his were free to grab at her hips, run up her sides, over her tits, squeezing hard. He was right behind her, his body like an outline of her own. Breath on her neck, each deep, throaty sigh making her push back further against him.

‘Now, Abel.’

She was awake and staring into the black again. The clock said 3.17am. She knew she needed more sleep, but she was almost afraid of where the dreams would take her next, and yet she wanted to go there again.

They’re at the bus shelter. Teenagers once more. A perfect summer’s day. Abel’s hand is open on his thigh, as Temperance sits next to him on the bench, drawing circles over his palm. Their eyes are locked together, barely breathing. She works up the nerve to explore as her fingertips tingle: the thick muscle at the top of his leg, built by hours spent on a surfboard. Temperance can feel how strong he is, even over his shorts. Then the softer skin on his inner thigh, finding a gasp from the back of his throat as she moves. The noise makes her feel bolder, braver. Her fingers trace the hard shape pointing up towards his stomach now, under the fabric. Abel shuts his eyes and his head tips back against the shelter wall, a low growl coming from deep in his chest. Her hand trembles as she slips it beneath the elastic waistband and finds him impossibly hot and rigid: this is what she’s done to him. It’s like a river running down her spine, this ego boost, this invitation. The feeling pools between her legs: she’s so wet from just what she can do to him. She wants to know more.

Abel moves forward, kissing her like he’s been in the dessert and she is the water. When he breaks away, her hand is still stroking him, still absorbing the delicious, satisfying hardness there.

‘Someone might see,’ he whispers, but it’s not really a complaint or a warning. Temperance feels her heart bang against her ribs. He pulls his blue hoodie over their laps, a makeshift barrier, so she can keep her fingers wrapped around him, she can keep turning him insensible with each shudder of pleasure.

‘Come closer,’ he says into her hair, and her hips wriggle next to his. Abel’s hand snakes under the hoodie, finding the button of her jeans, clumsily wrestling with it while his mind is on what she is doing inside his shorts. ‘I need to feel you too.’

As his hand slips inside her knickers, parting her and finding out for himself just how turned on she is, Abel has to cover Temperance’s mouth with his to stop her crying out.

‘Sshhh,’ he almost laughs against her lips. ‘The people on the green will hear.’

Whether he knows it or not, he’s found just the right spot, just the right pressure, to send flashing lights up behind her eyelids. She’s terrified that someone might see, but she’s terrified that Abel might stop: the pulse of lust filling her whole body turns her light-headed, almost.

Temperance can feel Abel straining to keep his shoulders and hips still, to concentrate. ‘Just . . . don’t move your hand, OK? I want to see if I can . . .’

His finger traces tiny, delicate circles. He kisses the side of her neck until she feels dizzy, until the feeling builds and every muscle she has clenches, until this new energy courses along her nerve endings and makes her feel she will float, until she almost can’t breathe, until she . . .

‘Abel!’ She collapses against him, entirely spent and entirely delighted.

Her mouth tries to find his again. Except he’s not there. She’s on her sofa – twenty-nine, not seventeen – her breath ragged, her body on fire.

That dream felt particularly cruel: painting it like a memory, like something she’d really experienced, when it was total fiction. Temperance couldn’t take it anymore. OK, so the dreams were fun, but they were a surreal vision of a future she could never have. They were a tantalising taste of everything she wanted but just couldn’t find. She wanted love, but she wasn’t going to find it with someone who detested her, that was for sure.

With every follicle of her skin on edge and her mouth aching, she forced herself to stand up.

‘This dress will kill me,’ she said into the dark room, searching out the torch on the table by the fire and switching it on. ‘The minute Abel Gulliver is back in Bath, we are doing some heavy pagan shit on this.’ She touched the red belt at her waist and her knees went weak for a second, unintentionally reliving the feeling of Abel pressing her against the door, his fingers over her hardened nipples, his lips sinking into the back of her neck. ‘You’ll be first to go, you spicy little thing.’

Temperance finally caught her breath on the walk to the beach, trying to close off the hundreds of R-rated images the magic had conjured up of her and Abel on the sofa, in a bed, in a car, hot and heavy on the bus shelter bench. . . Instead, Temperance tuned in to the hoots of the owls in the trees, the insistent crash of waves on stones, the wind chasing through ivy. Anything she could find that was not hot. That would not make a granny blush. She needed it PG so that she could get her head in order and concentrate on the job in hand.

‘Don’t move your hand, OK? I want to see if I can . . .’

Temperance shook her head like she could knock the dreams out onto the ground. This was serious. This was not the time to live in a Judy Blume fantasy. It was time to take action.

It was still pitch black, so Temperance had plenty of time to get down to the beach, start a fire and practise reciting her spell in reverse. The dress was heavy and cumbersome as ever, but with no one around, she could use her powers to heft a lot of it. She was finding that the more she used her kind of magnetism to draw the silk up off the floor, the more she could lift several thick layers in one go, like she was strengthening a muscle. But Temperance was wearing her Marigolds just in case, to save herself getting nonsensical with love and lust.

With the fire gently licking away at some driftwood (she couldn’t look at it for too long or the dressing gown belt started giving her flashbacks again, specifically to Abel’s tongue on her throat), all Temperance could do was sit and wait for the day to arrive.

And for the millionth time over the last twelve years, she found herself wondering just what it was that she’d done wrong. How badly did you have to kiss someone to convert them from your best friend to your worst enemy? Clearly the dream version of Temperance had some killer moves, but what had she done that day in the pub garden that had turned his stomach so completely? It must have been something really so horrendous that Abel hadn’t been able to explain it face to face, instead he’d chucked all his worldly possessions in a car with his mum and left Devon.

Temperance had a few other kisses before that day, and none of those boys had renewed their passports and left town. Mind you, they were botched, sloppy moments of panic. What she’d shared with Abel was something much more memorable.

It had felt so natural in the moment. After a day at sixth form, they were rolling cutlery in napkins, sat together on one of the picnic benches in the pub garden. Something they’d done a million times before, though admittedly usually with Susie doing cartwheels around them. Temperance was turning seventeen in a few days and Abel was teasing that she wouldn’t in a million years guess what he’d got her.

‘Well, last year you bought me a double ice cream cone. So this year am I getting sprinkles as well?’

Abel rolled his eyes, his grin never faltering. ‘Nope. Way off.’

‘A hot glue gun?’

He laughed. ‘No! Who else in the world would go from thinking ice cream to a glue gun but you, Temperance Molland?’