I took one look at my date’s bathroom – and fled

Something dropped in my stomach – I felt like it was all going a bit wrong (Picture: Getty Images)

A layer of dark brown goo sat at the bottom of the bathtub.

The sunlight from the spring afternoon shone through the dirty window and landed on the thick crust of brown.

Along the edge of the bath, the tiles were lined with black muck – but I knew the tub was supposed to be white, and potentially shiny.

The rest of the bathroom was no better. It was filled with sticky, long forgotten detritus – cans of shaving foam and rusty razors with clogged blades. Open sarcophagi for dead insects, upended woodlice and mites, were lost in the discarded aerosol bracken.

The sink was a dry dusty bowl of caked filth, taps fused with black mould, body hair of every type clipped and st...