We make our way over. The party is in full swing. Dean makes a great show of helping Jenny out of her biker jacket. I’ve a mind to make a wisecrack with him about Jenny being too old for such a jacket but I hold back, it wouldn’t be fair. Jenny doesn’t like Dean. It’s on account of something I told her about him and a girl that went down years ago. It happened after a night at the Alternative, a nightclub that we persisted in frequenting in the Old Bray Head despite the fact that it was a complete dump. We had been drinking vodka before we hit the joint. There was a girl there that I was into. I’d noticed her a few times before. She was one of those Gothic types that I was partial to at the time and I snogged her on the dance floor during a slow set. That was the kind of behaviour that we were accustomed to.

After the club we all went back to Dean’s gaff. His parents were away and we had the run of the place, drink was the main attraction. Dean’s father was in sales and his garage was full of cheap Riesling that he’d give as gifts to customers at Christmas. It was easy enough to help ourselves to a couple of bottles, they were never missed. The trouble was white wine wasn’t a great come-down drink by any means, if anything it disagreed with us and we could become slightly aggressive with it. The girl came back to the house with us. I was kissing her hard in the kitchen and the Mock Turtles were belting out of the stereo. The room was a cigarette haze and my eyes were sore with it almost as much as they could become with the chlorine burning me when I swam in the local pool.