‘No, no, no,’ she said quickly, pulling back, her curtain of hair resuming sentry. She noticed Alice’s eyes trailing over her skin and offered up a quick, silent plea that she wouldn’t comment on it.

‘Sorry,’ Alice said simply. ‘How about… a hat? Or a scarf? Or, I know! Teddy pass me your waistcoat and bow tie.’ She helped Julia into the waistcoat, leaving the buttons undone, and draped the bow tie around her shirt collar. Instantly, Julia’s smart trousers and pin-striped shirt had added cool: a Le Smoking effect. ‘Do you have any blue eyeshadow in there?’ she asked, motioning at Julia’s large bag. A few minutes later she stood back gratifyingly, nodding as she surveyed the effect, Julia’s electric-blue pumps popping – along with her eyeshadow – now too. ‘When in Paris!’ Alice grinned.

Nina emerged from the bathroom, her dungarees back on with a neon-pink crop top underneath, and she’d kept on her yellow headpiece and silver, feathered heels. ‘Très chic, non?’ She laughed nervously, her East London accent just below the surface of her carefully enunciated French.

*

By nine o’clock, Julia – or Jules, as she was now – had Valentin’s arm resting lightly on her shoulders, having recently broken off their kiss to smile at one another nervously. Julia’s brain was screeching Yes! Yes! Yes! She had long ago accepted that she would likely start university not only a virgin, but one who had never been kissed. They reached for each other again, delicious kisses growing deeper in the dark, sweaty bar. For the first time in about five years, Julia wasn’t thinking about her skin. Alice had hooked up with one of Valentin’s friends, Jean-Pierre, and had to bite her lip to stop herself giggling, it reminded her so much of her French textbooks from school. Nina was being spun around the dance floor by Teddy, her eyes alive, her headpiece precarious, bits of feather and lace in danger of cascading over her face like flowers trailing down a wedding cake.

When ‘Spice Up Your Life’ came on, Jules and Alice joined them on the dance floor and they all shook it to the left and slammed it to the right, including Teddy, belly-laughing. They swung their arms around each other, singing at the top of their voices, jumping up and down as a new track came on that they all knew. They devised silly dances. ‘I call this Le Tour Eiffel!’ Alice shouted, making a triangle shape and then moving her hands around like flashbulbs. ‘I do this, on the hour!’ she said, and each time the clock crawled on to the next hour one of the others would grab her and shout ‘It’s time!’ There was an attempted lift, Dirty Dancing style, which resulted in Alice and Nina in a heap on the floor, laughing. ‘Amateurs,’ scoffed Julia, because she’d spent hours watching other girls doing this during their gymnastics lessons at school but had felt too afraid to try herself. ‘Come on, Nina, I’ve got you…’ she said, grounding herself to the floor and tensing her thighs. Nina stepped back, further back still at Julia’s command, and then she was running and flying and swooping over the dance floor in her dungarees and heels and her stupid yellow headpiece, before she and Julia also ended up on the floor, the three of them crying with laughter.