Inside, the temperature of the party had risen. All the rooms felt pressing and over-warm. The bursts of laughter jarred, as if the sound sprang not from merriment but from the desire to defuse threat. Stephen had a metallic taste in his mouth and he felt afraid, of what he did not know. A sense of unease pressed down on him; a physical sensation, as if someone was attempting to push him underwater. All of a sudden Cass appeared at his side.

‘Let’s go,’ she said.

‘Really?’

‘I’ve had enough of it here,’ she said.

Hamish disappoints you all the time, Stephen thought, but I wouldn’t. If I was in his shoes, I wouldn’t let you down.

‘Did you drink the punch? It’s definitely spiked, I feel kind of poisoned,’ he said.

Cass looked closely into his face, tilting her own as she considered him.

‘You do look a bit green around the gills. Shall I make you a cup of tea before we go?’

‘That’d be great.’

She disappeared and Georgie came and stood where her sister had just been.

‘I can’t find her,’ she said.

‘She was just here. She’s gone to get some tea.’

Georgie leant against him. Cass came back with a mug of tea.

‘Oh good, there you are,’ she said to Georgie. ‘Once he’s drunk this we can go.’

‘I thought you’d stay over,’ said Georgie.

‘No. Hamish doesn’t … I’d sooner go home.’

Stephen drank the tea and the heat of it cleared his head somewhat. But still he couldn’t shake off the feeling of apprehension. He didn’t know whether to tell the girls this, whether to say he wasn’t ready to leave yet, that he needed a little longer to get back to rights. But Cass was impatient to go, he could see that, so he followed her out of the house and to the car.

‘I’ll go in the back,’ she announced.

Georgie got into the passenger seat.

It was funny how you could do mechanical things almost in your sleep, however you were feeling. As soon as he took the key out of his pocket, the sequence became automatic. He had to back a couple of times to turn the car around in the cramped yard, but it was no problem. Maybe he’d feel better once they got out of there. Hamish’s place was down in a dip: maybe that was why it’d brought him down, being there. The doomy feeling he’d experienced was horrible.