Despite the dance-floor flights and much throwing up of toffee vodka in the ladies loos, the party was barely getting going, having kicked off at six for the younger kids. Carly tried not to yawn, secretly longing to be at home watching soaps on catch-up. It was so early, she’d see the latest episodes as they were broadcast.

‘Nothing’s going on here for hours,’ Ash announced after his second bottled beer. ‘Let’s head over to Flynn’s for a bit.’

Carly gritted her teeth. The shark pit beckoned.

Music thumping, dogs barking and dope smoke rising, nineties rock-star throwback Flynn greeted them at the door of his tiny terraced cottage wearing nothing but a skull and crossbones flag wrapped around his snake-like hips, tattoos and neck chains on show.

‘It’s an ABC party,’ he reminded them.

‘What’s that?’

‘Anything but clothes. Amelia’s idea.’

Flynn’s latest girlfriend was a teenage university student, the riding-mad daughter of two local doctors, all swishy hair and wide-eyed ‘totes!’. Ash and Carly endured her with toothache smiles, uncomfortable in the knowledge that Flynn was sleeping with at least three other clients. Tonight, Amelia had brought a lot of pretty friends, also with swishy hair, excited exclamations and tiny skirts made from sticky tape and bin bags. Carly cast around for any women she knew, but saw none, not in itself unusual. Ash’s old gang was a bachelor pack who, like divorced dad of two Flynn, saw sex as recreational sport, their relationships counting down from first chat-up line to pillow-biting revenge porn.

All Ash’s usual crew were already there, friends he’d known since schooldays – or bunking-off-school days – none of them embracing the ABC theme, although Ink, the tattooed assassin of the quiet chat-up, was already wearing a pretty blonde on his knee. Meanwhile Roadie, the hulking fridge of music trivia and gross party tricks, was wearing a retro T-shirt featuring a picture of a man with hair like Cameron Diaz.

‘Martin Fry – lead singer of ABC, gettit? A… B… C!’ He raised a can from his lair by the stereo.

‘You both got a hall pass then, yeah?’ Flynn gave them beer bottles. He was even talking like a student, Carly realised.

The Turners’ three children were sleeping over with their grandmother, a quiet little woman abandoned long ago by Ash’s father, her fear of going outside compensated by the sixty-inch television constantly beaming CBeebies, soaps and crime after lights out.

‘I’m trying to get Mazur-arty next door to join us.’ Flynn picked up his phone to check messages. ‘You know, that sweet piece of arse married to the Polish man mountain.’

‘You’re brave. He’s one big bastard.’

‘Still in Poland with ze luvink family,’ Flynn said, winking. ‘Little Mrs M came home early, looking for work. Shame for her to sit alone all night. You go round there and invite her over, Carl. She thinks this party is beneath her.’

‘It bloody is.’ She eyed the slipping bin bags. One girl had tit-taped CDs to her nipples and thong. ‘And don’t you dare call a woman a sweet piece of arse again in my presence, Flynn Rix. Not unless you want your plain ordinary man-arse embossed with my trainer treads.’ She had no intention of asking the next-door neighbour around, a woman she had no doubt was way too sophisticated for one of Flynn’s seedy sessions, where half the room was usually under age or on probation.