‘Listen, mate, keep your nose out of this.’ Binkers looked like he was squaring up for a fight.

‘I’ve got to get back to my room.’ Pax started backing away, aware that she was going to throw up any minute. She felt in her pocket for her key card, dog treats, her Visa card and cash spilling out.

The Viking stooped to collect it all, flipping the cardboard key-card wallet over to read the room number. ‘I’ll make sure you get there okay.’

‘I’ll take her!’ Binkers protested, reeling forwards, cannoning into a bar stool and lurching sideways to fall over the back of a leather banquette into a surprised group of revellers.

The Viking was already marching Pax away.

‘We can’t leave him there!’ she protested.

‘His friend can sort him out, so he can.’

That didn’t sound very Scandinavian. What was it with men and dodgy accents tonight, she thought groggily as he summonsed the lift.

Waiting for it to arrive, she squinted at his profile, which kept doubling, all beard and wild blond curls, part Beowulf, part Lord Flashheart.

‘Thisissokind butyoucan leavemehere,’ she insisted at the lift’s arrival ping, pitching gratefully inside before realising the doors had yet to open and she was head-butting them.

She made it inside on the second attempt.

Pax had no idea which floor her room was on. It was only when she was sliding down beside the buttons, momentarily content to sleep in the lift floor that she realised the Viking had stepped in with her.

*

‘Happy New Year, sweetlips!’

Carly dodged a second Red Bull-flavoured wet kiss from Flynn after ‘Auld Lang Syne’, her searchlight eyes raking the kaleidoscoping room for her husband.

Ash hadn’t come across to the village hall with the others earlier; nobody could remember seeing him for an hour or more. Nor was Skully in evidence. Something didn’t feel right – he’d never missed being with her at midnight before, however caned.

The disco kicked in again, glitter ball spinning through ultraviolet darkness, long-haired Flynn dotted with neon tribal marks, teeth and eyes luminous. His leather jeans were so tight he could only dance from the waist up, torso gyrating, shirt open so his neck chains harrowed his hairy chest, the skull and crossbones flag now worn like a scarf.

‘The girl next door’s hot tonight,’ he whistled, watching Bridge having a riot on the dance floor, already mosh-pitting to ‘I Predict a Riot’ with Ink and Hardcase, beer can in hand. ‘I wouldn’t mind a ride on that Mazur-ati.’

‘In your dreams,’ Carly scoffed, regretting talking Bridge into the clingy catsuit and hastily applied false eyelashes, Essex facelift ponytail replicating her own – but far sexier with those vintage Raquel Welch cheeks. She looked like a movie femme fatale, the sort who crushed hot henchmen between their thighs.

‘Put in a good word for me, yeah?’ Flynn shouted in her ear. ‘I’m up for a threesome.’

‘Shouldn’t think you’re Aleš’s type, Flynn.’

‘You know I’ve always fancied you, sweetlips,’ he laughed, eyes still on Bridge, whose pink-tipped silver extensions were swinging like a cheerleader’s pom-pom. ‘Bet she does, too.’