The blond turned in the shotgun seat to face Curtis. She laughed briefly and her mouth stayed pressed into a sour smile. ‘You are so blind, Curtis. You do know you’ll never have Liv, don’t you?’

‘Shut up, Audrey,’ Olivia said.

‘But he’s right, you know,’ Audrey said to Olivia.

‘What the hell are you talking about? Respect? For him? Why on earth should she?’

‘Watch yourself,’ Curtis murmured. ‘You need to relax.’

‘If not for him, for the club, for the university,’ Audrey said. ‘She doesn’t know what a privilege it is to even be here.’

‘Fuck that.’

‘Hey. Calm yourself, Liv.’ He fished in his inner pocket and drew out a packet of pills. ‘Here, take one of these.’

‘No. You know I won’t take that stuff.’

‘Yeah, better not, right,’ the driver, Martin, said. ‘Remember what happened last time? She went all puffy.’

‘It’s called an allergy, dimwit,’ Audrey told him, training her gaze back onto the road ahead.

Curtis rolled his eyes and picked up a bottle of champagne from the car’s cup holder. He opened the bottle in the space between his hip and where the car door would be if it wasn’t an open-sided stage prop, and tipped a handful of pills into it without anyone else in the car noticing. ‘Have some of this, at least,’ he said, offering the bottle to Olivia. ‘It will make us all feel better.’

Olivia glared at him but took the bottle, swigging several gulps.

Curtis grabbed the bottle. ‘Steady on. Leave some for me there.’ Staring tiredly out of the car window, he absently swirled the bottle, dangling the neck between two fingers, dropping it, catching it with his other hand. Finally, he put it to his lips and tipped the bottle, before jerking towards her with a look of alarm. ‘Christ, you nearly finished it, Liv. It was for us all.’

But Olivia wasn’t listening. Her eyes had rolled back and a stream of vomit was trickling from the corner of her mouth.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Curtis said.

Audrey turned from the passenger seat. ‘Stop the car, Martin!’

The lights and wind slowed, a frieze of cold black trees slowed to a halt behind them as the sound of tyres on wet gravel filled the air.

From the wing behind them, the sound of another car slowing and stopping, car doors opening and closing. Footsteps.

‘What’s going on now?’ An American man’s accent as the third couple from the table approached Martin’s BMW.

‘Oh, my God,’ the woman said, the one who’d corrected Rashida’s pronunciation.

‘You’d better help us,’ Curtis said.

And as the members of the Drama Society hauled Olivia’s body out of the car, Rashida danced.

‘I loved her,’ Rashida said into Petra’s mind, lines for her alone. ‘Do you know what that means?’

‘More than you can imagine,’ Olivia said into the air.