Jack laughs too, thickly, swirling in the crowd. He trips.

Rose steps forward as Jack stumbles. He bumps into her and she steps back again, knocking into someone else. A drink spills on the carpet.

‘Fuck’s sake.’

Someone pushes Rose.

‘Hey!’ Jack’s voice is heavy, hard.

The room sharpens.

‘Easy.’

Jack moves, tense and unconstrained, bucking clumsily. Rose is pushing back at his chest. Everyone’s body language is different now. Boys are puffed up, shoulders back, arms wide. Girls are stepping away.

Jack mutters furiously, ‘… fucking touch her …’ .

His arm sweeps backwards and knocks another glass off the mantelpiece, and someone shrieks and he falls, heavily, and now people are laughing again, louder.

Jack grunts from the floor.

Dillon steps in and hooks an arm under Jack’s. He pulls him up. Jack’s breath is hot and sweet with alcohol, and the weight of him as he leans forward across Dillon’s shoulder is leaden.

The buzz of voices rises and falls.

Dillon’s fingers dig into Jack’s ribs. They grip tight, like they want to hurt him, but they’re holding him. Then someone else is holding him too, and they walk to the door, and they take him out, and they sit him down on the neat step under the bright light at the front door.

Jack, and Dillon, and Rose, and the door is closed behind them.

There is no point at which Rose asks, or Jack asks, or Dillon. They wait outside the door, and nothing happens, and then Jack stands, swaying, and Rose reaches out to one side, and Dillon to the other, and they are walking.

The walk is long and slow, with Jack slung between them. The wet tarmac has a bright sheen under the yellow lights. Jack’s heavy steps cause them to veer across the road, and once, to fall.

Jack lives in the grey concrete building above the carpet shop.

They take him in. The hall smells of piss. They help him up the stairs. Three flights. His door has scratches on it, deep, like someone hit it with something.

The door opens. The room is dark.

Before he goes in Jack grabs Dillon’s arm above the elbow, tight enough that Dillon almost cries out. Then the door shuts and he’s gone.

Rose and Dillon walk back down the stairs. They haven’t said a word to each other all evening. Outside the building they stand in the street. Dillon rubs his arms. He realises he’s left his jacket at the party.

‘It’s cold,’ he says.

Rose walks over and hugs him.

It’s only when someone doesn’t do all of the things you expect them to do that you notice the complexity of something like a hug. The arms out, the lean, the smiles, the little noise at the back of the throat.

But with Rose, none of that.