‘Hey,’ she says.

‘Hey,’ he says.

‘How are you?’ she says.

She sways gently.

‘Look,’ she says, holding out her jacket for him to see. ‘Gold buttons.’

He smiles. Yes, they are gold. ‘Solid?’ he says.

‘Of course.’

‘You got a drink?’ he says.

She holds up a bottle. He drinks from his own. She says something he can’t hear.

‘What?’

She leans in. Her lips are close to his ear.

‘I’m drunk,’ she says.

He smiles. ‘Cheers,’ he says, lifting his drink to hers. She clinks, and tilts the bottle back sharply.

She leans in again.

‘I could give you a blow job in the toilet.’

He tries to hold his expression still.

‘What?’

She’s got a half-smile on her face. He has no idea what it means.

‘I’m all right,’ he says.

Her face doesn’t change.

‘I’m going to grab another drink,’ he says.

He goes farther than the beer bucket, though, up to the end of the garden. He can feel the drink in him, and the night, and the moisture of Rose’s words cooling in his ear. He can still see her in the window of the kitchen, talking to Yannis. It’s like a screen.

Several people stand around the drinks. Dillon pushes between two figures.

‘Excuse me,’ he says.

Callum’s face clears in recognition. He drops his hand to Dillon’s shoulder.

‘Hey, buddy!’

Callum’s large face hangs open, his eyes slurred. His tongue sits wetly behind his teeth. Jack stands, heavy limbed, beside him.

‘Hey,’ says Dillon. He feels a flush of adrenaline. Callum’s huge, and drunk.

Callum nods towards Rose, still standing at the wide window, laughing now.

‘You gonna smash the model then?’

‘What?’

‘I saw you!’ Callum is shaking Dillon’s shoulder. ‘You’re the fucking boy!’

Dillon grins, embarrassed.

‘No,’ he says, wryly.

‘Why not, bud? Everyone wants to smash the model!’

In the window, Yannis is touching her on the arm.

‘She’s a pricktease,’ Dillon says. He’s surprised at himself. But he means it.

‘Easy, tiger,’ says Jack, sharp faced. The mass of him bundles in closer.

Callum crows. ‘The boy thinks she’s a pricktease!’

Jack’s hand is on Dillon now as well. He’s buffeted by their bodies. They are laughing, but they are big, and he can feel the sway of drunkenness in them.

‘She fucking is,’ says Dillon, panicking.

Callum throws his head back and roars with laughter, clapping his hand down hard on Dillon. Dillon staggers. Jack’s face swims out of the dim light, wolfish and sad. For a moment they are inches away from each other. In the kitchen window, Yannis makes his move on Rose. She stands still while he kisses her.

‘Fucking pricktease,’ says Callum, admiringly.

Dillon knows you can’t look inside a person. But you can still see a lot through the chink between one moment and the next. Jack’s eyes are hard, and angry, and filled with violence. But they are also, in that fraction of a second, as Yannis kisses Rose, the eyes of someone a lot younger than they seem to be. There is a hurt incomprehension in them, a kind of wounded loneliness.