The walls of this house shake and conduct noise and smells. Thoughts of the girl in the back of the Garda car are wrecking my head, so a social visit is on the cards. Distraction technique. The woman from earlier seemed like a kindly sort, and not one given over to dramatics. I put on my comfy socks and climb the steep, narrow staircase to the landing. She said she was in the room above me, so I turn left off the main corridor. There are four doors this side, all of them open a crack. I listen to see if I can hear her voice, but there’s never a sound from the women, not even a peep. I sit in the landing and wait for the men to leave.

The first guy passes me by a few minutes later. ‘Hello you,’ he says, as if he were addressing one of his daughter’s school friends he just happened to bump into in the tinned fruit and veg aisle in Tesco. He seems fine, normal, ok-looking, polite, mannerly – and married. He hasn’t bothered taking his ring off. I get up off the brown swirling-patterned carpet and knock on the door. There’s no answer, so I curl my head around the door.

‘Fuck off,’ a woman’s voice says. She’s sucking powder up her nose. ‘Not enough to go around,’ she says apologetically when she sees me.

‘That’s ok, I was just looking for someone,’ I say, backing out of the room.

‘Are you looking for your mam? I think she might be in room 422. Don’t burst in there without knocking though, ok?’

I tell her I’m terribly sorry and she laughs, saying I have beautiful manners, and I’m just as Zoe described me. Zoe. She turns back to her snorting.

Brian told me we would do cocaine one day, he said it made everything sharper, more intense. I think I’d rather something to knock the edges off a bit, not sharpen them.

Another guy comes out of one of the rooms; this one is young, skinny and greasy, and he nods at me. ‘That aul yoke’s getting a bit past it now. This place needs a new filly like you to gallop around on,’ he says.

‘Mum?’ I say, the word slipping out of me for maximum effect, as I poke my head around the door. I look back at Slimy Boy, who can’t seem to process what just came out of my mouth. He legs it down the stairs. The woman inside is sitting on the bed having a fag. She looks at me closely. ‘You’ve lost me a perfectly good punter, you know. That little stick insect liked to talk rough but he was as puny as a fly. He’ll never come back now he has heard the word “mum” and me in the same sentence.’