The pool attendant put two platters of canapés on the bar and everyone dived in. JJ’s buddies had interpreted their main man stepping across to Harry’s cabana as an open invite and suddenly all the girls were getting hassled by loud college-age guys. Harry decided to escape, stripping off his tank top and swaying from the booze as he waded into the pool.

It wasn’t even nine, but Steak and Eggs was popping. Kids of sixteen and seventeen were wasted and JJ’s pals were sneaking inside to snort cocaine. Lupita wanted to make out, but Harry was too trashed and she bounced to another cabana.

He wound up beached on the big lounger, a touch queasy, tapping to pounding music and occasionally getting jolted when someone squeezed past.

‘Awesome party,’ Matt said, gesturing towards a girl on his arm. ‘I’m taking Hermione to our apartment to show her the view,’ Matt said. ‘I’ll see you back home.’

‘It’s so cool that you guys don’t have to live with your parents,’ Hermione said. ‘I can’t wait to get to college.’

Harry wished he hadn’t drunk so much as he watched Matt head to the elevator. But he didn’t hold the thought, because Fawn Janssen was striding towards the cabanas with purpose.

‘JJ,’ she barked.

Fawn was twenty-nine and the fact that every other girl was ten years younger and dressed for the pool made her seem gigantic in her tight purple dress and high-heeled boots. Harry had met Fawn when he’d photographed her house, and she shot him a fierce glare of recognition as she crossed in front of his cabana, then up the steps and through the flaps into JJ’s.

‘Rooster in the hen house,’ one of JJ’s mates boomed. ‘Feathers gonna fly!’

Harry was drunk and knackered, but his instinct for a story trumped both handicaps. He pressed the record button on his phone as Fawn started yelling.

‘You dirty cheat! Get these tramps outta here.’

Harry recognised a pair of eleventh-grade Queensbridge girls. The first stumbled through the flaps into the arms of a huge, guffawing jock. The second was propelled by the sharp heel of Fawn Janssen’s boot, crashing into an empty lounger, followed by the top half of her bikini.

‘You paying someone to stalk me now?’ JJ shouted from inside.

Then he gave a deep groan and Harry winced at the thought of what Fawn had just kneed.

‘Show me up in front of the whole city!’ Fawn screamed.

‘Who are you to talk?’ JJ shouted back. ‘I know you’ve been sniffing around my dad.’

Holy shit! Harry thought.

‘Your father showed me some kindness while you were strutting the TMU campus like a horny bull,’ Fawn shouted. ‘But I’ve never cheated on you.’