Charlie felt lonely, and remembered how she liked the warm, detached feeling of being drunk. She wanted another drink, but she had no booze back at the motel and she couldn’t buy any in Farm Fresh because she was under twenty-one.

‘Janssen Riverboat,’ Charlie told her driver.

Patrick looked curious as she helped fasten his seatbelt. ‘Aren’t we going home?’

‘I thought we’d take a stroll. You can get an ice cream if you like.’

Every Vegas high-schooler and college undergrad knew Janssen casinos were lax about checking IDs, but there was a small Janssen-owned casino a few blocks from the motel if alcohol had been all Charlie was interested in.

I’ll check out Karl’s Watches. It might not even be there any more. Have a couple of drinks and get Patrick an ice cream. Maybe buy a bottle of rum if the casino has a liquor store. It’s Christmas after all … Though Ed’s been on his own all day, so I can’t hang around for too long.

Janssen Riverboat was a 1970s-built casino at the south end of The Strip. While the sixty-storey mega-resorts around it had crashed when the tourists stopped coming, the Riverboat’s cheap rooms and nicotine-stained walls kept pulling in underage drinkers and hardcore gamblers.

Dean Martin Christmas tunes played in the Riverboat’s lobby as Patrick squeezed Charlie’s hand.

‘This place smells funny,’ he complained. ‘My daddy lost all our money in a casino.’

‘I don’t gamble,’ Charlie reassured him.

There was no ID check as Charlie bought an overpriced bottle of rum in the hotel shop, and found a near-deserted pancake place. Patrick merrily scoffed a chocolate-and-banana float, while Charlie went for a deal offering a beer and a double shot of whisky.

‘Can we go home now?’ Patrick asked tiredly. ‘I want to be up early for my presents.’

Charlie laughed. ‘I think you’ll manage to wake up tomorrow.’

‘Mikey hit me and locked me in his car last Christmas,’ Patrick said.

‘That’s horrible,’ Charlie said, tears welling as she left two and a half thousand on the table and grabbed the rum. ‘One more stop, then home.’

The outdoor market in front of Janssen Riverboat was all enclosed stalls, selling fast food, fake designer clothing and tacky Christmas gear. The crowd ranged from messed-up-looking zombies, a lot of drunk kids, and tourists, many of whom snapped pictures of the dusting of snow on the shuttered Cascada resort across The Strip.

Charlie approached Kurt’s Watches with a slight wobble as Patrick moaned that he couldn’t walk any further. The covered stall’s glass counter contained a few dozen cheap plastic watches, and solar-powered bobble heads of President Timberlake and a bunch of celebrities.