‘Fine, here.’ Jordan fumbles to remove the key to my flat from his ring. ‘Have your key. Now please, you shouldn’t be here.’

There’s a commotion at the entrance up the top of the stairs. Horrible Rhiannon, and her equally unpleasant work friends, saunter down.

‘What’s she doing here?’ Rhiannon barks at Jordan. Wearing an elegant cocktail dress over her skeletal frames, she looks me and the girls up and down. Her friends snigger rudely at our outfits. I shoot them a stern mind-your-own-business glare.

‘Who are they?’ Bip asks me.

‘They don’t seem very nice,’ Ban whispers.

‘Girls, they’re nobody,’ I say.

‘Actually, I’m his girlfriend,’ Rhiannon says, looking at Jordan.

‘Oh blimey,’ Robert sighs, not knowing where to look.

I’m gobsmacked. Rhiannon. With the poker-straight brown hair, who weighs half of me. I attended drinks for her twenty-first birthday six months ago. It takes a few moments for it to sink in. Rhiannon is now Jordan’s girlfriend.

‘What’s she doing here?’ she repeats, glaring at Jordan.

‘She wanted her key. I didn’t invite her.’

‘Jesus, Jordan,’ is all that comes out of my mouth.

Jordan turns on me with his tawny eyes. ‘Grace, we broke up.’

‘Three weeks ago,’ I scream at him.

‘I’m not doing this.’ He grabs Rhiannon by her arm and practically drags her back inside. She turns to glare at me before she recommences growling at him.

‘That didn’t go well,’ Robert says.

‘No, Robert, it didn’t.’

I’m shaken, but not stirred. I’m upset. But I’m not crying. In shock, I presume.

‘Gracie, I’m sorry, you didn’t deserve that. That girl is an utter little cow,’ he says. ‘Let me get you a cab.’

A lone redhead in a decadent long dress offers me a kind smile. I smile forlornly back. Trudy, the lovely receptionist.

Robert escorts us safely away around the corner and, I don’t know how, hails us a black cab within seconds.

The girls give directions to another club, an underground place south of the river, where, they assure me, their bouncer friends will let us all in, most likely for free. I tell them I’d really rather call it a night.

‘Gracie, no.’

‘That was too upsetting.’

‘Stay with us.’

‘We’ll look after you.’

‘I’m drunk and I want to go home,’ I say. ‘Oh no, I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘Gracie, hang in there,’ Ban takes my hand.

They whisper among themselves. Something about Harry saying they mustn’t and not having anything anyway and, after I make a funny gurgling sound, they worry that I may well be about to vomit. Then right here in the back seat of the cab, Bip loads her fingernail with some white powder from a little plastic vial she’s retrieved from her bag and she puts it under my nose. Without thinking, I breathe in.