Laura’s uncanny clarity left her. She was now very confused. ‘What?’

At that moment Charles arrived with two glasses of water. ‘Drink up,’ said Monica, thrusting one of them at Laura. ‘Or you’ll want to die in the morning.’

‘She’s right,’ said Charles.

Laura obediently sipped her water. It seemed to make her drunker than ever, but she felt it was a good thing that she realised she was drunk. Before she’d just thought she knew everything. Dermot was speaking again so she focused on his mouth.

‘I will go to the festival you’re arranging in England,’ he said. ‘On one condition.’

She was concentrating very hard, trying to gather her scattered brain cells. She was here to get Dermot to the festival. He was asking for something. OK. He could have it. Enunciating carefully she said, ‘I’m sure anything that we can do to make—’

He was doing that unnerving starey thing again. He really did have the most amazing eyes, and lips and . . .

‘I’ll go on one condition – if you’ll sleep with me.’ He smiled his challenge.

Laura blinked. He couldn’t really have said that, could he? She must have misheard. There was something wrong with her hearing as well as her balance. She looked for Monica for confirmation but she saw that she and Charles had gone into one of the other rooms. She was alone with Dermot – if you discounted about thirty other people. She’d have to work this out for herself; she hadn’t misheard, of course, Dermot had said she had to sleep with him and then he’d go to the festival. She worked on it in her mind. Did she want to sleep with Dermot Flynn? She smiled. This was what they called a ‘no-brainer’, which was quite funny because she no longer had a brain. She did want to sleep with him.

‘OK.’ She nodded. Why not.

Dermot looked down into her eyes once more and something in her flipped. What was this feeling? The poetry-loving romantic in her wanted it to be love, but she had just enough grip left on reality to realise it was lust that stirred her. Both emotions were practically unknown to her.

She was vaguely aware of a tiny voice buried deep inside her telling her she would probably regret what she’d just said, but she drowned it out with another sip of whiskey. She knew there was nothing else in the world at that moment that she wanted to do more.

‘Well, isn’t that nice?’ he said slowly, raising an eyebrow.