Mona has decided to change her name for the night. Tonight, she announced, she would like us girls to call her Jessica. So we will have a Jessica, after all of my efforts. She’s wearing chunky heels and her round legs in shiny leggings look dangerous. She keeps her hands on her hips, fists balled up, don’t-mess-with-me sexy. Her purse is full of tissues and Nurofen for tomorrow. Her cheekbones are high and round like thick apple slices. Her lipstick is wet-look. In the lift she pushes between us to check her backcomb in the mirror.

I am the last of the line as we leave the flat. I’m wearing a bodycon dress, like Catwoman, but with more thigh, and all my bones jut out, like I’m sketched out in pen. I’ve contoured my face: earthy shades filling in the hollows, translucent powder across the cheekbones, like slug trails in the light of the moon. I look beautiful. Around my neck is a locket of sentimental value and in the locket a picture of Miss Phyllis, who is alive, of course, and extremely miffed she couldn’t make it. Earlier today she gave me the locket so she could go along, in a way. She said, ‘Never lift your heels from the ground for too long when you’re wearing high shoes because it’ll only make your feet worse.’ Grind down into the earth for balance. There was a festive air to the care home, like that on the dock when a ship sets sail. ‘You girls have fun,’ chorused the old women when we left. Mrs O’Toole raised one serious finger and pretended to think hard about something, so I bent over to offer my ear, into which she burst a peal of laughter. They waved goodbye from their chairs, which we’d arranged in the living room in a semicircle. Only that shrivelled root of a man, Mr Hancock, sulked in a corner. He could rot in hell for all we cared.

In the hallway Alanna pulled me into a corner. She popped the locket open, crushed a pink pill into it, against the black-and-white portrait.

‘One night,’ she whispered. She let the chain fall back between my breasts. Her breath smelt of berries. I held the necklace with the picture of Miss Phyllis between my fingers. We were together. Age is just a number and these were the things that were happening to me, on a night out, at thirty years of age.