“For the part, I grew horns. It felt really essential to my character, really vital that I had the experience of that stigma, that sense of what it’s like to have horns and how that might drive me to opening the hell-gate and unleashing my servants of darkness upon the heroes and their . . . ”

Harmony stands over Jiannis as the room writhes and crawls in food, flesh, meat and whisky, and waits for him to notice her in his wriggling exploration of this woman’s body, and he doesn’t.

“Jiannis?” Her voice, tiny and lost over the roaring of the room. “Jiannis?”

She taps him on the shoulder, and it is the most stupid thing she’s ever done.

He glances up, grins a bloody grin, “Hey, babe!”

The woman underneath his scarlet-smeared form giggles, pushing her hips against his, fumbling for a bottle of uncorked wine and sloshing down a gulp through purple lips.

“I, uh . . . I don’t feel . . . I think I want to go home.”

“The party’s only just got started!”

“I just . . . I want to go home.”

“Babe, let’s give it another hour; it’d be rude to leave. My friends are here; it’d be really rude – you don’t want to be rude?”

“I really want to go home. Now.”

Something in her tone. Something she hasn’t used for a long while. He pulls himself a little higher, as the woman’s face contracts in surprise, distaste at Harmony’s sharp tongue, flesh-flecked hair, stained, crumpled clothes.

Jiannis straightens up, squares up to her. “Babe,” he whispers, bending in close. “These are my friends. We’re staying.” A sound, just for her, his smile never faltering for the room, one hand caressing her arm, the other reaching round to squeeze her bum.

A moment where she might have argued.

A moment, which in later years she will remember, a paralysis of thought, a shutting down of reason that will come again, the day a woman called Gillian tells her about punitive financial services, about non-essential systems, about acne and withdrawal and . . .

All of that is to come, of course, but perhaps tonight, for just a moment, the shadow of it reaches back to shroud Harmony in darkness, and as she teeters on the second of choosing, the universe waits.

“OK,” she breaths, and is surprised to feel something hot in the corner of her eye. “Babe,” – a hasty added word – “babe.” “Yeah, sorry, you’re right, yeah, I just . . . need some air, yeah.” Sounds are safe, nodding, smiling, always smiling – smiling is safe. Only when she picks her way over bodies soaked in blood, slipping and sliding on lacerated flesh and smeared skin to the lady’s lav, does she wonder why she wanted to cry.

Chapter 15

This is Harmony Meads, twenty-seven years old.

She lives in her boyfriend’s penthouse flat in the tower on the corner of Blackfriars Bridge, and yes, the layout may not be optimal, sounds might carry and the kitchen is a nightmare to clean, but that’s why they’ve got a cleaner and, anyway, the views! The views and the convenience and the prestige of the thing: every time she comes home she feels privileged, privileged to live here. It’s just great; it’s so great. It’s just like the magazines.