Reluctantly I followed Edie upstairs. She put some music on and sat on her bed. We listened to it, but I wasn’t sure I liked it. Plus, it quarrelled with the ABBA coming up from downstairs.

‘We could sneak out,’ she said. ‘Go and find your brother and his friends. Do you know where they are?’

‘No idea. Maybe the Nags Head or the dock. We’d need a car to get to Penzance though. The buses won’t be running at this time.’

Edie rolled her eyes and lay back on her bed. ‘Jesus, it’s so fucking backward here. Look, I’m knackered. I’m going to go to sleep. Are you staying?’

‘If that’s okay.’ She shrugged dismissively like she didn’t care either way, and left the room to get me a pillow and a blanket.

Last time I slept over – after the tattoo – we’d slept head to toe. I’d lain with my shoulder smarting and my head swimming in a vodka haze enjoying the warmth of her body, but this time she put the pillow on the floor. She turned her light off and said she wasn’t in the mood for chatting, and it wasn’t long before her breathing deepened and I was left with only the sounds of the party for company. I concentrated hard to try to separate the voices, the laughs, putting them to the faces of the people down below. I imagined joining them. Dressed myself in a red satin dress which trailed the floor. On my wrist was Eleanor’s gold and ruby bracelet. I told stories and they all laughed, hanging on my every word and, as I spoke, Max smiled and poured me champagne.

Soon the voices shifted to the terrace. I got up and moved to the window. They were circling around the swimming pool. The women were dancing and twirling, and then one by one, they undressed, pulling silk and satin over their heads, bodies lit from the light within the house. They reminded me of druids dancing around a fire, writhing to music, hands in the air. Two of the women stripped entirely. One of them was Eleanor. Both leapt into the water with shrill shrieks.

The men were laughing. Three of them were smoking. Freddie, the one who’d said I was pretty, put his drink down and threw his burning cigarette into the darkness. He took off his jacket and shirt then his trousers. Soon Ken followed suit. Then, with the women whooping hysterically, they ran and jumped into the blackness of the pool. They didn’t re-emerge for what felt like ages and I wondered if the pool had swallowed them up.