Betty leaned a little over the bar, exaggerating her pronunciation even as she lowered her voice. ‘She took a couple of E tabs apparently. Her mates were telling me. They’re down the back, having a wake for her.’

Tony left the drinks back with Karen and explained that he’d be a moment. He moved down towards the grungier area at the back of the bar where he recognised a group of Shauna’s friends. One of them, a girl a little shorter and broader than Shauna, stood at his approach.

‘All right?’ Tony said. ‘You were one of Shauna’s friends, isn’t that right?’

The girl nodded. ‘I’m Emma. Did you hear?’

‘Betty told me,’ Tony said. ‘What happened?’

‘We were out for the night. We came here first, then onto The Tunnel.’

Tony nodded. He knew of the place, though had never been, dance music not being to his taste.

‘She had a couple of tabs. She took one before we went in, but after about forty minutes she thought it wasn’t working, so she took a second one. It wasn’t doing it either and she thought she’d been sold duds, so she took half of a third.’

Tony groaned, already knowing where the story was heading.

‘They all seemed to kick in at the one time. One minute she was standing with her drink, the next she was bouncing around the place. She was totally hyper, like she couldn’t stop, she was all jittering, she was downing water like it was going out of fashion. She wasn’t even making sense, half of what she was saying. She said she felt sick and went to the toilet. I went in with her and she went into the cubicle to see if she could make herself throw up, get some of it out of her system. The next thing, she’d just taken this, like, fit on the floor. She was lying just shuddering, her arms and legs all over the place. I went out and got help, one of the bouncers like, but by the time we came back in, she was already still.’

Tony shook his head as he gently touched the arm of the girl, standing in front of him, tears streaming freely down her face at the rawness of the memory.

‘The paramedics arrived, but she was already dead, lying on the toilet floor.’

The group with which she had been sitting sat in silence, listening once again to Emma recounting the facts of their friend’s death. When she was finished, one of the fellas raised his glass. ‘To Shauna,’ he said.

The others joined in a chorus, then toasted one another and downed their drinks in their own bacchanalian memorial for the girl.

‘When’s her funeral?’ Tony asked.

Emma shrugged. ‘They’ll have to do a post mortem first,’ she said. ‘It could be a few weeks yet.’