‘Is Karen still about?’ he asked, a little wary at the warmth of Kelly’s greeting. Kelly’s sense of their rapprochement seemingly more genuine than Tony’s own.

‘She’s up the stairs. She wasn’t feeling great–’

‘Thanks,’ Tony said, turning to leave.

‘Wait! I’d leave her, mate.’

Tony looked askance at him. ‘I’ll go on up, thanks,’ he said. ‘She’s expecting me.’

‘Just looking out for you,’ Kelly said, his hands raised in surrender.

Tony squeezed his way up the stairs, past several assembled couples that had taken position there, though they barely noticed his passing.

There were four doors at the top of the stairs, three closed, one slightly ajar to reveal what Tony assumed to be a small toilet, judging by the noise of someone urinating in there. He knocked and opened the first door where a couple, partially clothed for the moment, lay in an embrace on the bed. The couple in the second room had progressed further, her bent over the bed, him standing, trousers at his ankles, behind her. He turned and grinned at Tony without stopping.

‘Fuck off!” she shouted as she saw the cause of her partner’s distraction.

Tony muttered his apologies as he closed the door, moving to the third, knocking and pushing it open.

The third bedroom was empty. For a second, Tony assumed that Kelly had been mistaken, or that perhaps Karen had given up waiting and left. Just then, the door of the first bedroom opened and the drunken couple emerged. He had his trousers still half unbuttoned while he tried to tuck in his shirt, she, head lowered, was rebuttoned her own shirt the wrong way, so that it gaped in the middle, showing her bra beneath.

‘Karen?’ Tony asked.

She looked up at him, her face a blear of make-up, her eyes unfocused as she squinted slightly at him.

‘Tony?’ she said.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Four

‘Tony?’ she repeated.

He raised his head. They were back in the car now and on their way again. He was almost surprised to see she was older, her features hardened a little with age. Yet he still felt the pain of her betrayal as something visceral, as if it had happened a moment earlier.

‘Are you OK?’

Absurdly, he wondered if she’d just shared in his reverie of that night, if she felt any guilt, remorse at what had happened.

‘I’m fine,’ he said, more petulantly than he’d intended, earning a brief frown from Karen before she motioned towards where Barr sat.

‘I was asking you, are you OK to stay over and go back tomorrow?’