At the bottom, beside the hedge, there was a wooden shed packed with years – no, decades – of rubbish. Tins of paint jostled for space with damp rolls of carpet and prehistoric tools. It smelt of creosote and mould. That was where Tom and Conor were now, sitting on two overturned tea chests, their only light provided by an old torch. Their shadows looped and flickered against the walls, making the shed feel like the opening of Tales of the Unexpected. Two brown bottles of Harp stood on the floor. Tom’s pockets held three John Player Blue, a box of matches and a bottle-opener.

‘Maybe they’re not going to come after all,’ said Conor.

‘They’ll be here,’ Tom reassured him, although his knees were doing a nervous jiggle. He, too, was starting to have doubts. Tess’s mam and Nina’s parents were at the party, and both girls should have been able to escape. So why weren’t they here? Come to think of it, what had he been doing, inviting them over for a drink and a smoke? They probably got scores of invitations. There was every chance that at this very minute they were somewhere else, having a laugh at him.

Despite the snow, almost everybody on his parents’ invitation list had turned up. A few who weren’t on the list had arrived too. Before the doorbell began to ring, Tom’s father, who’d put on his multicoloured sports jacket, had got into a tizzy about the house being too cold. He’d made Tom place two pages of The Irish Field in front of the fireplace until the flames roared up the chimney. ‘Will you stop that, Haulie?’ his mother had said. ‘You’ll set the chimney on fire, and then what’ll we do?’

‘We’ll enjoy the heat, that’s what,’ he’d replied.

Tom’s mother, who was wearing her best blue dress, the one with fake diamonds on the belt, laughed. This made him suspect that she’d already started on the Cinzano.