On the way to the bathroom, Minnie checked her phone. She had a text from Leila.

‘Just checking on you. What’s the damage? Do I need to rescue you from a hostage situation/pothole/worse?’

Minnie smiled and tapped out a reply, ‘Not too bad so far. Lost only coat and got vommed on.; )’

Leila was Minnie’s best friend and business partner. They’d set up No Hard Fillings together four years ago and invested all their time, money and energy into it ever since. If it hadn’t been for Leila, Minnie doubted she could have kept it going for as long as they had. They’d faced so many hurdles along the way, it would have been so easy just to give up and go back to working for someone else, somewhere you knew you’d be getting a pay cheque at the end of each month rather than scrabbling to balance the books and give yourself any kind of salary.

‘So surprise – I’ve spent New Year’s Eve preparing pies so we don’t have to work tomorrow. I’m taking you somewhere for your birthday. You need to wear a dress,’ said Leila’s text.

Minnie smiled. She sent back a dress and sick face emoji.

Leila sent back a screen full of pie emojis and then a screen full of sick faces. Minnie laughed out loud and then replied, ‘You are the best. Thank you Pieface. For you, and only you, I will wear a dress xxx.’

Minnie looked up from her phone and walked straight into a waiter carrying a tray of canapés. A flurry of goat’s-cheese tartlets rained down on her.

‘Oh god, I’m so sorry,’ she said, falling down onto her hands and knees to help the waiter retrieve the debris.

‘It’s not my night,’ said the waiter, miserably.

He couldn’t have been more than seventeen. Minnie saw that his glasses had been spattered with soft cheese. She gently took them from his nose and wiped them on her top before returning them.

‘I know the feeling,’ she said.

Once she’d helped the waiter clean up as best she could, Minnie walked around the back of the bar and found the toilets along a dimly lit corridor. She peered around the door of the ladies’ loos. Half a dozen women were chatting at the mirrors, touching up their make-up. She didn’t want to wash her vomity shirt in front of them. Walking further down the corridor she found a unisex disabled toilet with its own sink and hand dryer – perfect. She pulled the black silk shirt out of her bag and started rinsing off the worst of it. Luckily, it was mainly sticky rather than anything too globular, but the smell of stomach bile mixed with vodka and Coke made Minnie pinch in her nostrils. She couldn’t imagine Lucy Donohue ever finding herself in this situation.