I turn back to face her, watch as she takes a sip of her drink. ‘What … on this train? In this country?’ I pause, take a sip of my own drink. It’s creamy, but there’s a hard bite of alcohol in there. ‘Being here with me?’

She picks up the chocolate straw and starts nibbling on it. ‘All of the above.’

I take another sip of my drink. Memories of the night at the festival have been coming back to me all day, jabbing at me like random, tiny pinpricks. One minute I want to blurt something out, and the next I want to keep it locked away inside my head. From Carrie’s up-and-down mood, I sense she is getting the same reminders.

‘You know … you said something the other night. About Sam…’

It’s as if she’s read my mind.

‘I don’t really want to talk about him, actually.’ I drain my drink. The problem with these types of glasses is that they hardly hold any liquid. I turn around towards the bar, and catch the woman’s eye. ‘Can we have two more, please?’

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ Carrie is ripping corners off a piece of paper, dropping small, rough confetti onto the table. If she had a bottle of beer, the label would be in shreds by now.

‘Of course it is. We’re in first-class, aren’t we? Let’s enjoy it.’

The bar woman brings us another two drinks and plonks them hard on the table, with another emotionless ‘enjoy’, then leaves us to it.

Carrie picks up the chocolate straw and holds it like a cigarette, sucking the end. She turns to face me, looks me straight in the eye, and I can’t look away.

‘We should talk about the festival,’ she says, ‘what happened…’

‘Which bit?’

‘Which bit do you remember?’ She slides more of the straw into her mouth, bites it in half with a snap. Then nibbles at the remaining piece, small tiny bites, like a little animal. Her eyes flash a warning at me, and I wonder if she wants me to tell the truth or lie.

‘I remember some of it…’ I say. This is the truth, at least.

‘I remember running out of the shaman’s tent. I remember colours, flashing everywhere. My head spinning. I fell onto the floor, and someone picked me up—’

‘That was Rory.’

‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘We didn’t see Rory or Martin after the reading. They said so in the van. They’d been looking for us…’

I take another drink, trying to buy time. I thought I remembered, but now I’m not so sure.