‘What? Here?’ Ashling was completely thrown. It was a long time since a strange man had asked her to dance. Especially in someone’s sitting-room. Although now that she looked, people – all female, of course – were kind of flinging themselves around to Fat Boy Slim. ‘Ah, no thanks,’ she apologized. ‘It’s too early in the night, I’m still too inhibited.’

‘OK, I’ll ask you again in an hour.’

‘Great!’ she exclaimed hollowly, taking in his eager face. An hour wouldn’t get her drunk enough. A lifetime wouldn’t suffice.

Some time later, to her delight, she spotted Joy kissing the face off Half-man-half-badger.

She hung around a little longer. Though it was a fairly crappy party, she was surprised to find she was happy to be with a crowd and happy to be on its edges. Such contentment was rare: all Ashling knew was that she almost never felt whole. Even at her most fulfilled, something remained forever absent, right at her very core. Like the tiny, pinprick dot that remained in the wash of black when the telly used to shut down for the night.

But tonight she was calm and peaceful, alone but not lonely. Even though the only men who’d hit on her weren’t her type, she didn’t feel like a failure when she decided to go home.

At the door she met Mr Enthusiastic again. ‘Going already? Hold it a minute.’ He scribbled something on a piece of paper, then handed it to her.

She waited until she was outside before opening the twist of paper. It was a name – Marcus Valentine – a phone number and the instruction, ‘Beliez moi!’

It was the best laugh she’d had all night.

The walk home took ten minutes – at least the rain had stopped. When she reached the front-door of her block of flats, there was a man asleep in the doorway.

The same man who’d been there the other day. Except he was younger than she’d realized. Pale and slight, clutching tightly on to his thick grubby-orange blanket, he looked barely more than a child.

Rummaging in her rucksack she found a pound and placed it silently beside his head. But maybe it’d be nicked, she worried, so she moved it under his blanket. Then, stepping over him, she let herself in.

As the door clicked behind her, she heard, ‘Thanks,’ so faint and whispered she wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it.

While Ted was going down a storm in the Funny Farm, Jack Devine was opening his front-door in a bleak, sea-facing corner of Ringsend.

‘Why didn’t you call me?’ Mai demanded. ‘You never have enough time for me.’ She pushed past him and marched straight up the stairs. She was already unbuttoning her jeans.

Jack stared out at the sea, the nearly-black of the night-time water as impenetrable as his eyes. Then he closed the door and slowly followed her up the stairs.

At the same time, in a stylish, Edwardian, red-brick house in Donnybrook, Clodagh downed her fourth gin and braced herself. It had been twenty-nine days.

7

Ashling woke at twelve on Sunday, feeling rested and only mildly hungover. She lay on the couch and smoked cigarettes until The Dukes of Hazzard finished. Then she went out and bought bread, orange juice, cigarettes and newspapers – one scurrilous rag and one broadsheet to cancel out the rag.

After gorging herself to the point of mild disgust on overblown stories of infidelity, she decided to tidy her flat. This mostly consisted of carrying about twenty crumb-strewn plates and half-empty glasses of water from the bedroom to the kitchen sink, picking up an empty tub of Haagen Daz from where it had rolled under the couch and opening the windows. She drew the line at polishing, but she sprayed Mr Sheen around the room and the smell instantly made her feel virtuous. Cautiously she sniffed her bed-linen. Grand, it’d do for another week.

Then, even though she knew it couldn’t have gone anywhere, she checked that the suit she’d had dry-cleaned hadn’t been stolen. It was still hanging in her wardrobe, beside a clean top. Big day tomorrow. Very big day tomorrow. It wasn’t every Monday she started a new job. In fact it had been over eight years and she was horribly nervous. But excited too, she insisted, trying to ignore her fluttery stomach.

What now? Vacuuming, she decided, because if you did it right it was great exercise for the waist. Out came her magenta and lime-green Dyson. Even now she couldn’t believe she’d spent so much money on a household appliance. Money that she could just as easily have spent on handbags or bottles of wine. The only conclusion she could draw was that she was finally grown-up. Which was funny because in her head she was still sixteen and trying to decide what to do when she left school.

She flicked the switch and, energetically bending and twisting from the waist, worked her way across the hall floor. Much to the relief of her very hungover neighbour in the flat below (Joy) it didn’t take long – Ashling’s flat was ludicrously small.

But how she loved it. The biggest fear about losing her job was that she wouldn’t be able to meet her mortgage payments. She’d bought the flat three years previously, when she’d finally understood that Phelim and she wouldn’t be applying together to purchase a cottage with roses round the door. There had been an element of brinkmanship to it – naturally she’d hoped that Phelim would hurtle in as the credits were rolling and breathlessly agree to sign up for the regulatory three-bedroom semi in a distant suburb. But to her heavy-hearted disappointment he didn’t and the purchase went ahead. At the time it had seemed like an admission of failure. But not now. This flat was her haven, her nest and her first real home. She’d lived in rented hovels since she was seventeen, sleeping in other people’s beds, sitting on lumpy sofas that landlords had bought for cheapness, not comfort.

She hadn’t had a stick of furniture when she’d moved in. Apart from the essentials like an iron and a pile of threadbare towels, mismatched sheets and pillowcases, everything had to be bought from scratch. Which caused Ashling to throw a rare tantrum. She fumed with seething resentment at the thought of diverting month after month of clothes money to buy all sorts of stupid things. Like chairs.

‘But we can’t sit on the floor,’ Phelim had yelled.

‘I know,’ Ashling admitted. ‘I just didn’t realize it would be like this…’

‘But you’re mind-blowingly organized.’ He was baffled. ‘I thought you’d be great at this sort of thing. Whatjacallit? Home-making.’