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her cheeks.
Then she spotted something that made her eyes bulge.
    ‘What?’ Raegan asked anxiously.
    ‘He’s brought her. Candace. The one he cheated on me
with.’
    Raegan touched her arm sympathetically. ‘I’m sorry. You
okay?’
    Marie wasn’t listening. ‘And I bet afterwards he’ll be
taking her to the Shack. Well, good luck to her if she can stand it there. It’s
a mouldy, abandoned old house, for god’s sake! In the middle of Lydgale Forest!
But they all think it’s so-o-o cool. Losers.’
    ‘Look, shall we just go?’ Raegan, uncomfortably familiar
with the situation, hated to see her friend upset.
      ‘Where?’ Marie laughed, welsh
accent thickening with sarcasm. ‘That’s the problem with this town, babes.
There isn’t anywhere to go. ’
    She slammed her glass down with enough force to make the
table rattle. When she looked up, her dark eyes were blazing. Raegan felt a
sense of foreboding.
    ‘Come on. Let’s hit the bar.’
    ***
    After this declaration, Marie was on a quest for oblivion
and equally determined to take Raegan with her. The first time she ordered two
glasses of wine, it was a thrill; sipping at the illicit, cool liquid, the
alcohol burning her throat, Raegan felt as if everything was coming into a new,
sharp focus. She was finally awake. With each gulp she was raising two fingers
to Bridey, and to Con, and everyone at her old school who had thought she was
such a goodie goodie.
    But then one glass turned into another, and then another,
and then a whole bottle had been ordered and drained – and mostly by Marie. The
rollercoaster pace set by her friend was exciting, and perhaps it would have
been easier to just go with it; but almost as soon as she had finished her
first glass Raegan felt uneasy. She was underage. They both were. She didn’t
want to give herself away so she decided to focus on Marie, watching out for
her friend and drinking as slowly as possible.  She could hardly leave
her. The more Marie drank, the more outrageous she became: dancing
provocatively whilst pretending she was completely unaware of Dafydd’s
presence, unhooking so many buttons down the top of her dress that she was in
danger of showing the room her little butterfly tattoo (Raegan had not been
given the option – Marie had flashed her cleavage in the toilets) and leaving
Raegan breathless, unable to keep up, catapulted into the here and now.
    They were attracting a lot of attention, and Raegan, unused
to the spotlight, was not sure how to feel. Soon she became aware that two guys
were paying them more attention than most. Everywhere they moved to, these two
would also appear, hovering on the fringes. They seemed content to wait. It was
odd but not exactly unpleasant. As Raegan stood with Marie at the bar,
determinedly ordering herself a pint of tap water and not another wine, she
spotted them again. Surreptitiously she moved closer to Marie. ‘Do you know
those blokes over there? I think they’re following us.’
    Marie turned to her, her brown eyes shining but unfocused.
‘What? What you talking about? There are lads everywhere.’
    ‘Those ones,’ Raegan tried to make herself heard over the
loud music. ‘Opposite us. Older. And they have really good… hair.’ One of them caught her eye and smiled, and
Raegan felt a pleasing tingle of heat sweep through her. He was very
good-looking.
     Marie turned her head to look, and then began to wave
enthusiastically, much to Raegan’s alarm. ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘I know them,’ Marie crowed. ‘They were on the pier earlier. And they were totally checking me out. This is amazing, they must be in their twenties! This is it, Rae! We’re in.’
    The two guys were now approaching and Raegan’s nerves went
into overdrive. Marie, by contrast, blossomed; as Raegan pushed her hair out of
her face artlessly, Marie smoothed down her outfit and leaned seductively
against the bar. And as the men drew nearer, it became clearer, too, just