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their forties or fifties; quite a few were checking out way before that. Casualties of how we all live now, I guess — cars, booze, drugs, despair. I’d rather not have known, but it wasn’t something I could switch on and off.
    I’d got about ten feet in when I started to panic, wedged between a guy with his T-shirt completely soaked in his own sweat and his girlfriend, all hairspray and perfume. I didn’t see how I could get much farther forward, and the gap behind me had closed up. There was no air and the noise was so loud it was like it was actually inside my head, trying to burst out through my ears and eyes and nose. I was feeling light-headed, and as the strength started to go from my legs, I realized I didn’t actually need them; my body was held up by all those around me.
    Through the smallest of gaps I saw a familiar logo on the back of a yellow T-shirt, bobbing up and down as its occupantmoved in time to the beat. Spider! I took a deep breath and dropped to the floor, ducking down to squeeze through the sea of legs. I resurfaced by Spider and tapped him on the shoulder.
    He half turned, smiled, and put his long arm across my back, holding me at my waist. Despite our little chat, I didn’t object. Drawn into his side, the familiar smell of his BO was almost welcome, and his arm supported me, giving me a chance to relax and breathe again.
    He was saying something to me, but I couldn’t hear a thing. He bent down and yelled, “Good vibes, man! Here…” From his other hand he offered me a big roll-up. Battered and dazed just by having made it there, I took it without thinking. “Go on,” he shouted in my ear. “It’s good stuff.”
    I looked at the roach, held between my fingers, blue smoke spiraling out of the end. It was just pot, nothing heavy. Then I thought of my mum, the funny angle she was lying at when I found her. Was this how she started? A harmless toke? No way I was going down that road. I handed it back to Spider.
    “What’s up?” he asked.
    “Nothing. It’s a bit hot in here — I think I need a drink.”
    “You need to take off your hoodie, Jem, or you’ll melt.”
    He was right. I could feel the sweat running down my front. I wriggled out of the sweatshirt, trying not to elbow anyone as I drew it up and over my head. Of course, I’d forgotten the knife. It fell out onto the floor. I held my breath,wondering what the reaction would be. Quite a few people had noticed — they just laughed.
    “Hey, there’s no need for that here. Honor among thieves, right?” Someone ducked down, picked it up off the floor, and handed it back to me.
    “Spider, who’s this you’ve got with you? She’s hardcore.” A wink of the eye told me they were laughing at me. I was fifteen and five foot nothing, no threat to them.
    Spider grinned. “Yeah, this is Jem. You don’t want to mess with her. She’s little, but she’s mean.”
    I wouldn’t normally like people talking about me, but squashed in there, it seemed like it was someone else they were talking about. It didn’t matter.
    After a while, a big bloke came over to us and had a word with Spider. He was covered in tattoos, and I mean
covered.
Arms, neck, face, the lot. It was the ones on his face that freaked me out, never seen nothing that extreme before. Spider leaned down to me and yelled, “I’ve got to do a bit of business. I’ll be back in a minute.”
    I watched them disappear together into a back room while my mind tried to make sense of something. The tattooed guy had looked me up and down when he’d come over to Spider. Now his number was drifting ’round my mind and I was trying to make sense of it — I may not have taken a draw on Spider’s spliff, but I guess I’d been breathing it in anyway. My mind wasn’t quite working the way it should — I hadn’t exactlystopped thinking, but it was just all taking a bit longer than usual. 12112010. What the hell did that mean? Then it all kind of came into focus again. The