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vagina.
    ‘I don’t think so,’ she says.
    ‘Married?’
    She hasn’t thought of that either. He didn’t look married. She tries to picture his hands. She’s sure there wasn’t a ring. What does it matter? She’s never going to see him again.
    ‘What’s it matter? I’m never going to see him again anyway,’ she says to her sister. The dark blue room seems suddenly oppressive.
    Marie looks in the mirror again, snatches a tissue from the box by the bed, twists it, licks it and wipes away a trace of lipstick that has bled at the corner of her mouth; then she smooths her skin-tight jeans over her thighs languorously, looking pleased with herself.
    ‘Come on,’ she says, ‘let’s go for a drink.’

    Marie drinks vodka and Red Bull. Kate drinks orange juice. Kate remembers her father coming home from the pub, the smell of beer and cigarettes blowing through the door with him, and the sweet odour of his sweat as he kissed them both goodnight. Kate doesn’t like the taste of alcohol.
    ‘You can’t really taste it with Red Bull, though,’ Marie tells her. She always wants Kate to share in her sins. ‘It’d pick you up a bit,’ she says.
    ‘I’m not down,’ Kate says.
    ‘You’re thinking about that bloke.’
    ‘I’m not.’
    ‘Did you snog him?’ Marie wants to know.
    ‘He kissed me,’ Kate says tentatively.
    ‘I did that once,’ says Marie.
    ‘What?’
    ‘ Snogged a stranger. On a train. We were sitting opposite each other, you know, and we kept looking, then looking away. Then you know...’ Marie smiles to herself at the memory. ‘...the looks turned to smiles, and, when the people in our bit got out, we snogged ...’
    ‘And...?’
    Kate wants to hear the end of the story.
    ‘It was great.’
    ‘But what happened?’
    ‘He got off. I thought about him a bit that night, you know, and the next day...’
    ‘But you never saw him again?’
    ‘No. Didn’t even remember till just now.’
    ‘Oh.’ Kate can’t help feeling disappointed.
    ‘You’re allowed to fancy someone, you know,’ Marie tells her. ‘It’s normal.’ She finishes off her lurid drink and spots someone she knows drinking on the other side of the pub. ‘Back in a mo,’ she says.
    The pub’s clientele is mostly gay men. It’s where Marie comes on a night off. There’s little chance of being propositioned. Kate watches her sister flirting exaggeratedly with a grey-haired man in his fifties wearing a lilac polo shirt and his much younger boyfriend who’s wearing a vest and a leather collar with studs around his neck. In London , Kate sometimes sees Marie as other people must see her. Her eyes look huger and bluer than they used to at home because of her cropped hair and the drugs she takes, and her plum-painted mouth is always open, laughing or talking. Marie’s not the sort of person who can walk along the street just listening to her personal stereo: she has to sing along with it. She’s petite, but she’s what people call larger than life, and she’s got a beautiful singing voice. Perhaps one day, someone will discover her.
    The streets of Soho are like extensions to the theatres dotted around. People act like they’re on stage here. At home, they’d call it showing off. Kate expected London to be more serious and monumental. It still takes her breath away when she turns a corner and sees a view, like Trafalgar Square or St Paul ’s Cathedral, that is so familiar it’s unreal. But the rest of it is a never-ending series of urban villages. She likes the fact that you can walk all day and not get to the end of it. She never feels lost exactly, but she has never felt so alone. You need a big personality like Marie to be part of it. Des says she’s turbo-charged.
    Kate could sit on her own in a pub for hours and nobody would say a word to her. She’s had a coffee in Marco’s bar every day since she arrived. On the first day, Marie arranged to meet her there because it was easy to find. She had some