Mandy sat herself down on a white leather couch. The room was dim. A glass door she’d just been ushered through was the only source of light. She focused on the constant flicker: blue, blue, blue, pink, yellow, blue, blue. It was a reminder that the world outside was still a bustling social nightlife. The lights awkwardly linked this room with the distant normality of the rest of her night.

Pink, pink, pink, yellow, blue. Mandy felt someone squeezing her hand; that baby-faced boy was trying to catch her eye. She shifted her body on the couch, trying to widen the gap between them.

Why was he still here?

Something jabbed her as her weight came back onto the white leather. It gave Mandy an excuse to pull her hand away from Ryan, or was his name Reese, she couldn’t remember. She reached underneath her and pulled at the offending object: it was Bec’s handbag. A security guard must have thrown it there on their way into the room. Cherry lipstick was poking its way through the zippered opening.

Mandy looked across to her left. Another couch, with the same white leather, sat in the opposite corner of the room. Bec’s body was stretched out across it. It was further into the shadows but Mandy knew without really seeing that the lipstick was well worn off Bec’s lips. She wanted desperately to walk over and re-apply the deep cherry colour how she had seen her best friend doing earlier in the night. But she was to stay where she was, as she was told.

Mandy couldn’t let her eyes stop in that corner of the room. There were too many people, too many uniforms. Her eyes landed back on the floor, where the monotonous flicker of lights continued to give her comfort. Red entered the mix.

Red, Red, Red, Red.

The change drew her attention back to the door. An ambulance was pulling into the curb outside. Sirens. It was the first sound she had heard since Bec had collapsed. It was a sound she understood, suddenly everything from the past thirty minutes clicked in Mandy’s comprehension. A sob rose in her body, it sickened in her stomach and she vomited. Bubbles of earlier champagne burned her nose and throat.

The two security guards that had carried Bec down the stairs met the ambulance officers at the door.