‘Whenever weren’t we?’

‘Helenka and Jessica?’

‘Of course. If they’ll come. Snotty bitches.’

We didn’t invite the Real Men. It didn’t even occur to us.

On the night of the party, we sellotaped three balloons to our front door, covered our living-room lamp with red crêpe paper and opened six bags of crisps. Although we already had three compact discs, we borrowed two more in honour of the occasion. Then we sat back and waited for the glittering event to unfold.

I had thought all a good party needed was truckloads of drink and drugs. Although we hadn’t actually bought any drugs for our guests, we had ensured plenty would be available by franchising out the provision to Wayne, our friendly neighbourhood dealer. And we had a heroic amount of drink packed into the kitchenette. But still our apartment didn’t look anything like a party.

I was baffled. As I sat in my empty, echoey living-room that Saturday night, I wondered what I’d done wrong.

‘It’ll be great when it’s full of people,’ Brigit promised me, then bit her knuckle and gave a muffled, anguished wail.

‘We’re ruined, aren’t we, Bridge?’ I asked, as the extent of my folly revealed itself to me. How had I ever thought I was worthy to hold a party and invite people who worked at Calvin Klein? ‘We’ll never eat lunch in this town again.’

The invitations had told everyone to come at about ten o’clock. But at midnight the flat was still like a graveyard. Brigit and I were suicidal.

‘Everyone hates us,’ I said, swigging wine straight from the bottle.

‘Whose stupid fucking idea was this?’ Brigit demanded tearfully. ‘I would have thought at least Gina and them would have come, they swore they would. People are so false in New York.’

We sat for a while longer, trashing everyone we knew, even those we hadn’t invited. We drank heavily.

In the absence of anyone else, Brigit and I turned on each other.

‘Did you invite Dara?’ she demanded.

‘No,’ I said defensively. ‘I thought you were going to. Did you invite Candide?’

‘No,’ she snarled. ‘I thought you were going to.

‘And where’s that fucking Cuban Heel?’ she added viciously.

At the time Brigit, with her great fondness for the Hispanic lads, was having on-off-on-again dealings with a Cuban. When he was nice to her she called him Our Man in Havana. When he was horrible, which was most of the time, she called him The Cuban Heel. His name was Carlos and I called him The Gyrater. He thought he was an amazing dancer and performed with the least provocation. It was enough to make you lose your lunch, the way he carried on, doing all manner of exaggerated swerve action with his tiny hips. On the days that I didn’t call him The Gyrater, I called him The Stomach-Turner, still in keeping with the rotation theme.

‘And where’s Wayne?’ I demanded. ‘There’ll be no point in anyone else getting here if he doesn’t.’

It was Wayne’s absence that was making me more jumpy than anything else.

‘Turn on some music’

‘No, because we won’t be able to hear the door.’

‘Put on some music! We don’t want people to think they’re at a wake.’

‘A wake might be more fun! Remind me again whose idea this was.’

The bell rang shrilly, interrupting our bitter sniping.

Thank God, I thought passionately. But it was only the Cuban Heel and a few of his equally tiny friends. They looked doubtfully at the balloons, the crisps and the empty, silent, rosy-lit room.

While Carlos put on some music and Brigit gave out shite to him, Carlos’s little friends undressed me with their limpid brown eyes.

I couldn’t see the appeal, I really couldn’t.

Brigit said that Carlos was amazing in the scratcher and that he had a ginormous willy. She would have loved it if I had got off with one of his friends but I would rather have rented out my vagina to a swallow to build a nest in it.

Music burst out, incongruously loud in the empty room, drowning out Carlos’s, ‘Sorry enamorada’s, and ‘It wasn’t my fault, querida’s.

‘Here,’ I thrust a cereal bowl at Miguel, ‘have a crisp and stop looking at me like that.’

The music Carlos had put on was that South American, terminally up-beat, twenty-man trumpet band type. It was violently cheerful, conjuring up sun and sand and Rio and girls from Ipanema and brown boys with shining eyes. Men with frilly-sleeved shirts, big straw hats and bootlaceties, shaking maracas. The kind of music that’s described as ‘infectious’. It certainly made me feel sick. I hated it.

The bell rang again and this time it really was a guest.

The doorbell rang again and another ten people trooped in, bottles under their arms.

I got cornered by Miguel. To my surprise I couldn’t duck past him. What he lacked in size he made up for in nimbleness. His eyes were about level with my nipples and there they remained for most of our conversation.

‘Rachel,’ he sang to me, with a flashing, olive-skinned smile, ‘there are two stars missing from the sky, they are in your eyes.’

‘Miguel…’ I began.

‘Tomas,’ he beamed.

‘… OK, Tomas, whatever,’ I said. ‘There are two teeth missing from your mouth, they are in my fist. At least they will be if you don’t leave me alone.’

‘Rachel, Rachel.’ Doleful eyes. ‘Don’t you want a little Latin in you?’

‘If the little Latin in question is you, then no, I don’t.’

‘But why not? Your friend Breeegeeet likes Carlos.’

‘Brigit isn’t well in the head. And apart from anything else, you’re too small, I’d flatten you.’

‘Oh no,’ he breathed. ‘We Cubans are skilled in the love-making arts, you and I will explore many things and there is no danger that you will flat…’

‘Please.’ I held up a hand. ‘Stop.’

‘But you’re a Goddess, in my country you would be worshipped.’

‘And you’re a gouger, in my country you’d work in a chipper.’

He got a bit haughty at that, but unfortunately I still hadn’t annoyed him enough to make him go away.

Then I had a bright idea. ‘One minute, you’re Cuban, right? Have you any coke on you?’