Joy flung open the fridge and examined the four cartons of milk within, all of them past their use-by date. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘Playing Russian Roulette with the milk? Running a yoghurt factory? And have you eaten?’

Ashling indicated the almost-empty bowl of popcorn.

‘You’re funny,’ Joy said. ‘In some ways you’re so organized, but in others…’

‘You can’t be good at everything. I’m well balanced.’

‘You should take better care of yourself.’

‘That’s like the dog calling the cat’s arse hairy!’

‘But you’ll get scurvy.’

‘I take vitamins. I’m fine. Where’s Ted?’

Ashling had barely seen Ted all week. Not only did they work in opposite directions now, so that he no longer gave her a backer to work, but since the owl triumph he’d been sampling his way through the girls who’d expressed interest in him. Though he’d annoyed the shite out of her when he’d been a constant fixture in her flat whining about not having a girlfriend, Ashling missed him and resented his new-found independence.

‘You’ll see Ted later. We’re invited to a party. Architecture students. One of them does a bit of stand-up so some of the comedians should be there. And where there are comedians, Half-man-half-badger is usually to be found!’

‘I’m not so sure about the party,’ Ashling said cautiously. ‘Especially if it’s students.’

‘We’ll see,’ Joy said easily – too easily. Ashling flicked her a nervous glance. ‘I can’t believe I’m putting make-up on again. It seems only like minutes since I took it off,’ Joy said, curving on lipstick without the aid of a mirror, then turning her lips inwards, blotting them against each other with a panache that Ashling envied. ‘Don’t forget the camera.’

As they hit the streets, Ashling looked for the homeless boy, but he and his orange blanket were nowhere to be seen.

*

‘Single women and homosexuals.’ Joy summed up the fifty-strong crowd in one hawk-eyed sweep. ‘A dead loss but as we’re here we might as well get drunk. How much expenses have we?’

‘Expenses?’

Joy shook her head and sighed.

There was an hour’s class before the club began. The instructor, who introduced himself as ‘Alberto, from Cuba,’ was a fairly nondescript-looking man. Until he started to dance. Sinuous and lithe, graceful and sure, he was suddenly beautiful. Strutting, pointing, swivelling on the ball of his foot, he demonstrated the steps they’d be attempting.

‘The state of your man,’ Joy complained crossly.

‘Ssshhh!’

Ashling loved to dance. Despite her lack of waist she had a great sense of rhythm, so when the joyous, sunshiny trumpet music started again and Alberto instructed, ‘Everyone, join me,’ she needed no second bidding.

The steps were basic enough. It was the panache with which you did them that mattered, Ashling realized, mesmerized by Alberto’s lubricated hips.

Most of the class were lumpish and clumsy – Joy in particular from lack of sleep and a hangover – and Alberto seemed genuinely distressed by how atrocious everyone was. Ashling, however, picked up the moves smoothly.

‘Wasn’t this a fantastic idea?’ she declared to Joy, her eyes shining.

‘Feck off.’

‘Smile for the camera! And look as if you’re dancing.’

Joy did a couple of club-footed steps while Ashling snapped, then Joy took over the camera.

‘Try and photo some men for the article,’ Ashling hissed at her.

After the class, the club began properly. Experienced salsa and merengue dancers began to flood in, the women in short, flared skirts and high T-bar shoes, the faces of the men impassive as casually, expertly they twirled and manoeuvred women to the loud upbeat rhythms.

‘I can’t believe this is Ireland,’ Ashling said to Joy. ‘Irish men! Dancing! And not just the twelve-pints-of-Guinness shuffle, either.’

‘Real men don’t dance,’ Joy was keen to leave.

‘These ones do.’

Salsa was very much a contact sport. Ashling homed in on one couple. They danced right up close, as if their bodies had been velcroed together. Below the waist their limbs were a blur, but above the waist they barely moved. Groin to groin, chest to chest, his left hand held her right one above their heads, the soft skin of their inner arms joined along the full length. His right hand was firmly on the small of her back. All the while their feet perfectly performed the complicated steps, the man gazed into the woman’s eyes. Their heads remained still.

Ashling had never seen anything so erotic in all her life. A bud of yearning yawned open within her and it felt like pain. Stirred by a nameless need, she watched the dancers, her mouth bitter-sweet with longing. But for what? The hard, sweet heat of a man’s body?

Perhaps…

Jolting her from her introspection, a man asked Ashling to dance. He was short and going bald.

‘I’ve only had one lesson,’ she offered, hoping to get out of it.

But he assured her he wouldn’t do anything too complicated – and then they were off! It was like driving a car, Ashling decided. One minute you’re static, the next you’re moving smoothly, all because of what you’re doing with your feet. Forward and back, they stepped and swayed, he twirled her away from him, she returned smoothly and without missing a beat recommenced the dance, forward and back, dipping and flowing. It gave her some inkling of what it must be like to be able to do it well.

‘Well done,’ he told her at the end.

‘Can we go?’ Joy said tersely, when Ashling returned to her seat. ‘What a waste of time this was. Not a man in sight. Just one dance with a short-arse slaphead to show for our trouble.’

‘Oh go on, please, just for five minutes,’ Joy begged. ‘I don’t know where I stand with Half-man-half-badger and he’s bound to be there. Please.’

‘Five minutes, I mean it, Joy, that’s all I’m staying.’

The party – like most student parties in Dublin – was held in Rathmines, in a four-storey, red-brick Georgian house that had been converted into thirteen tiny oddly shaped flats. It had the obligatory high ceilings, original features, peeling paint and overpowering smell of damp.