She was now directionless and lost. Somehow the dance room no longer seemed inviting. The horrors of the beer-swilling men in the kitchen seemed even less appealing than before. And it wasn't at all obvious what she should be looking for. The chill-out room had seemed perfect, but now it was the one room she most did not want to be in. She dashed up and down the stairs, squeezing past the crowd queued up by the toilets, occasionally pushing open doors to see whether there was anywhere else she could hang out. But it seemed that every bedroom was occupied. And quite clearly there was some vachement hot shit going round. In almost every room, there was some kind of sexual activity. Men and women cuddling. Men and women kissing. Men fucking women. And in one room, the most horrible sight of all, men fucking men. She had seen quite enough penises in her life, and she didn't really want to have to waste much more time on them. Wherever she went, however, the sound of the dance music thundering from the dance room was pumped and piped around the place, so unless she went back to the top floor she was unable to escape the block busting beats that were being laid down by the DJ. He was clearly getting harder and more frantic. Mauro Piccotto, Tony de Vit, pump that pussy. Hard House Heaven. Yeh Eh! Here it Comes. Ohh Yeah! Ça plein pour moi.

But Janine just wasn't in the mood. At last, she gravitated to a point on the landing of the stairs, cigarette dangling from the forefingers of one hand, while other guests wandered up and down the stairs beside her, her other hand pressed against her forehead, lost in thought and reflection, unsure whether to come or to go, to dance or to rest, to wait or to depart. Without her Edie, she was feeling abandoned and through the haze of serotonin, nicotine and dope, unsure just what she should be thinking at all. Her eyes were unfocused, her thoughts were scattered and her cigarette kept going out.

"You got a light?" suddenly asked a kindly voice.

Janine looked up with her box of Swan Vestas pulled out of a large pocket from her trousers. "Bien sûr! Ouai!" she said passing the box toward the proffered Marlboro Lite at whose filtered tip were some gorgeously red lipsticked lips, and a thin face with sparkling light green eyes. Janine was so taken by her eyes and the classically straight nose, that she only belated became aware that here was a girl who had dispensed with the need for hair-care products and had opted instead for a clean shaven skull, where only at this late hour was the stubble starting to show through.

"Hey. You're French or Belgian or something, aren't you?"

"French," corrected Janine, slightly offended that anyone might think she was some kind of Walloon speaker. If her ear had been more attuned to English, she'd have noticed that this girl had a Geordie accent scattered with evidence of her time in London.

"Well! Whatever!" the girl sniffed. "Anyway, I'm Molly and I live here."

"So this is your party."

"Well, our party. I just live here. But it's fucking kicking, ain't it? It's the biz!" She punctuated her assertion with a two-armed wave in the air, her face gurning in a way that made Molly seem if anything that much more gorgeous to Janine. "Hey! What I wouldn't do for some blow. You ain't got some shit on you?"

"I got some skank."

"Oh Wey-Hey! Not that fucking cool shit I've been sampling all evening! Hey girl. Let's go up to my room and roll a fat one. You on?"

"Bien sûr! That would be ferking great!"

"You bet," agreed Molly, taking Janine's hand in hers. "Let's hope there ain't a fucking orgy in there."

Molly's room was small and thankfully empty, although the discarded condom and the scattered ash was indication that it hadn't been so all evening. Janine studied the posters and magazine cuttings that covered most of the cream-painted walls. Molly was a girl who liked films. But she also had a taste for flyers, which were blu-tacked to the wall. Some of these were taken from phone booths and were rather less imaginative than those advertising club nights. Molly sat cross-legged on the futon that was on the floor by the window, just by her stereo and a battered old armchair.

"Where's the gear? I can roll a real mean one."

"Here!" said Janine, tossing Molly a plastic bag which she'd stored in her trouser pocket. She watched Molly roll her joint, while she slumped on the other end of the futon, and admired her small lean hands at the end of long bare arms, as her fingers teased out the skank to tubular dimensions. She wore a sleeveless top with no bra under which her breasts could easily be seen and a long thin waist to her baggy purple shorts. She had large pendulous hooped earrings in well-studded ears and Janine caught a glimpse of the stud through her tongue.

And then, with a sprinkling of Marlboro Lite and a twist at the end, Molly lit the short stubby joint and inhaled long and deep. "Fuck! This is fucking A!" She exclaimed, passing it roachwards towards Janine. She took a long deep toke herself, and pulled herself up the length of the futon to slump, supported by an elbow, right next to Molly. The girls passed the joint backwards and forwards to each other, chatting about clubs they'd been to, excesses that they'd enjoyed and a time in Ibiza when the two of them had been there at the same time but of course had never met. They'd even been at the Café Del Mar on the same night, and Molly had one day even ventured into Manumission. "I'm told it's not as good as it used to be," Molly told her. "No fucking dwarves fucking anymore."

"Is that so?" contemplated Janine, stubbing out the roach and admiring Molly's long thin arms with their scattering of moles and the fading trace of summer tan. Molly regarded her, and then without warning she plunged her face into Janine's, put her hand behind her neck where her hair was at its shortest, and thrust a tongue into Janine's mouth. Although taken aback, Janine was instantly receptive. They plunged warm tongue and liquid lips together, Janine glorying in the curious and erotic sensation of running her fingers over the stubble of Molly's scalp. Her other arm caressed Molly's slim waist: so hard and firm with not even a hint of extraneous fat.

"Oh fuck! What the fuck!" gasped Molly, suddenly pushing Janine off and pulling off her top while the echoing sounds of techno thundered about them. "Yeah Hey! Let the Rhythm take you! Into the Heart of the Bass!" Molly cried, her breasts loose and perky, her nipples hard and excited.

Janine knew what to do. She pulled off her jacket and top, and, just in case Molly might think a kiss and cuddle would be enough, she pulled down her trousers and knickers, revealing the full glory of her tangled pubic hair, a mass of dark brown, longer than the hair on her head, which still couldn't hide the swollen lips of her vagina. Molly grinned. "You know what you like, don't you?" she commented, pulling down her shorts and whatever else she had inside to reveal that it wasn't just her head that she shaved. Her crotch was, if anything, smoother than her head, and Janine noticed, with a great thundering of her heart, that she had a stud and ring on her labial lips more pronounced than the quite modest ones she and Edie had got in a mad careless moment on their Ibiza holiday.

"You too!" smiled Molly, stroking Janine's lips with her hand. "What's yours taste like?" With that she dropped down her head between Janine's thighs and wiggled her tongue around the lips and occasionally nipping at her long hairs. All the while, Janine stroked Molly's naked head, while stroking one of her long thin nipples on her otherwise rather small left breast. It tickled but it was fun. And then Molly's tongue went straight inside her and Janine could feel that tongue stud within her, occasionally clashing against her vaginal stud as it licked and probed.

And soon, it wasn't long, she and Molly had moved themselves around so that the lips of Janine's mouth were pursed to the bare lips of Molly's crotch. Her crotch with its bare skin tasting somehow sharper, maybe more acid, than Edie's dark brown patch. Janine just loved the uninterrupted stretch of flesh from one set of lips to the other. How could there be so much luscious flesh? Her fingers joined in the probing, easing themselves surreptitiously into the folds of Molly's cunt, while below, with a sensation of recognition that made her gasp, she felt Molly's fingers poke not only into her own moistness, but also to explore her puckered anus, a place where Edie was usually so reluctant to touch and which she now knew she wanted to know more of in future. In answer, she took a finger to her mouth, licked its length so that a dollop of saliva trailed down its length to her knuckle and eased this into Molly's own arse, noting with satisfaction Molly's own puff of pleasure.

The futon was hard and firm and warm, the sheets pushed about by the girls' flailing legs, as they rolled over and over, flesh sliding on flesh, the sweet taste of sweat trickling down the skin and into Janine's mouth. And then mouth to mouth again, hands pressed against crotch, nipple hard on nipple. All around them, the beat continued thumping and crashing and swooping, taking on shapes and patterns which in Janine's mind was matched with her passion and ecstasy, the rush of her pill-taking returning to her and causing a fresh re-tingling of the skin. Above them, Janine could see the soft eyes of Daniel Auteil from a poster for a movie she only knew in its original French. Occasionally, the lights of a passing car would light up a room otherwise lit only by a weak 40-watt bulb.

And again. Mouth back on crotch, the two of them gasping and sweating and slobbery. The tastes, the smells, so animal, so vital, so in tune. Sometimes, Janine would take Molly's hard nipples in her mouth, tasting sweat and navigating the contours of the hard reddish skin of the aureole of motherhood. And then again that studded tongue in her mouth, where she could explore in detail the hard, sweet metal with her own tongue and could just about detect the inside of the hole through which the stud protruded.

As the two collapsed, after how many minutes, hours, eternities, Janine didn't know, she regarded Molly's room. The battered wardrobe rescued from a skip. The line of books and CDs along the wall. The stacks of magazines. The movie posters and club flyers. Already she felt that this was homely and comforting. This was, she knew, thoughts of Edie and her own heterosexual flings forgotten, this was a room she'd get to know much much better in the future.