I was crouching at the bottom of the stairs, miserable and rubbing my hand back and forth over the polished wood, probably trying to find a splinter or four.

Europa found me. A person I didn't want to see. She was in the same situation as me, but she didn't know it yet. Felix had said, confidentially, that she was too quiet, she didn't seem to think for herself. I agreed, and I still do, but now I see what Felix does - he's all about taking shortcuts to love, all over the place. And he doesn't show any respect to those he breaks, because if they weren't good enough for him, what should he care if they feel bad? He's a charmer. If he changes his mind and wants a second chance, he knows he can get it.

You know my attitude towards privacy. And it's the thing that did Felix in - Europa crouches down beside me on the bottom step, and says,
"You must be feeling bad about Felix. Is there anything I can do? I've always liked you, I don't like seeing you down..."
The only people who knew about Felix and me were Felix, me and Thorn. I hadn't told anyone; Felix had said he hadn't told anyone; Thorn had figured it out for himself, and he liked everyone as much as he disliked everyone, never had closer or better or lesser friends, and therefore had no reason to keep or tell secrets. He never told secrets.

Felix, then, had wrecked a golden-gate rule. He'd been crashing from girl to girl, telling them about each other, supposedly confidentially. Underestimating the predictability of a jealous female's behaviour.

So I smiled at Europa, said that I didn't care about Felix's whereabouts, and put on one of Thorn's cds.

Turned it up loud enough to hear it next door, and checked in on the Anderson brothers. In their thirties, working for law firms, don't smoke and never talk about drugs, keep a low profile by living in an apartment together, have oodles of younger friends, and they're slightly creepy in a "I don't understand them" way - yeah, I think I knew they were coke dealers before they even did.

We played scrabble. At least, I think it was scrabble. Some coke dealer version, with dirty vocab and a glass of shiraz every time you get a certain number of points. The board was a marker-outlined super game on a white tablecloth, red wine stains everywhere. I'm living by this "do unto others" rule, though, and it covers not wanting to talk to drunk people, so I'm sticking to a drink per hour.

For some reason, I'm still thinking about Thorn. Maybe because it's Christmas Day. Maybe because I feel weird, and he is weird, and so the two thoughts go together.

His grandma was the nanny of a LA celebrity, and his mother is the nanny for that celebrity's daughter. Like in the olden days, with English manor houses and housekeepers' cottages, Thorn's mother and grandmother live in a house on this enormous estate, miles away. Thorn's supposed to be back in his apartment for a party tonight, but I don't even know that I want to see him. I want to see his family? I don't know, I'm following an impulse.

Europa spins into view as I'm leaving the Anderson brothers' apartment. She's pretty beautiful and mild-mannered and reasonably kind; I don't know why I've disliked her.
"Do you know when the others are coming back?" she says, and I don't dislike her anymore.
"Any minute now," I say, and hug and kiss her, and leave her with shiraz, coke, a heart pining for Felix, and the Anderson brothers.

It takes an hour; by 6pm I'm at the security outpost of this grand estate. I've had these random conversations with Thorn in the past, where we ask random questions and embellish the answers with other random information, and that's how I learnt about his family and where they live.
The security is tough.
"I'm here for the Fords' Christmas party," and I'm in.

The celebrity parents are out for the evening and the main house is dark and quiet; another house is pumping with light and sound. Their daughter and a butler greet me at the door, and she takes an instant liking to me (to my blue wig, probably). She leads me in by the hand, even though I've asked to see Thorn, she's taken me to her suite. She's playing with an outfit-selector on her computer, like Cher in Clueless, deciding between Christmas fancy-dress costumes. Choosing an angel costume, she scampers away to get dressed, and I leave the room slowly behind her. There's a child's blackboard in the corner, in the shadows, with some message from Thorn to Jennifer, the little girl. Underneath it, I write "Milly's looking for Thorn".
It's strange meeting his family without him there. "Christian should be here soon," his mother says. I didn't know Christian was his real name. Christian, Christmas. How teleological. His grandmother has Alzheimer's, as does my mother, and watching her I'm suddenly miserable again.

Little Jennifer hasn't appeared, and I take the opportunity to leave the pleasant people, find Jennifer, regain my composure. On the blackboard in her suite, my message has been erased, and there's a drawing of a Thomas the Tank Engine train. The caboose is coloured red.

Thorn's waiting outside, in the hall.
"I'll fix yer little red caboose, lady," he says, pushing me to the ballroom, where the party's getting underway.
"It's wagon, not caboose!" I'm laughing.
Before we go into the ballroom, Thorn looks at me sternly.
"Felix is a rat," he says, using my slang for it.
"Not a super rat, though."
"Oh well."
"Anyway."

Most everyone ends up sleeping where they were last standing, sitting, or leaning, in the ballroom, and I wake up on a window seat. My first impulse is to run and jump onto Thorn's lap, but I don't want to seem all girly-mushy about having a neat friend, for god's sake, so I lie as still as still can be, as the sun wakes up the room, person by person.