Once they'd listened to a few of the C.D.s and eaten all the pizza and drunk most of the alcohol, the remainder of the party was given over to watching D.V.D.s. This took pretty much all night, and by the time Sacha, Hannah, Alain, Mal, and Brent all stepped out of the house the next morning Rona had a good collection of comments and opinions to base her reviews on.

Sunday was a write-off. After everyone else went home Rona made herself a large pot of very strong coffee, and then fell asleep on the sofa and woke up in time for an early dinner. Once or twice when she was only half-asleep she thought she heard movements in the house, but when she finally got up the house was quiet. Her housemates' bedroom doors were each shut tight.

After Sunday, the first half of the next week was spent doing various tasks in the small office of the street magazine she worked for: on Monday and Tuesday cajoling the other regular contributors to let her use the computer so she could write her reviews, on Wednesday rushing around to hurry them into finishing their articles so that the magazine could be put together. She had just recently been made assistant editor, and a particularly officious one she was too.

Thursday morning was spent doing last-minute trimming of her reviews, which the senior editor of the magazine had decided were a little too long; and then Thursday afternoon was spent arguing with him about why she wasn't going to rewrite them all to make them bitchier - something about too many three-star ratings this week, which the editor didn't think made for very interesting reading. Rona said she didn't do bitchery; the editor said that wasn't true, he'd seen her do bitchery plenty of times. She replied that this was true, and what's more the way he was heading he was going to see it again very soon. He said okay, and she didn't change anything.

Friday was spent ignoring her 'phone, which she knew would just be editor with some last-minute crisis. Sometimes, she thought to herself, I get sick of being the only responsible person at that magazine.

Saturday was spent drinking: coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon, beer at dinner time, cocktails with Hannah at a new place in the city until Sunday morning.

Sunday was spent telling her editor that she couldn't come in on Monday because she had a job interview.