Me and Stix sit on the bed in the blue bedroom. It is his room, I’ve learnt. I’ve also discovered that about ten or so people stayed over in this house last night. His mother had a party of her own. So some of her friends slept here. Stix and his friends, apparently, crashed in the lounge. He carried me upstairs and put me to bed.

A man around my age, as I think Stix and his friends are, could have had sex with me in this bed last night. Or if it was one of his mother’s friends, it could have been someone old enough to be my parent. I mustn’t get so drunk again. Things like this have happened before when I’ve got too drunk. Although usually I’ve woken up in bed with the person. That’s bad enough. This not knowing is even worse.

I stare at the Pink Floyd posters on the wall opposite. Stix is mixing heroin and water in a spoon. I can’t wait to have the hit inside me. It’s not just to get rid of the aches in my bones. I want to get rid of the dirty feeling in my body.

I don’t want Stix to be the one to have given me this feeling. I need him. I need this stranger. He has heroin and I don’t. I don’t even know if I still have Lorna as a connection after our final conversation at the party last night. If it was Stix who fucked me, I’m going to have to forgive him.

“Have you got your own needle?” he asks after drawing up a hit in his syringe.

I take mine from my handbag and pass it to him. He fills it and hands it back to me. He ties a grey tourniquet around his upper arm. He takes his hit. He gives me the tourniquet. I wrap it around my arm. I push the needle into a vein on the inside of my elbow, delivering the shot. I need to stop using that vein. There’s a permanent mark there now. I lie back on the bed.

“Dinner’s in a few minutes. Don’t get too comfortable,” he says, lying down next to me.

I realise the hit’s not strong. There’s no great rush flowing through my body. Hopefully, the pain in my bones will stop. I’m sure the chatter in my head won’t. It’s bad enough that everyone at Christmas dinner is probably going to know I’m a prostitute, but it’s worse that someone’s invaded me. It smelled like it was man. Some disgusting man fucked me while I was comatose.

“Did Mickey and the other guys downstairs stay over last night?” I ask.

“The other guys did. Mickey came round at lunch.”

Of course. He didn’t know it was me who stayed the night. So unless Mickey came up here and fucked me while other people were most likely awake, it wasn’t him. I’d have remembered being woken up, surely. I think I can eliminate Mickey. What about Stix and the other two though? And what about the others who’ve since left? And what about Stix’s mother’s friends? Am I ever going to know?

The feeling it’s left me with is worse than doing a job and not getting paid. I don’t even know if they used a condom. This is the feeling I have after I’ve been raped. I have the feeling but not the memory that should go with it. Those nasty images that haunt me. The tapes my memory stores and that my mind constantly replays. This is like a void. A gaping hole in my memory. My body can tell me it happened. My mind can’t tell me a thing. That’s what’s left the hole – the knowing and the not knowing. If only I didn’t get so drunk.

I want to talk to Stix about it but I can’t get any words out. Anyway, we have to go downstairs for Christmas dinner in a minute. It could even have been Stix who did it. Or I might end up talking to the man over dinner. He’ll be looking at me, knowing what he’s done. I’ll be looking at him and know nothing.

Entering the kitchen, I see a woman old enough to be my mother. She looks like she might even be a grandmother with those rollers in her greying, blonde hair.

“We’re having dinner in an hour. Can I do you up a snack?” She puts an apron over her pastel pink dress.

“I’m not hungry, thanks.” I can’t eat. I feel ill not knowing who had sex with me last night. I hope it wasn’t her. I can hear men talking in another room. Perhaps it was one of them. I don’t even know whose house this is, or where it is.

“Can I do you a tea or coffee, love?”

“Coffee please,” I reply. Heroin please, I think. I’m hoping there’s a smackhead in this house. I need a hit. I really need a hit.

“Come sit in the lounge with the others and I’ll bring it through in a minute.” The lady opens a door in the back of the kitchen.

Inside the room, there’s a strong smell of dope. Three men are sitting on a red leather sofa. One man sits on an armchair. Stix is one of the men on the sofa. Mickey is the man on the armchair. I don’t know the other two.

Who fucked me last night? I want to ask. I’m dying to ask. I have to know. But a girl can’t ask a question like that. A normal girl can’t and that’s what I want them to think of me. I’m a normal girl.

“Did you sleep well?” Stix hands me a joint.

I stand awkwardly in the middle of the room. “Kinda,” I reply. I take a pull on the joint. That’s not what I need. I need heroin. I’m clucking. My skin feels damp. My bones are aching. At least there’s a chance of having a hit now. Stix is on smack.

“So you’re the English girl Stix stole from the party. I thought it would be you.” Mickey smiles at me.

I don’t melt this time. Mickey is the man in the room that I want. The only man I’ve wanted in I don’t know how long. I can’t have him because I can’t be with a man in a normal way like other women can. Even still, I don’t want him to think I’m a slut. But now he probably knows I’ve slept with one of his friends. I don’t know which one but I know it was at least one of them. Or maybe it was him.

“Take a seat,” says one of the unknown men. He is really unattractive. I hope it wasn’t him. His greasy, brown hair falls on his shoulders. His teeth are yellow. His lips are crusty. He shuffles along the sofa, making a space between himself and Stix.

As I sit down, I have a memory from last night at the party in Dee Why. In my drunken state, I told Stix I was a hooker. That means every man in the room is likely to know this about me – every man including Mickey. Waves of shame wash over me. It’s just a job, I tell myself. It’s just a job and it’s none of their business.

“Mum’s doing Christmas dinner in a bit,” Stix says. “She’s making enough for you. I didn’t know if you wanted to stay or if you’ve other plans?”

So, this is Stix’s house. That means I’m in Elanora Heights, wherever that is. It might have been his room I stayed in. Maybe he fucked me. I look at him closely. He’s thin, gaunt, goateed and stubbly. He looks like a spider. I’m a spider-fucker. I could be.

“I don’t have plans,” I say to Stix.

I do have one plan, though – to get Stix alone. I’m craving heroin. I don’t want to say anything in front of the other men, especially Mickey. He said last night that he was three days off the gear. He’s only going to try to get me off it. I know what people like him are like. I used to be one of them.

Stix’s mum walks through the door, carrying a tray. She places a plate of biscuits on the battered coffee table. She hands out the mugs then leaves the room.

I take a sip of my coffee. “Can we have a private chat?” I whisper in Stix’s ear.