Free Angels by Marian Keyes

You go on off and have a nice time with the people at the BIGGER table.”
    She looked at me levelly—or so I thought at the time, but clearly we were just swaying in time with each other. “I've taken agin' your sister.
    “And,” she appended grandly, “her friends.”
    I looked over at the table that Claire had just joined. At her arrival it had blown up with laughter and talk. I was pierced with a peculiar sense of exclusion.
    “I've taken against them too!”
    “You haven't taken against them.”
    Hadn't I?
    “No,” Emily leaned her head back and tipped the last of her wine down her throat. “You've taken agin ' them.”
    Fair enough. I'd taken agin' them.
    We managed to procure another bottle of wine, then decided to go somewhere else where the people weren't quite so annoying.
    As we beat our way out, we passed Claire and her friends.
    “We're leaving now,” Emily said haughtily. “No thanks to you.”

    ANGELS / 57
    Cryptic, I know, but at the time it made perfect sense.
    In the hotel lobby, by the front door, we decided to have a little dance before we left. I'm not sure whose idea it was, but we both agreed that it was a good one. We actually put our handbags down and had a brief dance around them before cackling off into the night. To this day I can still see the astonished expressions of the three considerably more sober men standing near us.
    Outside we hailed a taxi and asked—demanded, more likely—to be taken to Grafton Street. Within seconds we'd taken agin' the driver, paranoid that he was taking the long and lucrative way round.
    “I have to go this way—you can't turn right on that bridge,” he defended himself.
    “Sure,” Emily scorned. “You can't fool me, I live here,” she lied aggressively. “I'm not a tourist.”
    Then she poked me with her small, sharp elbow and giggled hoarsely. “Maggie, look.” She'd opened wide her handbag—like a dentist trying to reach the farthest molars—where, in among her LV wallet (fake) and Prada makeup bag (real) nestled one of the ashtrays from the hotel. If I remembered correctly, it had carried a price tag of thirty pounds.
    “Where did you get that?”
    A rhetorical question. When Emily is under stress she steals things and I hate it. Why can't she be more like me? My way of dealing with stress is to get an outbreak of eczema on my right arm. I'm not saying it's pleasant, but at least you can't get arrested for it.
    “Stop stealing things,” I scolded, low and fierce. “Sometime you'll get caught and you'll be in terrible trouble!”
    But answer came there none—because she was berating the driver again.
    We went to a nightclub that realistically we were far too old for and had a great time taking agin' more people—the doorman who didn't summon us to the top of the line 58 / MARIAN KEYES
    quickly enough for Emily's liking, bartenders who didn't serve us instantly, sundry merrymakers who didn't leap to their feet and give us their seats as soon as they saw us.
    Basically we had a blast; the following day Garv was not unsympathetic. He speedily vacated the bathroom when I had to vomit, and stood patiently on the landing, his face covered in shaving cream, his razor in his hand.
    By six that evening I was well enough to talk, so I rang Emily. I was quite giddy—almost proud of our wild behavior the night before, but Emily sounded subdued.
    “Did we dance around our handbags in the Hayman?” she asked.
    “We did.”
    “Do you know,” she said fake-casually, “I have a horrible feeling there was no dance floor.”
    “Never mind no dance floor,” I exclaimed. “There was no music.
    And wasn't it great the way we took agin' all those people?”
    Emily made a funny noise. A whimper crossed with a groan.
    “Don't tell me I was taking against people.”
    “Agin',” I corrected. “We took agin ' people. It was great.”
    “Oh God.”
    I picked up the phone. “Emily?”
    “Are you okay?”
    “I'm fine,” I croaked. “I just