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‘I have no battery life.’ Valentina waggled her black-screened phone about.

Rocco took it from her and plugged it into his portable power block.

‘Round two!’ Maria called out. ‘Award yourself ten points if you have a photograph of the mum-to-be taken today, you have more than twenty unread messages, and for a missed call.’

‘Ha! I’ve got loads of unread messages and missed calls,’ Valentina called out.

Rocco glanced down at Valentina’s phone and could see just how many.

‘Get you, Miss Popular,’ Rocco said, nudging Valentina’s shoulder playfully as she opened up her messages, but she turned her phone away slightly, not laughing back as she read through them.

‘You okay?’ Rocco asked.

‘Yeah,’ Valentina said, but she seemed distracted.

They carried on with the game, tallying up their points with Rocco being declared the winner. As he stood up to receive his prize – a dummy lollipop on a ribbon – he also put on the playlist he’d collated, all with “baby” in the song title and Britney Spears’ ‘…Baby One More Time’, played out through the surround speakers.

‘Want me to get you some food?’ Rocco asked Valentina.

She shook her head and switched her phone off as Frankie came over.

‘You look tired, sis,’ Frankie said. ‘Mum’s going to round everyone up and leave you in peace.’

‘Thanks, Frankie.’ Valentina smiled faintly.

As everyone streamed out Frankie hugged Valentina fiercely, then Rocco before hurrying off.

Valentina began to collect plates.

‘Oi, what do you think you’re doing?’ Rocco took them off her. ‘You look done in. Why don’t you have a lie down.’

Looking slightly teary, she nodded and left the room.

Rocco busied himself with the clearing up.

A moment later he was aware of Valentina coming back into the kitchen. ‘And, do you realise, we christened the house with its first party.’

‘The first of many, I hope.’

Rocco whirled around. It wasn’t Valentina in the kitchen. It was Alison.

‘Please don’t shoot,’ she said with a wry smile as she held her hands up.

He looked down to see he was holding the kitchen spray like a gun, nozzle pointing toward her. He put it on the table.

‘Valentina let me in.’

‘Ah, did you leave something?’ he asked, walking over to the sofa to see if he could spy a bag or a jumper.

‘Nope.’

‘Oh.’ He put back the cushion he’d been looking behind.

‘I just wanted to come back in and have a bit of a chat. I never got the chance to earlier.’

Rocco had engineered it that way. He’d spent the evening avoiding any eye contact and dodging out the way any point he thought Alison was heading in his direction. Being the host made it easy to evade contact, but now, there was nowhere for him to hide.

“Ice Ice Baby” faded out, leaving a second of silence…