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There was no-one to be seen, not even the person that went with The Voice, so she started up the stairs as instructed. The landing on the first floor gave out onto a narrow corridor with red wall-to-wall carpeting. There were several doors to the right and the left, some half-open, and from one of these low-key voices could be heard. She followed the sound to its source, and, pulling open one of the doors, suddenly found herself face to face with the full population of The Zone, minus one, expectant eyes turning to her as she opened the door.

‘Dr. Brady’, one of them started – he was tall, with short grey hair. She remembered meeting him at the hospital once; Julian, if she wasn’t mistaken. He didn’t get a chance however, because Echo, wearing a pair of yellow-tinted sunglasses, immediately chimed in.

‘Shades? Where is he?’, he said, putting himself in front of the others, and a little too close to her for comfort. ‘Is he ok?’

It was funny how he managed to get on her nerves straight away. Somewhere she knew he was probably just worried, but did he have to be so bloody pushy? She put up both hands as if to bodily stop him from coming any nearer.

‘Nathan is at the hospital, but he is allright’, she said, trying to talk across Echo to the two men behind him, rather than address him directly. There were sighs and mutters of relief; however, Echo didn’t allow himself to be ignored so easily. He gave Roisín a critical look, folding his arms across his chest.

‘Why is he at the hospital if he’s allright?’, he demanded. ‘What the hell’s happened to him?’

Roisín could hardly believe her ears. The nerve on this guy was really beyond anything! The anger she’d felt earlier, when leaving the hospital, had been momentarily subdued by the awe of finding herself in the heart of World Famousness, but it came surging back double force now at Echo’s casually put, arrogant, and quite frankly simply stupid question.

She narrowed her eyes, trying to find his through the yellow glasses.

‘What the hell’s happened to him?’, she repeated tautly. ‘You’re asking me what’s happened to him?’

Echo shrugged, looking a bit annoyed at the tone she was taking with him.

‘Well, yes’, he said. ‘I’d like to know if it’s not too much to ask.’

‘Oh, certainly not’, she said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. ‘I will gladly tell you.’

Echo’s face darkened. Clearly this wasn’t going the way he’d expected.

‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re on about, doc’, he said, ‘And frankly I think you’re being a bit of a...’

Here he was stopped by Julian putting a hand on his arm. He had approached behind Echo. The other guy, the handsome drummer with the daughter from hell, remained where he was, seated on a chair slightly to the left, behind his two companions. He never seemed to have anything to say – maybe that was why she couldn’t remember his name.

‘If there is a problem, doctor, it’s only fair that you tell us. You’ve kind of lost us for the moment’, Julian said in that posh English-boarding-school voice of his.

She took a deep breath, and then it all came spewing out.

‘You people call yourselves his friends?’, she said, aware of her voice raising. ‘You drive a guy right to the edge and then you happily tip him over! What kind of friends are you?’

They were staring at her, dumbstruck, but she was on a roll now, unable to stop herself.

‘A gig in front of five thousand people, what were you thinking? Bloody hell! Two months ago, this man was in a bleedin’ coma! And here’s you guys thinking, oh, let’s ease him back into it nice and quiet. Let’s get on a flaming circus and see how far we can push this guy before he cracks up.’

‘Now, really, doctor,...’, Julian tried, but she wouldn’t let him.

‘Why didn’t you fly him to London and sell out Wembley for his first show? That would have been another great bollocking crackpot idea. I’m surprised none of you came up with that.’

She was breathing hard, trying to get her emotions back under control. It was difficult – they’d been waiting for their moment since she got that ruddy phone call at Kit’s. She didn’t dare to look at the three men – nobody said anything.

‘Five thousand people, I don’t believe it’, she said, shaking her head.

‘We made a mistake, dr. Brady, but I hope you know that Nathan never gave us reason to believe he couldn’t handle this’, Julian said.

‘Oh really?’, she snapped.

Echo took another step forward.

‘Yes, really’, he said. ‘And for your information, it was ten thousand people. And we had to send home every last one of them.’

Roisín felt her heart speed up again.

‘You are unbelievable’, she said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘You’re standing here, in your yellow bloody shades, talking about the poor tossers that didn’t get to see you wiggle your behind on a stage floating in the Dock when your supposed best friend is lying in the hospital on the verge of a fucking mental breakdown!’

‘There’s no need to start swearing’, Echo said, his voice now dangerously low.

‘Oh, that’s rich. Like you don’t, all the time.’

‘It’s my fucking studio! I’ll fucking swear as much as I fucking well like!’

At that moment, someone entered the room behind Roisín, causing everybody to stop talking and stare – even Echo. She whipped around to see a young man frozen in the doorway, dressed in a pair of light blue Y-front underpants, no shoes and a dirty white T-shirt that said Jesus is my homeboy. His hair was a tangle of knots, there was a yellow rubber glove on his right hand and what looked like a half-eaten mango in his left. His face bore a look of utter bewilderment at finding the four of them standing there arguing in the little room, Roisín and Echo facing each other like two fighting bulls.

‘Woops, sorry’, the boy muttered, and, taking another bite from the mango he was holding, slunk away from the room. As soon as he’d gone the argument went on as if the boy had been a mirage brought on by too much heat.