Harriet had simply tried to help by inviting her, like a lot of other people not as close had tried to help, in other ways, to get her out of the pit of despair in which she’d buried herself. Now she was struggling to emerge. And it was important to avoid self-pity. What had happened hadn’t been anyone’s fault: hadn’t been avoidable or preventable. Dear God, how she wished so much had been avoidable or preventable! Self-pity again: careful, she warned herself.

She really did have to get away: find a quieter part of the cage at least. Claustrophobia was beginning to tighten around her, so that it was physically difficult to breathe, the first stirring of familiar panic she’d hoped to be over.

The gap was near the door, which was what she wanted anyway, a tiny oasis (were there oases in menageries?) kept vacant by the passing inrush of new arrivals. Cradling her barely sipped drink, a sweet punch Janet suspected might be too strongly laced with something like tasteless vodka from the gallon-bottle on the mahogany bar, she set out on her escape, turning and twisting and smiling her apologies through the crowd in between. Twice as she moved through she felt an apparently solicitous hand on her ass and once someone openly groped her left breast before she could get by.

Janet concentrated entirely upon reaching the space she’d identified and ignored the fondling, so it only took seconds to get through, but when she looked up the empty space wasn’t empty any more. It wasn’t possible so late to change direction; besides which, there wasn’t anywhere else to go: The entrance now was jammed with a group of new arrivals, kissing greetings and discarding coats and dispensing presents and gesturing with booze contributions to prove their right of entry.

“Oh!” said Janet.

“I’m sorry?”

So was Janet, at her gauche reaction to his getting there ahead of her. “It was just that… nothing… I’m sorry,” she stumbled, still awkward.