Christmas sounds filtered down from the apartments. Laughter and the clinking of glasses wafted through the night air to the empty street below. I rounded the corner and reeled as hordes of drunk backpackers roamed past (I had a vision of bison on rolling grass hills, moving as one). A pair of blokes staggered so close I could smell their cheap aftershave mixed with their bleary beer breath. They held each other up and whispered to each other, ‘Keep it together mate, keep it together,’ as they attempted to cross the threshold of another pub.

The streets seemed empty of women. I looked in dark corners and under streetlights to see if I could spot anyone. I walked past a phone box on Grey Street where someone had graffiti-ed their anti Christmas sentiments in yellow marker and wondered about the loneliness they were facing and how it could make them hate the day so much. I felt less sympathetic when I looked the next box over and read the racist vitriol they had taken the care to express there.

Dani called me and said she was working Greeves, so I headed away from the man who was hiccupping as he stumbled into a corner to piss, from the girl in the Santa hat and heels, and the group of hugging drunks and walked toward the quiet of the street beat. She was sitting on the hump, her now ex-boyfriend J. in his car spotting for her. I wandered over and had a chat with them about Christmas presents and their daughter. J. told me he had been diagnosed with diabetes and some sort of bone marrow disorder. I commented wryly that it was a great Christmas present and he laughed. He didn’t seem too concerned.

Some girl I’d never seen before was sitting in the passenger seat, her face illuminated by the mobile phone she was buried in. She was some stray J. had collected. She was pregnant and alone and so had moved into his place (you couldn’t write a better soap opera). B. wandered up and I was glad to see her. It had been a while and she was chirpy. Told me to take a photo of her shoes and I did. She climbed into J.’s car to count her money and I just hung around.

I was just about to leave when some Irish guys wandered over and B. was transformed. I’d never seen her work before. This woman who is usually tough as boots was suddenly flirty and giggly. She strode into the conversation, disarming, charming, and asked if they wanted to have a bit of fun, reeling off prices without even skipping a beat.

They told her they were going to convene and think about it and as they wandered off she turned to me and told me that she thought they wanted me instead. Cheekily, she raised her eyebrows and told me I should make some quick cash for Christmas. I laughed and was about to point out that with my unwashed hair and daggy outfit (which I wear very deliberately while photographing at night) I was no prize, but I realised I was being seen through the drunken haze of a couple of horny Irishmen. I rolled my eyes instead and we made some racist jokes of our own.

They were young and very attractive guys, probably my age. I wondered if this was a regular stop at the end of a boozy night when they’d had no luck picking up their equally drunk female comrades in a bar. Like grabbing McDonald’s on the stumble home when you’re loaded, and needing a quick fix.

B. wandered off to sell her wares, joining Dani on the hump. I asked her over my departing shoulder what she was doing for Christmas Day and she said she was going to see her son in the morning. I know she doesn’t get to see him often (we had sat together once and looked at photos she had taken of him, she stroking his photographic face, and me patting her shoulder) so I was glad for her. I know that she’d probably be the first person to scrawl Christmas sux on a phone booth and that her son’s real face would be a reprieve from the dread of a day loaded with expectation.

We yelled Merry Christmas at each other and I watched them as they stood in the dark together, lit only by the dim streetlight and the headlights of horny drivers. The sounds of drunken revellers drifted from other streets and I hoped they would be safe tonight in the hands of men who’d drunk too much, and whose festive cheer was wearing into a veneer of annoyance at having to pay for sex when there was seemingly so much free sex available. I wished them happy drunks, who came as quickly as those cheap hamburgers in the yellow and red packets: the other meat of choice for Homo-Inebrious.