We walked the distance to my flat. It wasn’t that far away but with the drink and the aggro it felt like a long while. Jenny kept trying to make light of the argument. I was trying not to sulk but it wasn’t easy. I mustered up some small talk about spice burgers in Ireland and I told her a story about a regular at the Crown. The nutcase who would come in on a Wednesday and tell us how after twenty-five years of marriage he had only just come to the conclusion that his wife was dull.

We were pissed. We walked up the three steps to the house. I found myself having a bit of difficulty opening the front door. It wasn’t a bad place as places go, but the weeds growing out of the cement in front of the basement did something to me. It gave the whole place an air of neglect when it could have been something special. The inability of the landlord to bring the house up to its potential annoyed me. I finally opened the door and I immediately started going on about the carpet in the hall as I always did.

And as always, Jenny said she liked it because it was retro and I said that she was only saying that because she was a bloody artist. And in my drunken state I wondered how my horrendous shit-brown carpet could be pleasing to the eye.

I checked the brown-veneered shelving unit in the hall for post.

Fucking bank statements, I said. I don’t need to know how many times in the one night I’ve hit the drink-link. It would wear you thin.

Out, it would wear you out, she said.

Her comment irked me somewhat but I didn’t let on. I sometimes did that. Put the wrong word into a sentence. Andy had pointed it out to me before and Matt at the magazine had mentioned it too. But when Matt had drawn it to my attention, the fact that it was said in a literary context, at the time I believed it to be a compliment.

Jenny went to the loo, which was on a separate lower level to my flat. I went on up to the flat and let myself in. The place wasn’t in that bad a state. I moved some free newspapers off the couch and shoved them in beside the microwave in the kitchen. I walked over to my music system and gave myself a moment to admire my choice of separates. I put on the Stone Roses. I cleared a couple of mugs from the coffee table and I shimmied my eyes over the bed in my room. I had a brief sniff of the duvet. Jenny came in all shy as if it was the first time she had been in the place.