‘Oh, the usual really. Tastes just like a regular curry,’ he said.

Reassured, Omar tried it and agreed. ‘It does, doesn’t it? Like a chicken curry mixed with a beef one.’

After a while, Ledley shrugged, and, pulling only a slight face, started eating.

After dinner, Omar still couldn’t see Jim and Karen anywhere. He was dragged slightly unwillingly by Dieter’s little group to the bar, where they cheerfully warmed up with beers, and moved on to tequila shots. After the third round of lick, down and bite, Ledley fell into Dieter, who fell into the table, which caused everyone else to fall onto the floor in a hiccuping hysterical heap, with Omar in the midst of them. This is where I really belong, he thought fuzzily, laughing hysterically with the rest of them; life with the geeks didn’t seem so bad. Here he would be accepted for what he was, not who he was friends with; here he could be a king, rather than a pretender.

The sound of the crash was heard throughout the bar, and welcomed with an enormous cheer by those standing around. Jim saw Omar and went up to him. ‘Where’ve you been, mate? Been looking all over for you. Didn’t you go to Hall?’

‘Yeah, I couldn’t see you guys anywhere,’ Omar said to one of the three Jims that stood above him, trying not to sound reproachful. ‘Thought you might want some privacy.’

‘You can’t have looked very hard,’ said Jim. ‘We were at the front, like we said, near the High Table.’ Omar realized through the fug of tequila what had happened. Of course, to Jim, the front of the Hall meant the end of the Hall where the High Table was set up. To Omar, the front of the Hall was naturally the entrance. Jim, looking impatiently at Omar, and for once less drunk than him, said, ‘Anyway, get up. We’re heading off to Balliol now to pick up Giles and Lydia.’

‘I think I might be stuck,’ Omar said apologetically, as Finola, a not too slim mathematician, was lying across his legs.

Jim did his trademark eyeroll, before pushing up his shirtsleeves, ‘Up you come, sweetie,’ he said, pulling Finola roughly to her feet in a businesslike way. He called her sweetie as he didn’t know her name, or the names of any of Dieter’s group, nor did he ever have any intention to waste his time learning them; he filed them all under ‘R’ in his head, for ‘Random People I never need to know’. He yanked up Omar too, only slightly less roughly.

As Omar left he waved to Dieter’s group cheerfully, and shouted back to them the running joke that they’d started with their first tequila shot. ‘Bye, guys, see you later. Why did the Mexican throw his wife out of the window?’

‘Tequila!’ Dieter’s group shouted back, waving their empty shot glasses.