The two attic rooms up top were taken by Matthew and Juliet, who had decorated them with the kind of flock wallpaper you used to see in Indian restaurants. They’d chosen red and it looked cosy and exotic up there. There were three more rooms on the first floor, where Marcia and I lived along with a pale-looking sociology student with curly dark hair called Mark. Red-haired Ed, a physics student, was in what had been the front sitting room on the ground floor. Meanwhile the back sitting room became a communal place for us all, and we’d fashioned a make-do bedroom in the basement for Ron, who promoted local bands and had nowhere else to go. Despite having the physique of Desperate Dan, he seemed happy enough down there in the small space, and had pinned swathes of gold silk on the ceiling and walls, which hid the pipes and plumbing and billowed out, giving it the look of a harem. I loved going from attic to cellar, seeing how each character had made their space their own. As soon as Mum and Dad had gone and the tenants had moved in, the house had taken on a new atmosphere; a poster of Grace Jones appeared in the hall, another of Madonna in the sitting room. We ate what we liked when we liked, stayed up late, got up late. The house became a social centre for many friends who, like us, had little money to frequent bars or clubs and so loved to come and hang out. Phil Collins playing ‘One More Night’ was on a loop tape in the sitting room, and the house was always full of students or musicians, rolling joints, drinking tea, getting stoned and putting the world to rights.

It was perfect, and I had Marcia to share it all with.

*

Marcia rolled the most elegant joints I’d ever smoked. Not those fat, loose ones with tobacco and hashish spilling out of the end that got covered in spit because no one could get their mouth around them. Hers were long and slim, like panatella cigars.

On the low table in front of her in her room, she’d laid out her supplies: Rizla papers, king-size; silver cigarette case containing menthol, not regular tobacco; silver pill box with mother-of-pearl inlay containing her stash, and several immaculately cut pieces of white card for making roaches.

She reached for her Zippo lighter and lit up.

I smiled. ‘It’s like attending a Japanese tea ceremony, having a smoke with you.’

‘I like to do things properly,’ she said as she inhaled deeply. ‘Er … thing is, Bea, I’ve got some news.’