Christopher Slater entered the headquarters of the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs shortly after ten o’clock in the morning. His role as a respected non-executive director was keenly sought after in business circles, and to the civil servants coming and going through the foyer, this particular adviser always wore a smug grin. His duties brought him to London perhaps two days a week, where he was expected to sit at his desk, review documents, check and challenge. It was a dry affair, and sometimes he longed for something meaty to get his teeth into. Everybody remembered the colantropine scandal, of course, even though it was over twenty years ago. He didn’t necessarily want something on that scale – heavens, nobody wanted breakfast cereal to cause brain damage; no, something just a little controversial would suffice.

The job paid, not well, but enough to maintain his six-bedroom pad in Surrey, keep his wife happy, and allow him to have the odd Arturo Fuente cigar at the Montague Club. More importantly, it afforded him status. It was the natural order of things that the further one climbed up the slippery pole of success, the wealthier one became. He hardly paid for a thing these days, with people falling over themselves to take him to lunch or fly him out to their villa. Nowadays, it had to all be above board, with every receipt ticked off by the Permanent Under-Secretary, but she was easily circumnavigated. Proof and accountability: it just got harder, that was all.

His evening at the club had been thoroughly enjoyable, and so had his one-night stay. His favourite doorman turned a blind eye to young ladies arriving in the early hours, staying a mere hour or so and tipping generously. Reflecting to himself on his walk to the lift, Christopher decided that he had pretty much everything he needed. Life hadn’t turned out badly. Of course, it was only when one embarked on one’s second half-century that the awful realisation dawned that this was it: no trial run, no serum to resurrect youth, and no pause button. Yesterday would never come around again. He’d learned to say fuck it to just about everything, and found that it was a pleasing way to exist. If he could do it all again, he’d make different choices, but then so would everyone. All those conformities and goals that humans strived for in their little organised cages of propriety would go out of the window, and he’d be the first in the queue. He rather fancied living naked on an island with a tall Texan blonde, fishing, fucking and frolicking. He knew that was never going to happen. Even with all the billions invested in reversing ageing, eternal youth was a pipe dream.