The last step was to place the house with a real estate agent, where a kid with spiky gelled hair and a cheap suit lectured me about “market stress” and how long it would take to get an offer. We were, of course, negotiating over the sale of the home where I’d grown up; I suspected the Gelled Arsehole sensed my vulnerability. But fuck it. I signed the forms and walked away.

I left the keys with Peter. He promised to check over the place until it was sold. I felt uncomfortable with this—I didn’t like the idea of becoming entangled in some kind of debt to him—but unless I was to house-sit myself I needed somebody to do what he was offering.

I didn’t quite know why I was uncomfortable about Peter. There had always been something needy about him. And if Peter wanted to work his way back into my life, he had found an angle to do it. Perhaps, I thought, he imagined we would become Internet pen pals, swapping reminiscences about TV21. Perhaps, like the Gelled Arsehole, Peter had spotted my vulnerability and was exploiting it for his own ends.

Or maybe I was just being uncharitable. Whichever, as I set off back to London, I drove away watching him waving with a handful of keys.

When I got back to work, there was nothing for me to do, literally. Which tells you all you need to know about my career.

I worked for a smallish software development company called Hyf—a bit of Anglo-Saxon that is apparently the root of hive, for we were all supposed to be busy busy bees. We were based near Liverpool Street, in the upper floor of what used to be a small rail station, long disused. The office was open-plan, save for a small hardware section where minis hummed away in blue-lit air-conditioning. It was an environment of neck-high partitions, trendy curved desks that made it impossible to get close to your PC without stretching out your arms like a gibbon, and everywhere a flurry of polystyrene Starbucks containers, yellow stickies, postcards from skiing holidays, and the occasional bit of “comedy” Internet porn.

Walking down the central aisle under the pleasing architecture of the Victorian-era curved roof, I hurried along. I found I didn’t want much to speak to anybody—and nor did they to me; most had probably already forgotten the reason I had been away. As usual there was a whole series of scents as I walked down that aisle. The combative mix of cigarette smoke and air-freshener sprays was overlaid with a strong coffee stink and the stale scents of yesterday’s lunch. Sometimes, when I worked in there late at night, I could swear I picked up a subtle and unmistakable almond whiff.