You fucking touched my dick with your dick, you fucking poof, he says to him. He flips Wonder Woman off him in one movement. You fucking dirty poofter, Tommy says to him, and he’s struggling to get his trousers up. Calm down, mate, Millington’s man says to him, it was just a fucking accident, I must’ve brushed your cock by mistake. But it’s too late for that now. Tommy has flipped. You’re a raging fucking arse bandit, Tommy’s screaming at him, and he’s rubbing his cock with his hand like he’s caught something. Then he half-marches/half-staggers across the room, with his trousers pulled to just above his knees, tears this lamp out its socket with one hand and sets about him. Millington’s man falls back onto the couch and Tommy’s kneeling over him, smashing him in the fucking head with this fucking heavy marble lamp. At one point I see what looks like a bit of skull go flying up into the air. Leave him, the women are screaming, you’ll fucking kill him! I leap to my feet and I pull him off. What the fuck are you doing, you fucking nutcase? But by this point he’s like a sleepwalker. You cannot wake this guy from the trance. So as I drag him to the floor and I hold him down but then I start worrying that our fucking dicks are going to accidentally collide or something so as I push him away and I yell to him to get our fucking bags, I’m screaming at him, grab our fucking bags, I says, and I push him out the door. Then I stand there, guarding it, with this fucking broke lamp in my hand. Nobody leaves, I says to them. The guy is lying there in a pool of blood. Oh, my baby, my baby, Millington’s saying to him, and she’s lifting his head and she’s trying to talk to him, he’s trying to mouth words back at her, and now he’s puking blood all over himself and Wonder Woman and Red Rum are lying there with their make-up smeared and their clothes torn and their panties all twisted on their legs and their nylons. Tommy’s at the front door. I hear him tearing the phone out the wall. Let’s go, he shouts. I look round at the carnage, at the women whimpering, at the guy whose head is pulped, at the hotel lounge that we’ve completely destroyed. What we did on our holidays, I says to myself, and by five o’clock the next day we’re in London, in a pub in Kentish Town, drinking green with a bad bastard name of The Swan.

*