We have a loose routine. On cold days, and dole days, we go to the Caroline of Brunswick and make a pint last all day, nipping out or to the bogs to do whatever pills we’ve chipped in to buy. On sunny afternoons, we go to the beach instead. The three of them take the piss out of me for being a tourist, because I don’t smoke crack, plus I have somewhere comfortable to sleep, and parents who will bail me out.

Except, as the weeks go by, and January turns into February and then March, comfort stops mattering so much. Spring is coming and with the warmer nights there’ll be no need to go home at all . . .

Tim and I still meet on the bench, and I sell him what he needs. The Fentanyl was a temporary thing, he’s back to speed and sleeping pills now – he knows what he likes. Perhaps we aren’t so different after all. Except that he’s studying, acting normal. Me? Not so much.

Mum and Dad have tried to talk to me a couple of times, but now they’ve given up, and so has Ant. Fine with me. It’s easier that way . . .

My eyes snap open. I’m in my den, hungover, hungry, dry-mouthed. The spring sunshine coming through my window is too bright. The morning smells of autumn: bonfires and decay.

Even I can’t have slept through an entire summer.

I turn my head to look for the source of the smell.

Nothing’s burning, nothing’s smoking.

Not in here. Is the main house on fire?

I leap out of bed to check. No. But the smell gets stronger. I slept in my jeans last night so I pull on my parka and follow my nose. Out of the house, down Dyke Road.

Smoke rises from somewhere on the seafront. Has a plane crashed on the beach? Or is it something to do with our invasion of Iraq? Has Saddam Hussein launched a WMD aimed at London and missed?

As I’m crossing Seven Dials, there are other people going the same way, following the smell.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask a bloke my age, in a shiny estate agent’s suit.

‘It’s the pier. It’s on fire.’

‘Which pier?’

Soon enough, I can see for myself. The Grand Old Lady. The prettier West Pier, the one that belongs to Brighton, lit from the inside. There are hundreds of us, maybe thousands, watching from the shore. But where are the helicopters and the boats trying to put the fire out?

People are red-eyed from tears or smoke. I pick my way between them, heading for the place where my mates usually hang out, next to the groyne. I can’t look away from the burning shape for more than a few seconds: the orange flames licking through the black-and-white pavilion that sits majestically above the water.