‘Knock ’em dead, gorgeous boy,’ she’d said. And it happened. She was softer, wetter, than he remembered. Her fingertips on his neck and face fizzed with static. Their bodies once again slotted so perfectly against each other, like an external force was squeezing them together. And then, her mouth against his ear, she’d said it.

‘I love you.’

Her kiss, those words. Ten, maybe fifteen seconds total. But a moment in time that matters more than most years do. The sort of fleeting instant around which entire eras are built. Another reminder of the thoroughly disorderly way in which time behaves.

Grinning, with pins and needles in his guts, Will focuses on his job. One mix down, he clears the left turntable and loads another record: a white label with the words 4 o’clock in the morning scrawled in marker. It uses an unauthorized sample of a classic love song that, when the tune drops, it seems some of these young people are familiar with. Less than a minute of that before he’s in the mix again, into The Prodigy’s ‘No Good’. Still no cock-ups, still no sign these kids aren’t loving every minute.

But something’s creeping up on Will. Unease. Doubt. Realization that this is going well. Too well. These past months may have changed Will, but no such transformation leaves someone totally different from how they once were. And so, still there’s a part of Will that greets success as if it’s only a visitor. Things can’t go this well. And if they do, that success exists only to put you in a dangerous position, from which you can only go one way. Like everything in the universe: from order to chaos. He knows he should just enjoy this moment, savour it. But as the moments pass, it becomes harder and harder. It’s all too precariously perfect. Such worries seem hardwired into Will’s DNA.

With utter concentration, he brings in the next mix. Despite his faltering confidence, it’s spot on again, hours of practice paying off. Next record on to the deck. Nearly halfway now.

The smoke is so thick Will can’t see the front row. Can no longer see April, just a few metres from him. The rigs of bright lights suspended from the ceiling have no definition now, instead just diffusing into the dense atmosphere. When Will looks up from the decks, his vision is blanketed by one colour at a time, like he’s facing the sun with closed eyes.