Jonathan is back with a huge glass of what looks like neat vodka. ‘I’m fucking exhausted. Got any drugs?’

Simon winces.

‘No, Jonathan,’ I say, ‘I don’t do that any more. I told you.’

‘Well I hope you don’t mind if I do.’ He’s about to start setting up on the coffee table, as we’ve done a hundred times in the past. Stephen looks as if someone’s just farted, but he’s fascinated too.

‘Actually, I’d rather you didn’t.’

‘Oh, I forgot. He doesn’t like them.’ He jerks a thumb towards the kitchen, where Simon is getting him something to eat. ‘You’re so wholesome these days.’ He gets his phone out and starts texting. Stephen sits and watches him. ‘My God!’ says Jonathan, suddenly, ‘what the fuck are you looking at?’

‘Certainly not you, dear.’

A text bings into Jonathan’s phone. ‘Rob, I need some money.’

‘Oh, that’s why she’s here,’ says Stephen. ‘I didn’t think it had the air of a social call.’

‘I haven’t got any …’

‘Mind your own business, grandma.’ Jonathan opens a wrap and dumps a little pile of coke on to the tabletop. ‘Well I’m very sorry, Robert, but I need it.’ He produces a Marks and Spencer store card from his back pocket – and for a moment he looks embarrassed – then starts chopping. His hands are shaking, and the coke is going all over the place. ‘Shit! Fucking stuff!’ He’s picking up crumbs with his fingertips, rubbing them into his gums. The coke is going under magazines, into cracks on the tabletop.

‘Oh for Christ’s sake, daughter.’ Stephen snatches the card out of Jonathan’s hand and stands over him. For a moment I think he’s going to sweep the whole lot on to the floor, or strike Jonathan across the face, but instead he kneels slowly on the floor and starts neatly, methodically chopping the powder, first this way, then that, forming little herringbone patterns in the fine white powder, before scooping it into two lines like vapour trails, elegantly tapered at each end.

‘That’s the way to do it.’ He smacks his hands clean. ‘Honestly Don’t they teach the children anything these days?’

Jonathan is speechless, which is a first.

‘And I don’t suppose you even have the necessary tenner, do you?’ Jonathan shakes his head while Stephen fishes in his pocket for a neat fold of banknotes, peels off a tenner and rolls it into a tube. ‘We used pound notes in my day. They were just the right size. Still, inflation and all that.’ He hands the tube to Jonathan. ‘After you.’

Jonathan is sulking now. He knows he’s beaten, but he’s not yet willing to concede defeat.

Stephen sits back, folds his legs, takes a sip of wine. ‘I saw the look on your face when you walked in here, my girl. Oh God, look at the old queen, how disgusting, what’s she doing here, shouldn’t she be in a home or something? You just think of us as the sad old bastards who missed out on the party. Well let me inform you that without us, there wouldn’t have been a party. You with your drugs and your clubs and your hair looking like a haystack and your trousers hanging round your arsehole, you think you invented it, don’t you? But you didn’t. You just bought it. You had it all handed to you on a plate and you never stopped to wonder who put it there. Your generation seems to have lost the ability to love or to care or to fight for change, or to do anything other than fuck each other and shop. You treat Robbie like shit, you’re jealous of his boyfriend, you’re bitter as hell because you’re lonely as hell and you’re drinking and snorting your way to an early grave. And don’t give me that look, daughter, because I’ve done it all myself and I can read you like a fucking book.’