We’ve come to this party largely because Jonathan thinks ‘we should’, because ‘it’s time we started moving in some more interesting circles’, but also because I think that there will be men there and Jonathan thinks there will be drugs there. We get ready at my house, mainly because I have hot water (Jonathan is having ‘a spot of bother’ with the gas board over a small matter of unpaid bills), and so of course Jonathan ends up not wearing the clothes he arrived in, but borrowing and ‘customising’ a lot of mine, which means I will never see them again. He’s ditched the yoga drag, and is now going for what he calls ‘banjee realness’ but looks more like the sort of thing you see in the B&Q; car park on a Sunday afternoon. He’s got a pair of my gym sweatpants rolled up to the knee, white tennis socks up to the shin, a pair of pink Converse Allstars and a zip-up cardigan with black-and-white check trim, that looks like something a rather effeminate policeman might wear. He’s teamed this with an outsize pair of aviator shades with white frames. I suppose this is the look that goes with his new name of Nathan or ‘Nate’, and I really hope it doesn’t last because on the bus we get quite a lot of abuse from some real-life young black men and have to sit downstairs.

I’m wearing my usual polo shirt and jeans, which Jonathan calls my children’s television presenter look. I say if I’m a children’s television presenter, then we’d better have a line of coke before we go out, but this time I make sure that I’m in charge because I only have a gram and I need it to last all evening. Jonathan hoovers it up and then starts pouting but I’ve already put it in my pocket. ‘If only I had a handy little leather wallet to keep it in,’ I say, but he just shrugs. Needless to say I never got a replacement present, nor has Jonathan apologised for chucking me in favour of Lukas on my birthday, but then you don’t expect apologies from Jonathan.

Lukas is another reason we’ve come to this party, because Hadley has told Jonathan that he is pitching for the Lukas account, which could mean that Hadley genuinely has a PR company and is hoping to represent him, or, which I think is much more likely, is hoping to become his dealer. Jonathan is convinced that Lukas is going to be at the party, that he’ll see ‘Nate’ in all his banjee realness and soon they will be photographed in Heat magazine together, ‘Lukas and mystery brunette’. So while I’m trying to talk to Jonathan, he is looking over my shoulder in case Lukas turns up.

This is so distracting that I have to look around as well, because I have this weird feeling that something or someone is hovering behind my back, and that’s when I see HIM for the first time. It’s a bit like seeing myself in a distorting mirror: he’s also wearing a polo shirt, but he’s taller than me, bigger than me, better looking than me, possibly a year or two older than me. He’s big – not freakishly big like Hadley, but he wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of Men’s Health or any of the other closet gay mags, shot in high contrast black-and-white with the words GET A SIX-PACK NOW! in bright orange letters.