‘You like it?’

‘Come on, there are people I want you to meet.’

He drags me across the room, where there are four guys who look, basically, just like Stuart. They’re all about thirty, they’re all wearing Abercrombie and Fitch and they all have the same body. Four pairs of eyes look down at my shoes, then up to my face, down to my crotch, up, down and up again, the exact same look that Michael gave me this morning. The gay look.

‘Everyone, this is Rob, who I was telling you about.’

‘Aah, the famous Rob,’ says one of them, shaking my hand. They have not been introduced at all. ‘So, how’s the world of high finance?’

I look to Stuart for some kind of clue, but he’s just grinning and working his jaw muscles, which gives his face a diamond shape.

‘I say,’ says another, ‘tell me that Hadley hasn’t asked you for any money.’

‘No.’

‘Because he’s going around trying to sting everyone for a couple of hundred quid to invest in this pile of shit.’

‘Why?’

‘So they can get a proper gallery show, he says.’

‘Whatever you do,’ says Stuart, ‘never, never give Hadley money. Unless it’s for drugs.’

As we’re leaving I see Jonathan handing his brand new credit card over to Hadley, who won’t look quite so pleased when he realises that none of Jonathan’s credit cards are worth the plastic they’re printed on.

We were supposed to be going for dinner but Stuart says he has VIP passes to Straight, and that we should get there early if we want to get ‘good seats’, which I don’t really understand. I point out that a) I’m hungry and b) I think the idea of being a VIP in a sex club is like being on the guest list at the clap clinic, but he just laughs and ruffles my hair, which he knows I hate. In the cab he gives me a line of coke, which he says will deaden my appetite, but by the time we get south of the river I’m not convinced that it was coke after all, because I am feeling very strange indeed. For one thing, I’m snogging Stuart in full view of the taxi driver, and for another thing I’ve got my hand down his trousers trying to get hold of his cock.

‘Cool it,’ he says, laughing, as he hands the driver a twenty-pound note, then, ‘Keep the change,’ which is funny as the fair was exactly £20. In fact it seems so funny that I’m doubled up with laughter on the pavement, tears running down my face. Stuart drags me to the door where he does a complicated handshake with the door whore and we’re in.

The place is already busy, and the air is thick with sex, and I’m so desperate to get off that I push Stuart up against the wall and start kissing him again, grabbing his hands and putting them on my bum. He takes my chin between thumb and forefinger and looks at me, nods and smiles and says, ‘You’ll do,’ then we go into the main room.