I had a brief flash of clarity – I saw a dirty old man kneeling before a drunken airman in a cheap boarding house, about to take the step that would turn him from latent to practising.

It was a step from which there was no return.

I took it.

‘Right,’ said the landlady, ‘where are they?’ She stood at the foot of the stairs, her arms folded across her bosom, a fag in her mouth, a scarf over her rollers.

‘Morning, missus,’ said Wright, trying to push past her.

‘I said, where are they?’

‘What?’

‘The tarts you had up in your room last night. Don’t pretend you didn’t. I told you about bringing girls back here. This is a respectable house, not a knocking shop.’

Wright said nothing, his hands buried in his pockets.

‘Come on. I’m waiting for an answer.’ She glared at us, as if we might produce women from our kit bags.

‘We didn’t have anyone in our room last night,’ I said. She softened when she heard my middle-class accent.

‘I heard dancing.’

‘I’m afraid we were a little bit the worse for wear.’

‘Hmm. And I heard … well, I heard other noises.’

‘I’m sorry if we disturbed your sleep.’

‘I don’t sleep,’ she said. ‘Nobody can get in or out of this house without me knowing it.’

‘Well I assure you …’

She barged past me, and up the stairs, hoping to find the ‘tarts’ in the wardrobe or under the bed.

‘There’s nobody here,’ she said, sounding disappointed.

‘I hope the room is tidy enough.’

‘What?’ She looked puzzled, as if she was trying to work out a difficult sum. ‘Oh yes, it’s quite all right.’

‘Good morning, then.’

Wright was standing by the car.

‘Breakfast?’ I said. ‘I’m starving.’

He didn’t even look up.

‘Come on. I’m desperate for a cuppa.’

‘Go ahead. I’ll get the bus.’

‘Look, if you want a lift back, we’re stopping for a …’

‘I don’t want a fucking lift! I don’t want anything.’ He stamped down the street, head thrust forward, hands deep in his pockets, his kit bag, containing his Saturday-night civvies, banging against his backside.

I suddenly remembered the goldfish. It was too late for that now.

06

I’m sweating so much that I’m actually dripping on to my keyboard. It’s hot in the office, but not that hot. I keep mopping my brow but people are starting to stare. ‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ asks Anna, and I say I’m just hungry, I’ve got low blood sugar and I’ve probably overdone it at the gym. ‘Well go and get some food, for Christ’s sake,’ she says, scowling. We’ve got a serious deadline this afternoon and I know that I am fucking it up but there’s not much I can do while I feel like this. I’ve got an emergency packet of chocolate biscuits in my desk drawer, so I grab them and sit in the toilet stuffing my face like a lunatic. The sweat is running off the end of my nose in a stream, falling on to the uneaten biscuits, and when I eat them I can taste the salt. My light blue shirt is rapidly turning dark blue.