‘Well I think we will.’ His voice was getting loud again. ‘Maybe not in our lifetime, but one day.’

‘Look around you, Stephen. Is this your brave new world?’

‘Yes it is. The freaks will inherit the earth.’

‘If you believe that, you’re a fool.’

‘Who’s the fool, dear? Me or you? At least I’m being honest.’

‘And I’m not, I suppose.’

‘No. You’re not, and you know it. You’re living a lie. You’re pretending you’re normal because you’re scared to death of being one of us.’

‘I’m not one of you. Not … this.’

‘You’re a coward, Michael. I’m going to stand up and be counted.’

We were both drunk by now. ‘And you’ll be rounded up and sent away to prison.’

‘I’m not frightened.’

‘Then you should be.’

‘For God’s sake, Michael, you’re an intelligent man. Don’t you read the papers? We don’t live in Russia, you know. People don’t just disappear. We have laws here.’

‘Laws that forbid our very existence.’

‘Yes dear,’ said Stephen, laying a hand on top of mine, ‘but laws can be changed, can’t they?’

07

Another card from Michael this morning inviting me to come and visit him, nothing about the fact that I haven’t responded to any of his other cards, just saying ‘I know how busy you are’, which I am of course. I don’t really know why he’s so keen to see me, I hardly know him, and I don’t know why I feel so bad about not visiting him either, much worse than I feel, for instance, about not visiting my parents or my sister. The truth is that I’m finding it hard to face anyone outside my immediate circle because I just don’t think they would understand what I’m going through and to have to explain would be even more exhausting than living it in the first place.

Stuart calls me at work and tells me where we’re meeting tonight. This is the usual routine now. I don’t know until the afternoon if I’m seeing him at all, and if I am seeing him, what we’re doing, except that it’s always the same thing, we go to a party of some sort, then we go to a club, then we go back to my place, where Stuart spends five nights out of seven. The other two nights he spends at his place – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he spends them ‘not at my place’, because I have no proof that he goes home, it’s just a convenient thing to believe. We never spend the night together at his place. We did it once, and he was so jumpy we couldn’t even watch TV. When he’s with me, he’s relaxed and horny and even sometimes affectionate, that is when we’re not arguing or he’s not storming downstairs to shout at the neighbours. Stuart has taken it into his own hands to escalate a minor neighbour dispute about noise and cooking smells into all-out war. He can’t stand noise, unless he’s making it, and so when the door slammed once too often he flew down the stairs, cornered some hapless African woman and laid into her with a stream of invective. She gave as good as she got, and it has made matters much, much worse. I will wait across the road before entering the block if I see them outside the flat, and will hide in my flat until they’ve gone before leaving. I can’t sleep without Valium now, I’m so wound up by every single bump or footstep or gurgle of the water pipes. If Stuart’s here, I’m terrified that he’ll charge downstairs and start World War Three again. If he’s not here, I feel anxious and vulnerable. I wish Michael had not left.