Chas denied it, of course. The three of them were having fish and chips at the red Formica table after a practice. Puff like a barrel, dark chest hair massed at the shaving line low on his neck. Chas talking some rubbish about paying a friend to give him lecture notes. The kitchen windows were misted and the Dunedin winter a pressing blackness beyond them.

‘I’m getting pissed off with you wearing my clothes when I’m away,’ Pearly broke in.

‘Wha–a–t?’ drawled Chas and continued reaching out to the unwrapped takeaways.

‘I know you do. You even left stuff in the pocket of my jacket.’

‘Bullshit, man,’ said Chas casually.

‘That’s really rank,’ said Puff. ‘You touch any of my stuff and you’re bloody for it.’ He wasn’t surprised by the accusation and immediately assumed Chas’s guilt, being familiar with his nature.

‘You’re fucking dreaming, Pearly. Who’d want to wear your stuff? You’re hardly a style setter are you. Jesus.’ Chas raised his eyebrows.

‘Keep out of my room and leave my things alone. Got it?’ said Pearly.

‘This is all bullshit.’ Chas kept on eating: not a chip at a time, but a clutch of them in his fingers, or pale fish encrusted with batter stuffed into his mouth.

Pearly didn’t expect Chas to own up, but he’d given him a warning, and after that he saw no signs of Chas using his gear. He wished there were a lock on his door, though. By the end of that year there was only perfunctory communication between Chas and the others. Pearly and Puff got along okay as flatmates and nothing else: their lives didn’t mesh despite time spent within the same house and on the field within the same team. At the end of the academic year there was no talk of the three living together again. Chas just vanished, leaving an unpainted chipboard desk and owing several weeks’ rent. Puff shook hands and told Pearly he hoped they would both make Varsity A the next year. His Southland girlfriend shook hands also, and Pearly realised that was the first time he’d ever touched her.