Tim She really likes you. I know that for a fact because she told me. So you be good to her.

Nick I will be.

Tim Because we’re not going to let Nadia live with a bloke who isn’t good to her.

Nick I’m doing my best.

Tim Which is all that any of us can do.

Tim’s beeper goes off.

Victor Time for the medication.

Victor gets pills and water from his bag.

Tim Now these are something you won’t have seen in nineteen eighty-four. These are new. You wouldn’t have seen these in nineteen ninety-four.

Nick What are they?

Tim In nineteen eighty-four you were calling it a plague weren’t you?

Nick I don’t know.

Tim Oh I think you were.

Victor Yes. Gay plague. Honey. Chug, chug, chug.

Victor feeds Tim the pill.

Nick Maybe the tabloids / they were always reactionary bastards …

Tim In nineteen eighty-four I would have been dead in six months. Whereas now …

Victor Chug, chug, chug.

Victor feeds Tim another pill.

Nick You’ve been cured?

Tim I can spin it out for years and years.

Victor Maybe forever.

Nick That’s good isn’t it?

Tim It’s fucking marvellous.

Victor Chooo-ooo.

Another pill.

Tim The story’s got a happy ending. That’s something you’ve got to get used to. We’ve reached ‘They all lived happily ever after’ and we’ve gone past it and we’re still carrying on. Nobody’s ever written that bit before but we’re doing it. This is the happy world.

Victor Yes, happy world.

Tim And you’re part of it now.

Victor Welcome to happy world.

Nick Maybe I don’t see it like that.

Tim You’ll get used to it.

Nick Maybe it’s not like that. Maybe there’s terrible things. Maybe there’s injustices that make you angry, that make you want to protest… make you want to …

Tim Murder?

Nick No.

Tim Stuff that makes you want to kill?

Nick I’m not saying that.

Tim Nadia told me about you.

Victor I want to dance now.

Tim When Daddy’s finished. (To Nick.) So what are you saying? You’re saying things out there make you want to kill and you’ve got no responsibility?

Nick I’ve never said that.

Tim We’re all responsible for our own actions okay? We don’t blame other people. That’s very nineteen eighty-four,

Nick Alright.

Tim Because it’s not out there anymore, alright? You can’t look out there and blame, blame, blame. And I can imagine what it was like for you. Everything blocked, everything weighing you down. Communists, apartheid, finger on the nuclear button. It was frightening and you were frightened.

Nick Don’t tell me, don’t you tell me …

Tim I’m not telling you …

Nick You child, you boy / don’t you fucking tell me …

Tim What do you think I’m telling you?

Nick … what you don’t understand. Just you keep your mouth / shut if you don’t understand.

Tim Just trying to make you see.

Nick Keep your fucking mouth shut.