We stumbled down the corridor towards our suite. The carpet and the walls were decorated in nausea-inducing geometric patterns, and the floor sloped suddenly downwards like a wheelchair ramp. The walls were lined with blank canvases, each illuminated by a stately picture lamp fixed above them. It was the wilful tastelessness of real money, money that did not have to hide its nature behind sense or aesthetics, but was its own justification. The suite cost £1,500 a night. We slipped our keycard into the electronic lock and headed into our room.

Francis cast his antique jacket aside in a mock dance move, plucking one sleeve off and then the other before whirling it around in the air, and fell gracefully backwards on to the cream sofa in the centre of the drawing room. He lay on his back, his legs encased in fine black material hanging over the arm. He took a handful of strawberries from the crystal bowl on the central table, a carved slab of black wood that had slender segmented legs, curving inwards under its belly like an insect’s. He fed himself in an exaggerated fashion, lowering the fleshy tips slowly into his mouth and then snatching at the whole thing, almost catching his fingers. Jessica went over to the stereo and started flicking through the CD collection provided by the hotel. She settled on something, placed the silver disc in the player, and melodic hip hop of the Roots, ‘Things Fall Apart’, swelled from the speakers hidden in the walls. She shuffled a backward step in time to the beat as she came to join us in front of the black marble fireplace. I looked up into the great mirror that dominated the room, and saw her and Francis as if through the eyes of a painter looking down from a stepladder. She laughed as she flopped into the soft cushions at my side, and Francis laughed too, and so did I, as the enormity of what we had achieved began to dawn on us, like a new day full of promise and resolution. Francis pumped his fists in the air in a compulsive release of energy, and Jessica howled. I cast my eyes in a delighted circle around the room, a brief inventory of its splendour, at the things we could now afford. The last of the fear and the vulnerability I had felt in the presence of Augustus White evaporated to leave a sweet residue of recklessness dried to the base of my brain, and I was the first one to hunt out the wrap of coke from Francis’s wash bag. The colourful little packet was swollen with two grams, bulging in the middle like a moist seedpod, and it burst over the glossy magazine sitting on the table, spreading a little drift of white powder over the advert (for a watch, I realized in heady joy, that I could now afford). It felt like the last day of school, the happiness that comes after exams, when a long grinding build-up of pressure dissipates in a moment, and the kids converge on the grassy banks outside the hall to lounge in the sunshine. We had climbed up a steep and unforgiving path, and the future opened up before us, a fertile and sunny valley we had reached by our own cleverness and labour. I loved them both, just for being there with me.