The suite was decorated to give an impression of imperialism: the drapes were heavy red velvet, the wallpaper was patterned with broad stripes of red and gold, the furniture was commodious and heavily padded. Yet the sealed test-tubes of mineral water, the leafy projections of bulbs that emerged from the wall on slender stems of iron, the bank of remote controls that governed sound, heat, lighting and refreshment, making almost any small desire simultaneous with its fulfilment, were all impeccably modern. The room made us feel the weight of our wallets, and we began to spread out, to throw glasses, to tap ash on the carpets, phone room service for more champagne. The suite demanded such behaviour, and its opulence helped us to slip the last tethers of frugality. We indulged in the lawlessness of the rich, leaving the coke out on the table when the bellboy came, refusing to tip him, and shouting at passersby from our balcony above Kensington Gardens. At last, I felt we had been returned to the paradise of my first term, where money was freedom. I began to allow myself to believe that it was true, that from now on all would be as it had been, when we were happy. The night was perfect in its isolation from consequence, brief and beautiful like an advert for something expensive. At first some element of my intellect detached itself, to savour the fact of what I was doing as well as the sensations. I wanted to be us even though I was: I felt the same aspirational pang I used to feel seeing the perfect bodies on TV. I wanted to sustain every second, but each one shrunk like cooling metal at the touch of the next.

‘What will you do?’ I asked Francis as he sat with his arms spread out across the back of the sofa at three o’clock, with half the cocaine gone. ‘With your share.’

Jessica looked at me with a little shock, and then grinned broadly, putting her white teeth on display. I was breaking the last taboo. In the months of preparation, the idea of success had seemed so remote that the four of us had never dared to mention the possible future, afraid of scaring off our wildest dreams with eagerness even as they drew closer to where we lay in wait.