‘Have you done this before?’ he said quite gently as he used a razor to cut it into lines.

‘Yes,’ I lied.

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t have to do it now, if you don’t want to.’

‘I do want to.’

‘I’ll cut two.’

Francis went first. I was shocked by how loud the noise was when he snorted, and how inelegant it looked to have your head pressed down into the table, doubled over on your seat. He came up and shook his head around, blinking at me once or twice as if surprised to find me still there. As I took the rolled note in my hand, my mind filled with a jumble of random warnings, facts and urban legends about the dangers of drug-taking. As I lowered my head to the picture, it felt like walking against the wind, leaning against the forces of years of good advice from parents, politicians and friends. I wondered if I would be the one in a hundred who suffers an allergic reaction. I did my line, trying to copy what Francis had done. When I came up I gripped his shoulder with the strength of a drowning man. I waited for my throat to close, for my eyes to roll back in their sockets. Then I felt a surge of triumph that washed away my fear, and my heart hammered along to keep up with the emotion. He looked into my eyes, laughing, and gripped my shoulder as I was gripping his, so that we turned inwards in symmetry. I thought, Now, I am experiencing things.

‘Hey,’ I said, suddenly inspired, wanting to seem like I knew what I was doing, ‘that’s good stuff.’

‘Only the best for my friends,’ Francis said. He rubbed the surface of the sketch with his finger, and then gummed the residue. He picked it up, and hung it back in place. ‘You know, if you ever get caught short, and I’m not around, you can usually scrape a spare line off Picasso.’

We both laughed at this, and he grabbed his scarf. At the time it felt quite unselfconscious, but it was with such acts that Francis crafted his mythos. After that, I felt I had edged a little closer to them all, as we had another thing to share, and another wall between us and the everyday world. The mystery of their bathroom trips, quick elations and unfinished dinners was solved. We never did too much, perhaps once or twice a fortnight, as Jessica said we had to keep it ‘special’. If Francis sometimes failed to keep it as special as she would have liked, nothing was said. Lisa never touched drugs. If offered, she would dismiss them with a quick shake of her head, and say, ‘Nah, man, I don’t do that shit.’ Michael too kept his nose clean, anticipating the plush green leather of government. As with everything, Francis paid.