My next big mistake came a year or so later. I still had my own flat (a slightly larger one in the same building as the bedsit), but spent the majority of my time at Tommy’s place. One Monday morning, when I had actually slept in my own bed (the restaurant no longer opened on Sunday evenings), I received a phone call from Tommy at about 4am. He was in some sort of panic and told me he was coming round to see me.

When he arrived, he explained that something had gone wrong with a drug deal he was doing. The police had swooped and he had managed to run away and evade them. It was really important, he said, that if the police got in touch with me, I should tell them that I spent the whole night with him. He told me a simple timeline that I was to adhere to and then we spent an hour cleaning every area of my flat that we thought might have any evidence of drugs. I was to go to the restaurant at 7am and do the same for his flat. He had already been there to clear out the stuff he knew of, but he wanted me to go over the place with a fine-tooth comb. I, of course, agreed. He needed to get some sleep.

The police arrested him at work around lunchtime and then called at my flat to take a statement from me. I stuck to the story and later that evening Tommy arrived at work a free man. He was smiling like a horse and hugged me so hard that my bra came off. For the next three months he treated me like a princess who was number one in the charts. The late-night ‘lock-ins’ at his flat stopped happening and we actually lived like something akin to a married couple. I made a concerted effort never to flirt with anyone in Tommy’s presence and he often bought me little gifts of jewellery and fancy clothes. It really was pleasant enough. I even persuaded him to cut his hair and lose the ponytail. Once removed, I saturated it with hairspray and mounted it above the bar in the restaurant. It had a small plaque underneath that read ‘Tommy’s Tale’.