‘Er, rent?’ she said, pouring the last of a bottle of wine we’d been sharing. ‘Seven hundred and fifty pounds a month for that little box room you’ve just shown me. Isn’t that enough? I know, I know: they’re all paying the same. They’re not the ones I should be angry with: they’re just trying to check if I’m tidy and sane; trying to claim some power for themselves and act like the middle managers they aspire to become one day. They’re the same as me, the same as all of us, we’re all fucked. And you and Jonathan have ruined me for normal company. I think there’s something sinister going on if someone isn’t questioning my decisions, or talking in the world-weary voice of a man who’s lived for a thousand years.’

‘Thirty-four thousand next week,’ I reminded her.

*

To celebrate my birthday and commiserate the end of our time living together we blagged our way onto the guest list of a dance music festival in Victoria Park. Sophie was going with her friends, also on freebies. For us fringe members of the media class, this was the closest we could come to feeling like the tax exiles or expense-fiddling MPs we despised and envied, and we took on a certain hauteur as we approached the gates en masse and headed to the guest entrance, looking on with horror at the longer queues for those who had paid to get in.

I did not feel superior for very long. My friends put their heads down and scattered into the festival when a sniffer dog lunged for my trousers.

*

‘Do you have any drugs in your possession, sir?’ asked the owner of the drug dog, and when I denied I did he explained that because the dog could smell what she thought were drugs on me I was going to have to be arrested and strip-searched. The dog was delighted with herself, the little snitch. ‘Have you taken any drugs recently, sir? Could that be it?’

Oh, yes, I said. ‘I spilled a line of coke on these trousers last night, just there where your dog was sniffing. That must be it.’