‘I have an influential daddy. I’m going to write a column about the injustice of it as soon as I get home.’

‘Plagiarist.’

Sophie’s new friend was lighting my new friend’s cigarette.

‘He’s handsome.’

‘He is.’

‘Aren’t you going to say, “So are you”?’

‘You’re very handsome. I adore you.’

‘Really?’

‘Come on. Your eyes are like saucers. Let’s get a beer.’

*

I was hugging Rochi. I hadn’t seen her since she’d curtailed my expectations. She was beautiful. She was – where was she? I’d lost her.

*

And whoosh. Mary was on the phone. I was still on my own. ‘Meet me in—’ ‘You’re cutting out!’ ‘Nathan’s not—’ ‘I can’t hear you!’ ‘—you a text!’ ‘I’m not getting texts! Hello! Hello!’

*

Text received 7.04 p.m.: Meet me by the mixing desk opposite main stage at 7.30. I’ll wait for you there. Nathan off with new gf. Jonathan doesn’t reply. I’m on my own, having shit time. Please come!

*

I was dancing on my own by the mixing desk of the main stage, hoping Mary would come along, though I’d arrived twenty-five minutes late. A woman in a vest with I Have No Tits written across it put her finger in a baggie and offered it to me. I sucked it. Disgusting. Thank you very much. Have some of my beer. Let’s get more beer. I like your T-shirt. I like your glasses.

Into the VIP area, where there was no one important, just Stev’n, Macaulay Culkin and Jerry the Deviant. The toilets were magnificent. Kissing. More kissing. Mouths too dry. We needed beer to kiss. Back to the bar for beer. Hello! said Stev’n! Hello! said Becky! Hello! said Sophie! Into the toilets again with her. I Have No Tits disappeared, never to be seen again. Hello! said Sophie’s tall irregular man. He was wearing a hat he was not wearing before. All together now.

*

The music stopped and we were on the streets again, clanking down the road with some of our new friends and enemies, carrier bags full of beer and Prosecco, ice and Irish whiskey. Stev’n’s flat was at the top of an old warehouse on Dalston Lane.

Where are you? said my phone, which had 3 per cent battery left.

Stev’n’s. Want to come? Just round the corner from ours. Flat 8, 2 Dalston Lane.

No answer before the phone died.

No Mary either.

Smoking with the taller man on the long balcony all the length of the big open living room. The rasp of a nitrous oxide machine from the other end of the balcony where a boy and a girl giggled under a blanket.

‘So I just go in buildings and value them up. By space, mostly, times area value. Age. Here, Sophie, she says you two, you’re not, er…?’

‘Something in-between.’

‘What, like…?’

‘I really don’t know what like.’

*