Stev’n and Culkin had set out various plates of drugs in the bedroom and this had taken most of the people out of the living room to ingest them. Becky and Annie were queuing to do lines off a chest of drawers. The walls were covered with blow-ups of White Jesus shoots. A girl in cut-off dungarees and chunky men’s shoes, lying on her front across the seats of a Tube carriage. A woman in a white dress and bright blue eye make-up covered in cockroaches. A woman in a 1950s housedress kneeling in front of an open oven. A sexy female soldier carrying a gun. A photographic tribute to John William Waterhouse, except the woman is carrying a large rock into the water with her. The white legs and broken body of a woman taken from the balcony from which she has jumped. The en-suite bathroom with its door open which Stev’n said women can use only if they don’t close the door. ‘Just joking!’ he said, when Becky and Annie said in which case they were leaving.

‘You better had be. Jesus, what is that? That’s not coke,’ said Annie.

‘You wanted coke?’

‘You told me that was coke,’ she said.

Macaulay Culkin laughed and fell back on the bed. ‘That’s ketamine, baby.’

The walls were painted pale pink. A wardrobe covered one side of the wall, full to the brim with shirts decorated with small skulls, and jewellery made from the small skulls of animals, tortured and killed by Stev’n, and a collection of ankle socks worn by the models on his covers. Annie said she couldn’t stand up any more.

‘Here, this is coke,’ offered Stev’n.

But we didn’t let Annie have any. Becky and I propped her up and walked her back to the sofa in the living room.

‘I can see myself from a camera in the corner of the room,’ she said. ‘I can see I’m the village drunk but can’t do anything about it.’

And then she started to be sick into a carrier bag that I grabbed quickly and Becky held for her while I rubbed her back.

Sophie came in to check on us. ‘Was that an accident?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Becky.

‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘Let’s leave. This is a horrible party. I can’t believe I work for this prick.’

‘He’s totally vile,’ said Sophie. ‘But it’s quite interesting to study him. Perhaps I’ll write about him.’

The surveyor came in and said he had in his possession what he knew one hundred per cent to be coke.

‘Can I have some?’ said Sophie.

‘Sure. I’ll put some out in the other bedroom.’

Sophie left to have a ‘quick line with him’.

I carried on talking to Becky. Stroking Annie’s head. Becky called an Uber for them.