I didn’t do as much coke then as I used to when I was younger, and I’ve resolved never to touch it again. It’s not that I ever enjoyed the effects of the drug on its own so much as the intimacy of consumption, the pockets of time alone with a friend to do something quiet and secret and then return, altered and better prepared for the busy room and brand-new people we had temporarily escaped. The appeal of cigarettes had increased enormously for me when you had to go outside for them.

None of us had any coke, but we were in a place designed for making lines and so we yearned for some.

‘Ask Cockburn if he has any,’ I suggested.

Sophie texted. The phone buzzed back immediately. ‘He’s getting some,’ she told me.

In the meantime we sipped gin and tonics and waited.

*

It is no wonder that places that are unbearable without drugs are so popular: they provide such a good reason to do drugs, to ring a number and prove our ingenious ability to satisfy our needs. So we can remove the awkwardness of our boundaries; so it feels natural to reach over and put our hands in each other’s hair and draw our mouths together.

Cockburn had arrived with what we wanted and we had been talking for what might have been hours now.

‘You need to be careful,’ Sophie was telling him. ‘My generation are going to want to burn your houses down.’

‘No they won’t. They’ll be too worried about not inheriting them.’

‘There won’t be anything left,’ she said. ‘You’ll have mortgaged them all to pay Harley Street doctors who say they can make you immortal. You’ll have spunked it all on Viagra and opioid sleeping tablets.’

‘And security guards,’ said Cockburn. ‘With big guns.’

I was enjoying talking to Rochi on my side of the table. She was a TV development executive who spent her Saturdays scrubbing scales and removing guts at a fishmonger’s in Hackney. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘It’s a skill,’ she said. ‘I like having a real skill.’

We got in the habit of going out in pairs to smoke, she and I, Cockburn and Sophie.

‘Do you think they’re getting off with each other when we’re out smoking?’ Rochi asked.

‘He’s too old for her, isn’t he?’

‘She doesn’t mind old guys. It annoys her dad. That’s why I thought maybe you and her were going to hit it off.’

‘He is significantly older than me, you know?’

‘You all look the same to me.’

Next time we were in the booth alone I asked, ‘Do you think they’re out there wondering if we’re getting off with each other?’

‘Definitely,’ she said, and we looked at each other for a moment before we leaned in.

‌

‌Ten