Heather stifled a giggle next to me while Jessica nodded. “Oh yeah. My dealer said so anyway.”

“Brilliant,” Joanie did two thumbs-up. “All right then. A line would be great. Thank you.”

Time flickered as I watched my friend rack up a line. We could’ve been in the dank toilet of a shit gig venue, snorting up off a tampon bin, not in my flat in Victoria Park Village.

“I’ll have one too,” Frederick said. “And let us know the number of your dealer. We had to stop using ours when we found out his woke coke was still quite...asleep.”

Heather really did laugh then. I sort of couldn’t blame her. “Really? Was the cocaine from a Colombian drug cartel not fair trade after all? Shocking!”

“I have to say,” Ben added. “I’ve never heard of woke coke before.”

I desperately tried to make eye contact with him, to figure out what the hell he thought of this pharmaceutical detour, but he just seemed genuinely interested by the ethical story line of Jessica’s gram.

Douglas took it upon himself to explain. “It’s just a joke term for a serious issue actually,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose, using the sort of voice I could imagine he used to his class. “I mean, if they’re not going to stop this pointless war on drugs and ensure ethical supply lines, some dealers have started posting it, for example, to stop local turf wars et cetera. It makes it less problematic.” He turned to Jessica. “I’d love a line actually, if that’s OK? Thank you.”

“Coming right up.”

I could sense Heather’s bullshit radar scanning the room, taking no prisoners. Her wife could too, as I saw Katie take Heather’s hand under the table.

“This is fascinating, fascinating,” Heather said, leaning over with her arms crossed. “Wow, so, like, have all the female drugs mules, who get threatened and coerced into stuffing the coke up their vaginas and risk horrific jail sentences to get it here, they’re like, empowered and stuff?”

Jessica, busy making a fourth and fifth line, didn’t notice the sarcasm and nodded. “Yeah. They get paid more, you see?”

“Wow.” Heather leaned back. “So if they get paid a bit more, we know they’re choosing to do this?”

“Well it might be better than other options,” Jessica said, glancing up to smile before returning to her job.

“Douglas? If that’s the case, you should totally get a drugs mule into your college to motivate your female students? It might be a line of work they’ve not considered.”

Ben, sensing the danger, reached out and laced his fingers with mine. “Ha, line of work,” he said, with a boom of faux laughter. “What a pun.”