“Oh my God, it’s been a very long time since I’ve...dabbled,” Ben admitted, and I must’ve really loved the man if I still loved him after he used the word dabbled.

“I was such a stoner at uni,” Joanie admitted. “Gained a stone. Best stone of my life.”

And, before anyone knew what to do, Jessica had reached into her handbag, her trademark grin on her face, and held up a stuffed white baggie. “Did someone say drugs?” she asked.

The chatter hit a full stop, everyone staring at Jessica and the bag of cocaine in her manicured hands. She laughed lightly. “What? It’s only some coke.”

“Where the hell did you get drugs from?” I asked.

Jessica shrugged. “A drug dealer?”

Ben and I shared many things in one look. Panic. Ben’s colleagues were here...

“Amazing,” Douglas clapped his hands. “I can’t believe you just produced drugs like that. If I say how much I want a red Ferrari, will one appear outside?”

Jessica laughed her tinkly laugh. “I’ll see what I can do. Anyway,” she tapped the bag with her finger. “Who’s in?”

I found myself in the weirdly nostalgic position of looking around my peers to see who said what first. Heather, never one to care about peer pressure, shook her head. “It’s a no from me. But you go ahead.”

Joanie strained her neck over her empty bowl, eyeing the bag. “Is it ethically sourced?” she asked. “I only do cocaine if it’s woke.”

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.