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.”

The distraction had the desired effect and everyone giggled, derailing the conversation. Even Heather looked suitably impressed. I mouthed, “Are you OK?” and she gave a thumbs-up. As suspected, the group were too inebriated to take her digs in, all of them focusing on the almost finished rows of rocky powder. I was still pissed at Jessica. This was the sort of behavior that had made me wary about having her back in my life. But my outrage was dwarfed by a stronger feeling—a pull to the powder. Cocaine. Shit. I hadn’t taken it in forever. Not since I started university. Not since I was friends with Jessica...

Frederick started asking people if they’d watched the latest David Attenborough about deforestation, and the conversation moved away from the coke to them all agreeing how important the rain forest is. Heather started urgently whispering to Katie. I heard, “Oh, because cocaine production has nothing to do with ruining the rainforest either.” I tuned her out and leaned into Ben, our hands still interlaced. “Are you all right?” I asked. “Jessica... I didn’t know.”

“It’s fine. It’s quite funny really.”

“I mean, it’s your colleagues.”