‘Yes. Please. Immediately. Go off sick from now till your notice is served; fuck their threats.’

‘Have you signed the contract?’ she asked.

‘Rich is emailing it over tomorrow. And I’ll go with you on Monday to make sure you don’t chicken out.’

The second secret to their success was that they had fun together. Shit happened, of course it did, but if Mary had something planned with Roddie, she never once wondered if she’d have a good time. It was a given. They both insisted on heavy and regular doses of the stuff, particularly after a period of separation.

‘You mean it?’ The idea of never going back was too good.

‘You are no longer a criminal-justice social worker.’

‘I can’t abandon my guys without saying anything.’

‘Yes, you can. You are never going back. I promise. Never. That’s it, done, finito. The rest of your life is about this: us, you and me. From now on, I am the breadwinner. I am an international sensation who’s just arrived from an overseas tour, and you know what that means?’

She did know. It meant fun.

‘I note we have a bubbled bath.’ Roddie said. ‘Do we have wine?’

‘We have wine.’

‘Do we have cannabis?’

‘Yes, we have cannabis. Shit, no, I flushed it.’ Pause. ‘But we do have cocaine.’

Roddie was wearing one of the surgical masks he bought in preparation for the inevitable chaos of the millennium bug. He’d retrieved it from the zombie-apocalypse cupboard in the hall. Mary hoped he didn’t notice the canned goods she’d skimmed in the last week for the impromptu food bank she ran from her car boot. She hadn’t had time to replace them.

Hands gloved, apron on, he leaned over the first of the three takeaway containers he’d filled with water and decreasing amounts of bleach. With the steady tweezers of a celebrated chin-hair-plucker, Roddie rotated the rubber package, studying the rate at which the chlorinated-water turned brown. When satisfied, he repeated the process in takeaway container two, then three, before placing a pristine-looking balloon on a sheet of kitchen paper and spraying it with disinfectant.

‘I can’t see any.’ Roddie steadied the package with his tweezers, cut the rubber ball with his least favourite knife, and the white powder revealed itself. Their evening was born.

‘You think some specks will have seeped in?’

‘I’m a hundred percent certain,’ said Roddie.

Mary scooped the powder onto a dinner plate and tidied it with her Glasgow Library card. ‘Wanna snort some shit?’

Ever since Jack moved out, Mary and Roddie had ordered a gram of Mandy from Johnny each month as a payday treat, and set aside an evening together to dabble in various combinations of the following activities:

Brainstorming business ventures, such as an artist’s retreat (Roddie’s idea) or the lottery (Mary’s).