I scanned the other faces in the photo. ‘Have any of these guys made it big?’

She moved to my side so we were shoulder to shoulder and I felt electrified by the touch of her arm against mine. ‘Freya’s understudying at the Gielgud at the moment. Oh, this guy, Rollo, he’s touring in the Far East with a great company. The problem is, you get a gig like that and then it ends and you’re back to square one. Back to bar work to pay the rent.’

‘I’ve done it the wrong way round,’ I quipped. ‘Maybe now I’ve got the café job, I need to become an actor?’

Melia cocked her head. ‘I actually think you’d be good, Jamie.’

‘Based on what?’ Clare asked her, laughing. I hadn’t realized she’d been listening. ‘I can always tell when he’s lying.’

‘There must be a slight difference between acting and lying,’ I pointed out. ‘Otherwise half the population would be auditioning for the RSC.’

Melia repeated the remark as if committing it to memory. In her own home, there was a subtle difference to her manner. She was more adult, challenging, even a little intimidating, as if she were in the one place where life worked on her terms instead of other people’s.

We chatted about my career counselling – ‘I’m going to be master of my own narrative’ – and when I next looked I saw that Kit had Melia’s cast photo on his knee and was dividing a small pile of powder into lines, vertical arrows through the bodies of each of the figures. I glanced at Clare, knowing I would need to take her lead, which was almost certainly to abstain since we hadn’t done drugs in years. But when Kit passed it to her, she peered at faces in the photograph and laughed.

‘I need to know who I’m abusing here.’

‘Go for Si, on the right,’ Kit said. ‘He works in Harrods in small electricals now. He was the one we all thought would make it, as well.’

‘You get Melia,’ Kit told me, indicating the line running up the centre of her skimpily costumed figure.

I could tell the coke was finer quality than in the old days. I felt instantly, shockingly pleased with myself, a sentiment reflected in the dilated gazes of the others in the room. God knows how much time was spent finding one another fascinating before Clare said, ‘Are we actually eating this evening?’

‘Oh, yeah, there’s stuff in the oven,’ Melia said, as if she’d forgotten quite what.

‘I can check for you,’ I said. ‘I need to get some water.’

I congratulated myself on the water, which I felt showed a level of self-preservation.

‘Grab another bottle of red from the rack, will you?’ Kit said.

The layout of the flat was from the original conversion, the galley kitchen at the back, next to the bathroom. Its sash window was half open, and in a neighbouring garden a dog barked and was loudly shushed by its owner.

Having filled the water jug and picked up the wine, I turned to find that Melia had arrived in the narrow space and was standing with her back to the door, blocking my exit. I smiled, wine bottle in one hand and jug in the other. ‘Any particular reason you’re barring my way?’

‘I just wanted you to myself for a minute.’

‘That’s nice,’ I said, uncertainly.

‘It is nice.’ She took a step towards me, her platforms soft on the tile, and added, in case I’d misunderstood, ‘I’m really attracted to you, Jamie.’

Well. Without the chemical boost, I’d have assumed I was being pranked; even with it, I thought this was not a declaration to be taken at face value, though she’d inched so close I could feel her breath. Was this some pre-arranged wife-swapping proposal? But hearing Kit and Clare in the living room arguing about Brexit, I thought not.

‘You don’t believe me, do you? Why would I lie?’ She gave a smoky sigh. ‘I’m going to have to show you.’

With both hands full, I was completely exposed to her wraithlike embrace, arms snaking around my chest, her fingers moving over the back of my neck, small high breasts compressed between our ribcages. Her confidence was audacious, even insulting, and in my mind I pictured myself shaking her from me, asking her what the hell she thought she was doing. In reality, however, I was kissing her, responding to the pressure of her instinctually, mindlessly. Occasionally the silky fabric of her jumpsuit would touch my bare skin, its frictionless contact wildly erotic.

I have no idea how long this went on for – thirty seconds, perhaps even a minute – but we came to only when we heard Kit’s voice from the other side of the door. ‘Me? Can you bring another bottle of white, as well?’

Melia detached from me as efficiently as she’d attached herself. ‘No problem, babe,’ she called.

There was the roar of the extractor fan as the bathroom light was turned on and then the sound of the door closing. In a few deft moves, she swiped a bottle from the fridge, eased the red from my hand, and swivelled, hooking the door open with her foot. Left alone with the water jug, my sleeve drenched from the motions of our clinch, I could only wonder if what I’d just experienced had been a quantum leap with consequences for all four of us or the opposite: ephemeral, weightless, a sweet suburban lapse never to be mentioned again and remembered in old age with fond nostalgia.

Back with the others, gender lines prevailed, Melia plunging instantly into some deep heart-to-heart with Clare while Kit and I co-DJed. The food, unchecked, had to be abandoned and a takeaway ordered.

*

‘I think we overdid it last night,’ Clare groaned, delivering tea and paracetamol to the bedside the next morning. No longer morning, in fact, I saw, nudging my phone from under the pillow and seeing the time. Sitting back on her pillows beside me, she looked like I felt: destroyed. ‘Good to remind ourselves why we don’t do drugs. They’re too old for it, let alone us! Never again.’

Struggling upright, I ignored the white streaks in my vision and downed the tea while she googled a story about a middle-aged couple going to bed after a cocaine binge and not waking up again. In the cold light of day it struck me as extraordinary that in these straitlaced times Melia should have done drugs in front of a work superior. But, then, that wasn’t the only line she had crossed so incautiously last night – my memory functioned well enough for me to be clear that it had been she who initiated our kiss. What had I been thinking, kissing her back like that?

I hadn’t been thinking, that was the problem.

‘Who’s this Steve bloke Melia told me about?’ Clare asked, cradling her mug. With her head lowered, the shadows under her eyes were dark, ghoulish.

‘He’s a friend from the boat. I don’t think she’s met him, has she?’

‘No. What’s he like?’

‘He’s okay. A bit full of himself.’

‘Everyone’s full of themselves these days. Where did all the shrinking violets and wallflowers go?’ Clare groaned. ‘Anyway, Melia’s very suspicious of him. I wondered if you two had words about him in the kitchen.’

I made a sound in my throat like a blocked pipe. ‘No, not at all. Why?’

‘Just that when you came back, she went on and on about him, how he’s a bad influence on Kit, that kind of thing.’