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slump down into the couch. It is Croxy, looking fucked, and Breeny, looking fresh, but wondering how he’s missed out on a session, and they’ve actually brought some more beer up. Funny, but this doesn’t produce any elation. It just makes that particular beer I cherished seem tepid, stagnant and undrinkable.
    But there are more!
    So more beers are drunk, more foolhardy deals are concocted and more rocks appear, Croxy knocking up a pipe out of an old placky lemonade bottle to compliment Bernie’s activities, and pretty soon we’re all fucked up again. This Val lassie’s stumbled back in, looking like a refugee that’s just been turfed out a fucking camp. Which, I suppose, is exactly what she is. She signals over to Tanya and she gets up and they head off without saying a word.
    I’m aware that an argument between Bernie and Breeny is getting increasingly heated. We’re out of ammonia and have had to move on to bicarb to wash up, which requires greater skill and Breeny’s giving Bernie a hard time about his wasting of gear. — You’re messin up, ya fughin prick, he says, his mouth half full of semi-broken yellow and black teeth.
    Bernie says something back and I’m thinking about how I have to work later and should get some shut-eye. As I head down the hallway and open the door, I hear shouting and the unmistakable sound of glass breaking. I consider going back for about one second but decide that my presence would only complicate an already messy situation. I slip quietly out the front door and close it behind me, shutting out the screams and threats. Then I’m out and off down the road.
    When I get back to the Hackney shithouse, which I must now call home, I’m sweating, shaking and cursing my stupidity and weakness as the Great Eastern from Liverpool Street to Norwich rumbles the building again.

2
    ‘. . . the attachments . . .’
    C olin gets up and out of the bed. By the bay window he takes shape in a silhouette. My eyes fall upon his hanging cock. It’s almost guilty-looking, caught as it is in a triangle of moonlight as he opens the blinds. — I can’t understand it. He turns and I register his apologetic gallows grin as the light washes his tight dark curls to silver. It also shows me the bags under his eyes, and the unsightly sack of flesh hanging beneath his chin.
    On Colin: a middle-aged fuck of whom we must now add declining sexual prowess to reducing social and intellectual interest. It’s time now. God, is it time.
    I stretch in the bed, feeling the coolness in my legs, and twist to flush out the last spasm of my frustration. Turning away from him, I bring my knees up to my chest.
    — I know it may seem like a cliché, but this genuinely has never happened to me before. It’s like . . . this year the bastards have given me four extra hours of seminar groups and two extra hours of lecturing. Last night I was up all night marking papers. Miranda’s giving me a hard time, and the kids are so fucking demanding . . . there’s no time to be me . There’s no time to be Colin Addison. Who cares anyway? Who the fuck cares about Colin Addison?
    I can vaguely hear this whining lament to erections lost as I begin to stumble down the ladder of consciousness into sleep.
    — Nikki? Can you hear me?
    — Mmm . . .
    — What I’m thinking is that we need to normalise our relationship. And this isn’t just a spur-of-the-moment thing. Miranda and I: it’s run its course. Oh, I know what you’re going to say, and yes, there have been other girls, other students, for sure there have, he says, now letting a satisfied air slip into his tone. The male ego may seem fragile, but it doesn’t, in my experience, take too long to repair itself, — . . . but they’ve all been teenagers and it’s just been a bit of daft fun. The thing is, you’re more mature, you’re twenty-five, there’s not that much of an age difference between us, and it’s different with you. It’s not just