It is half past ten and a different decade and cold. I went away for a while, and in the meantime I have possibly forgotten how to string words together in pleasing ways, the only words I really write now being ones like concurrently or thus or lexical.

Tonight I am going to the ball. (I do not have to be back at 12, and if I lose my shoes I doubt any man will pick them up.) Yesterday we sat in my room and did things to our faces and our hair and our nails, and the air smelt of at least four nail polishes, like bananas. A will be there too, in shirt with ruffs down the front. I won’t go away this time, he promised last night, but if  you all dance I’ll be lonely. A does not dance. I will dance anyway, and despite the wine red polka dress which won’t let me breathe.

 A says he is going to America next year, which I am sure has something to do with Max’ one way ticket to Hong Kong. Max still makes moonshine and has his drawer of vice, cigarettes and Prozac and valium. I will move to London or go back home or stalk C in Berlin where she is in love with someone also called Max and living with a parrot and toastable schnitzels in cardboard pop-art boxes. None of us are hopeful. What can you do with an English degree? We came out of the media careers fair sighing and dragging our feet. J says he wishes he’d taken physics.