House music

Me and Hayley went out dancing the other night. We got back at about five, whispering so as not to provoke the angry lump in the next room.

We got into bed and she plugged herself into some house music while I attempted some pre-school sleep. There was a comfort from the mdma, her body touching mine, the ticking music. A couple of hours later she was delighed to find my bottles of poppers on the table, so we sat up snorting them and drinking from some minty Bulgarian liquer thing which I bought one needy night from the nearest shop open.

Her boyfriend rang inopportunely, as the toxic fug throbbed. She told him she was at mine. "Are you in his bed?" "Yes. It's nice and warm." Are you really in his bed? Are you being sarcastic?"

She paused and made a grimace, rushing, in more ways than one, her answer. "Yes of course!" After having answered his queries about where she was going, what she was doing, she came back to me, laughing and imitating him. "He said 'what if I said I was going to spend the night at Dawn's?' I said 'I wouldn't give a shit!'"

"I'm not that bothered anyway, if he carries on like this. I can get someone else," and I felt momentarily bitter about her having that choice, her valuable currency in the economy of attractiveness.

Walking into town, Hayley still in her nightclub clothes, a man about my age, sitting in the window seat of a cafe, gave her a disgusted looking scan, finishing for too long on her miniskirt: a disgust with his own desires perhaps. I went to the window, leant towards him; give him the finger and told him to fuck off. I felt all manly and protective, safely picking on someone weaker than myself.

After what seemed an endless wait, but was in fact twenty-four hours, Cath rings to tell me I've got the room in the suburban Edwardian house, and I move in today. There were two conditions: that I don't take showers between 10.30pm and 6.30am, as the noisy old pipes will wake everyone up, and that I can give her a reference from my current landlady together with a phone number for her.

I needed someone to impersonate for me. The person I trust most to recite the story convincingly, and to improvise if thrown any unexpected questions, is a longstanding reader of this blog. He adroitly pulled off the dissembling phone call and contacted me to say it had gone well. "She seemed to like you." I was -- am -- hugely grateful and relieved. If ever you need an alibi, my friend, ring me first.

Since informing her of my departure, Unhinged Landlady has been working herself up with valedictory sallies of sniping. She asked me with whom I'll be living. "Well,", she responded, the woman won't like you." I smiled, said nothing, went to my room. None of this is really to do with me. The woman's an unhappy bully, uncivilised, not fully formed.