After Marcia she moved on to shopping, rabbiting on and on about triumphant forays to Dickins and Jones, dignified rebukes to shop assistants, the matching saucers tracked down, the jersey with the pulled thread returned. Really I wasn’t up to it at all.

Behind her the accountant was making more code signs trying to get me on to the dance floor, and out of the corner of my eye I could see the rugger player waiting to tackle from the left. The flatmate who hadn’t been able to have a bath was dancing with the goat, which seemed appropriate. Perhaps they were having a pong-pong match. A couple were necking unashamedly on the next door armchair, the man’s hand well advanced into the girl’s blouse. I was terrified Marcia’s mother would see them. Marcia had turned up the volume to drown the more excessive of the rugger songs and the distant sounds of some of the fruit salad being regurgitated in the lavatory.

I couldn’t hear a word Marcia’s mother was saying. My only hope was to watch her teeth and laugh when she did. I was in despair; my glass was empty; I thought of sending out maroons. I knew as a copywriter and as a potential novelist I ought to be studying the old monster. One day I might want to put her in the book. The true writer’s supposed never to be bored by anyone, but what was the point of studying her if I’d be far too drunk to remember anything about her in the morning?

Suddenly I saw Pendle through a gap. He was talking to the blonde with dirty fingernails, but he was glancing at his watch and had the abstracted look of a referee about to blow his whistle. That decided me.

‘I must get you some of Marcia’s delicious pudding,’ I yelled in her ear, and floundered towards the food table. Marcia passed me going in the other direction.