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on the grass, in the early-morning light. He came at her like a hungry animal, licking and eating. She was quick to respond.
     
    Looking back on that night, she reckoned that Christos had lit something up in her that she had never known about before, and she was grateful to him for it.
     
    As they walked back across the Heath in the warm morning sun, Rose thought that she had very high hopes for this one. They kept stopping for deep, devouring kisses, adding more ache to their already tired mouths and faces.
     
    ‘Would you like to come in for coffee?’ she asked with a smile when they arrived on the doorstep of the flat she shared with Polly.
     
    ‘I’d like to come in and fuck you some more,’ he whispered. ‘Then I’d like to sleep with you.’
     
    So he did. As usual, Polly had been partying all night and had gone to bed leaving the place looking as if a bomb had hit it, but for once, Rose couldn’t care less.
     
    They woke in the late afternoon and lay in bed, listening to the Sunday silence. Rose got up to make a cup of tea for them both, and was annoyed to see that Polly still hadn’t cleared up from the night before. She also noticed that there, amongst all the beer cans and vodka bottles, was a dirty set of works and spillages of white powder on the coffee-table. Not for the first time, Rose thought that if Polly didn’t sort herself out soon, she was going to have to start thinking about taking the almost unbearable step of leaving this flat and living a life apart from her friend. As she crossed the floor towards Polly’s room, she indulged in a little fantasy, where she moved into a cottage on a cliff by the sea with Christos and was finally able to stand on her own two feet.
     
    She was working out how many children they would have when she knocked on Polly’s door.
     
    ‘Poll? You awake? Want a cup of tea?’
     
    There was no reply. Rose knocked again. Surely she couldn’t have gone out and left all that crap out there?
     
    Carefully, she opened the door and there was Polly, completely naked, sprawled on her back across her bed, strings of drying vomit in her black hair and blood smeared around her face and pillow. She was the same colour that Rose and Gareth would later choose to paint their living-room walls: duck egg blue.
     
    Rose ran to her and took her pulse. She thought she could feel something, but it was hard to tell because her own heart was pounding so strongly. She grabbed a mirror from Polly’s bedside table and held it to her face, sprinkling tiny grains of white powder over her as she did so. It steamed up, so she was breathing, slightly.
     
    Rose began shaking her, trying to wake her, but Polly just flopped back like a bluebell a day after picking.
     
    Then Christos was by her side. He was completely naked.
     
    ‘Is that—?’ he asked.
     
    ‘Yes, it’s her.’
     
    ‘Polly Novak?’ he gasped. Rose had kept the fact of her famous flatmate a secret from her Goldsmiths friends.
     
    ‘Yes. Look, she’s not well. You’ve got to call an ambulance.’ Rose held Polly to her breast, shaking now only inside herself. Christos gently put his arms around Rose and kissed her hair.
     
    ‘You go, Rosa. I know what to do – this happened to a friend of mine. I’ll lift her up, get her walking around. You go: I’m stronger, you know the address and everything.’
     
    So Rose went to call the ambulance and the emergency operator asked a whole string of questions like what Polly had been taking, when and how much. There wasn’t much Rose could say definitely, but she answered as truthfully as she could. Who cared if it caused a scandal? Polly needed to stop what she was doing or the next time Rose found her, she might not be breathing. Despite the messed-up living rooms and the chaotic lifestyle, when it came down to it, Rose couldn’t bear to think of what her life would be without her.
     
    The operator finally let Rose go, saying the ambulance would be there as