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round his bedroom, disconsolately chucking clothes and toiletries into a Gucci suitcase.
    With exquisite timing, Ali buzzed from downstairs just as I was beginning to twitch. I hoisted Stan’s case and he picked up his laptop and mobile. Bloody hell. Less than twenty-four hours ago the highest-tech item in the co-op was Maggot’s toaster. Now all of a sudden we were drowning in a sea of laptops and mobiles.
    Ali was waiting for us outside in the co-op’s battered old transit van. I sat next to him, and spent the entire journey recounting my routing of armed and violent gangsters in a high-pitched, breathless gabble. Ali sat listening impassively. Actually, I couldn’t be sure he was listening at all until I paused for breath, at which point he nodded slowly and said, ‘Cool.’ Praise indeed. Stan sat in the back in complete silence, apart from when he said, ‘I’m going to be sick,’ which fortunately was just the once.
    Back at Nirvana, Ali strode off to try to get hold of the others for an emergency meeting. Stan probably wasn’t any happier at the idea of being my house-guest than I was, but necessity makes strange bedfellows. Or something. It was obvious he couldn’t stay at the apartment, and I couldn’t think of a better plan for now.
    He stumbled upstairs, either oblivious to or unimpressed by Murder in a Battery Farm. He walked straight into my bedroom and crashed out on my futon. I was beginning to see why someone might want to pull this guy’s nipple rings out.
    But I relented, and went to get him a cup of tea and a bucket (just in case). He never thanked me. Not for the tea. Not for the bucket. Not for saving his life. Ungrateful bastard.
    I flounced into my front room and flopped down on the cushions. An hour and a half later I was still there. My nails were bitten down to the quick, but I’d stopped shaking and started thinking. Something just didn’t feel right. I couldn’t put my finger on it.
    By the time Stan slunk into the room and lowered himself gingerly on to the cushions next to me, I had a list of questions for him longer than one of Maggot’s spliffs. But I wasn’t going to ask them now. I wanted witnesses.
    Then Stan did the only possible thing he could have done to make me feel better. He gave me money. Lots of it. In a perfect world I would live the anarchist dream and have no need of the stuff. But in this world, you have to survive. I tried not eating once. It’s called anorexia. There are better ways of making a statement.
    â€˜Jen,’ Stan breathed, ‘if it wasn’t for you…’ He shuddered, then held out the fistful of notes. ‘There’s five hundred quid here for services rendered so far. I’ll pay you £150 per day plus expenses from now on. If that’s OK…?’
    He tailed off, uncertain how to interpret the look of incredulity on my face. He got it wrong.
    â€˜Obviously I’ll pay the rent too while I’m here,’ he gushed.
    Oh, obviously.
    â€˜How much is it?’ he asked eagerly.
    I was stumped. Housing Benefit covered it all except the water rates, leaving me to pay a tad under £3 a week. Again he misinterpreted my expression.
    â€˜Will another £150 a week cover it?’
    I laughed in disbelief.
    â€˜So how about food?’ I giggled, thinking he must see how crazy this was.
    But Stan lived in a world where money was never funny. He may have been living in my world right now, but he still couldn’t see the joke. He got it wrong again. Full house, bless him. He laid his hand over mine.
    â€˜Jen,’ he said earnestly, ‘we’ll have the best.’
    What a guy! My heart was won.
    By the time the others trooped in, Stan and I were well bonded, having been reminiscing over the old days at the Torture Palace. He seemed to have taken the seediness of my habitat entirely in his stride. Gaia was first, and stooped to hug me and then