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hunk behind the bar and wandered around for a bit, trying desperately to sober up. He hated that feeling, when you suddenly realize that you’re too drunk to do anything, and nothing you do seems to make it any better. He staggered to the toilets and stood at the urinal for a full ten minutes, silently debating whether or not he was about to throw up. Suddenly he became aware of someone hovering next to him. He turned to find an old queen with a jet black comb-over hairdo standing at the urinal with his penis in his hand, staring at Martin’s crotch and gently playing with himself. Martin gave him a dirty look. Some people had absolutely no dignity. Here he was, practically on the verge of vomiting, and all this queen could see was the opportunity for a quick fiddle. He lurched out of the toilets and along the main corridor, knocking into a few people who were either as pissed as he was or too high on drugs to notice. Finally, he found a space at the edge of the dance floor and stood there for a while, leaning against the wall, taking it all in.
    And that was when Martin spotted him—Christopher. He was right in the middle of the dance floor, waving his arms in time to the music and grinning all over his face. It was less than forty-eight hours since Martin had last seen him, but already he looked like a different person. He’d had his hair cut, which wasn’t such a surprise, and he appeared to be in the process of growing a goatee, which was. He was shirtless, which was a new development, and around his neck he wore a thick silver chain, which Martin had never seen before. And he looked happy, far happier than Martin had seen him look in ages, though of course he could recognize a chemically enhanced smile when he saw one. He didn’t recognize the man dancing next to him, though. He couldn’t see him clearly at first, but he was sure it wasn’t one of Christopher’s friends—at least no one that he had ever been introduced to. He was slightly shorter than Christopher, with black hair and a broad back. His vest was hanging from the back of his jeans, and as he turned around and moved into his line of vision, Martin saw that he had an amazing body—big arms, well-defined chest, washboard stomach, the works. Even in this room full of muscle Marys, he stood out. He must have been going to the gym every day for the past five years to get a body like that—not an easy thing to do when you had a job like Martin’s, a job that demands that you be at your desk from nine till five, five days a week, forty-seven weeks a year. . . .
    Martin didn’t need a copy of
QX
to know who this dreamboat was—Marco! At that precise moment, he threw those big beautiful arms of his around Christopher and the two of them began necking like it was going out of fashion. Martin turned and lurched away from the dance floor, stumbled out of the club, and fell into the nearest taxi. It wasn’t until he was halfway across London that he asked the driver to stop the cab, stuck his head out the door, and began throwing up.

Three
    O n a good day, Caroline was the first to admit that she spent more time and far more money on her personal appearance than was strictly necessary. As she often joked, she was every bit her own woman—there wasn’t one bit of her body she hadn’t refashioned in some way, shape or form, so the only person sharing any of the credit was the surgeon who performed her boob job.
    But today was not a good day, and Caroline was not in the mood for jokes. What she was in the mood for was some serious pampering. Getting an appointment at Tony’s hadn’t been easy. It was Saturday after all, and Tony wasn’t just any old hairdresser. He was Tony of Belgravia, hairstylist to the stars. He had fingered more famous follicles than Elton John had hair plugs. People didn’t just come to Tony’s for a quick trim and blow-dry, they came for a brush with celebrity. This was why he could get away with charging such exorbitant