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making me a double hypocrite. A double hypocrite who has to do everything alone.
    â€˜Okay,’ I say. Wonder what we’ll do about each other’s funerals, when the time comes. Will we even know each other then? ‘You’ll come back for Mum’s, though, won’t you?’
    â€˜Don’t be stupid,’ she says. ‘It’s completely different. Listen, I’ve got to run. I’ve got a deposition at nine-thirty.’
    â€˜Okay,’ I say. There’s no point in arguing about it. India is one of those people who decide and, once the decision is made, there’s no going back on it. And she decided to move as far away in the world as she could manage without having to share her space with actual icebergs.
    â€˜I suppose you’re on your way out, are you?’
    I laugh. ‘It’s Tuesday. What else would I be doing?’
    â€˜Milly,’ she says, ‘have you ever thought about getting a job?’
    I laugh. ‘Please. What on earth is the point of a trust fund if you’re going to do that?’
    I hang up and push open the door of the Handful of Dust.
    Â 
    I am my father’s daughter. He loved a party, and so do I, especially
in extremis
. He was good at parties, too. No one could work a room like Sean Jackson, be noticed by all, make everyone feel special. You would literally see faces light up when he entered a room. The glad-hander, the joke-teller, the man of influence, the charmer of the ladies. He had many, many people who called him a friend, my father Sean. And he never forgot a name
    The bar is buzzing, as it buzzes every night. The good Trustafarians of Clapham Common: not as rich as the Chelsea lot, not as desperate for attention as the ones in Notting Hill, not as driven by hipster rage as everyone east of the Old Street roundabout. But as reliable and predictable as a clockwork doll: clothes whose cut (ragged hemlines, overlong sleeves) and colour (black with just the one touch of something else) declare their membership of the counterculture, but which never have a tear or a burn or a stain that might suggest that they’ve bought them at a charity shop. People who say they’re artists, people who say they’re writers, people who call themselves journalists and people who have given their days spent clicking through the internet names like ‘viral visioneering’. My tribe, the one I’m part of. The staff here despise us. You can see it in the way their shoulders move up towards their ears every time someone puts in an order. But we don’t care. We spend too much money for them to ever do anything about it. And besides, anyone who works in a place that sells Indonesian-Peruvian fusion dumplings as bar snacks is sort of asking for it.
    I weave my way through the crowd and order a vodka, lime and soda from a woman whose lip-ring looks as though it might be getting infected, change my mind and order two. The dieting drunk’s favourite drink: barely any calories and the bubbles get you drunk faster. And I need to get drunk tonight. If I can do one thing to mark my father’s life, it’s that. I lean against the bar and scan the room as I suck the first one down through a straw as quickly as it will go, look around to see if there’s anyone I know, or at least want to know, here yet. Someone will turn up soon. The people I know don’t
do
staying in. And besides, I know a
lot
of people, just as my father did.
    While I wait I amuse myself with my favourite game: Spot the Personality Disorder. It’s a good game, this, especially when you’re alone in a crowd. When there’s two of you, you can play ‘yours’, but this is lovely for those quiet moments before the fun begins. I keep a copy of the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
beside my bed and refer to it often. I wish I’d gone to university and read psychology. I still think about going. I’ve even got