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the application forms a couple of times, but somehow time flows past with them sitting on the counter in the kitchen and suddenly another year has passed and I’m still propping up the bar, wondering what to do with my evening. I can’t be an Avoidant, can I? No, I’m out all the time, and you almost never see Avoidants out in crowds. Though I do see them tucked into corners of dark restaurants, having monosyllabic tête-à-têtes with Dependents, or resentfully listening to Borderlines’ tales of being hard done by.
    No, a bar like the Handful of Dust is Narcissist Central. The walls are lined with cream leather pouffes and every one of the stripped-back walls bears at least three mirrors. You can look at yourself from every direction in here. I’m surrounded by women glancing sideways while sucking in their stomachs, by people pressing their heads together like space robots exchanging data as they pose for selfies to put on Instagram, by people nakedly checking their phones in case they could be somewhere better. People so busy checking in that their brains have checked out. I’m sure there’s the odd psychopath among them, but they’re harder to spot unless there’s some drama going down. They’ll be easy to single out then: they’ll be the only people still smiling.
    I know, or have known, a few of the people here, but none that I want to speak to. Over there, Anne-Marie, dyed dark brown hair like a mountain of seaweed left on a rock after a storm, pouts up at a man in Armani who clearly hasn’t yet seen the crazy glint in her eye. I put up with her narcissism for a couple of years because it was so extreme it amused me, but when she added orthorexia into the mix and started talking about nothing but her bowel movements it stopped being entertaining. Propping up the bar, eyes going slowly up and down the women’s bodies like a scanning machine, Anthony, too old to be in here but too vain to recognise it, mane of silver-grey swept up and back into two loose wings the better to emphasise its glory. I’ve never fucked him. I’ve never got
that
drunk.
    I finish my drink and take the other on a wander. A young couple are gazing at each other as though they’re looking in mirrors, discussing their eyebrows. ‘Do you get them waxed?’ she asks, admiringly. ‘No, threaded,’ he says. ‘It looks so much more natural.’ I don’t understand eyebrows these days. His look like plastic stick-ons, the skin between and around bald like chemotherapy, the ends squared off with geometrical precision. ‘They look amazing,’ she says, and she seems to mean it. ‘You should try some of that clear mascara on yours,’ he says. ‘It’ll tidy them up.’
    I can’t resist drifting up behind Anne-Marie. ‘Oh, no, I never go there,’ she is saying, ‘and I tell my clients not to, too. I said to him: bad mistake, pissing off a celebrity publicist and a high-end events organiser.’ ‘Oh, right,’ says her prey. ‘I thought it was pretty good. The food’s amazing.’ ‘That’s as maybe,’ says Anne-Marie, ‘but they know nothing about service.’ ‘And how did the shoot go, yesterday?’ ‘Oh, God,’ she says, ‘total nightmare. I had a photographer all lined up to be outside the restaurant and he pulled out at the last minute. Said his son had been run over.’ ‘Oh, my God,’ says the man, ‘how awful!’ ‘I know,’ she says, ‘do you know how hard it is finding a papp at no notice?’
    I see a tiny flinch. Ah, London, I think. I love you so. And then I see Sophie and Vickie in the garden, then, sitting at the table with them, Jono and Luke and Sam, and I push my way through the crowd to join.
    They cheer when they see me coming. In my world, if you don’t get a cheer when you turn up, you’re