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Since every day could evidently be my last, I was going to make it count. Experience was all, and I set out to grab it with both hands, drifting from country to country, from one relationship to another, a heedless, hedonistic round with never a thought for tomorrow. But though I refused to age, the students and the other teachers grew younger year by year. Eventually I decided that I’d had enough. It was time to retire, to return to England-land, to the genteel sheltered accommodation I’d fled more than a decade earlier.
    The moment I got back I realized that things had changed. The demolition crew had been in, the wreckers and blasters, the strippers and refitters. The attitudes and assumptions I’d grown up with had been razed to the ground, and a bold new society had risen in their place, a free-enterprise, demand-driven, flaunt-it-and-fuck-you society, dedicated to excellence and achievement. Something new, unheard-of! Created by this one woman! She had spurned the hypocritical cant beloved of politicians and addressed herself directly to the people, showing how well she knew them, telling them what they whispered in their hearts but dared not speak, calling their bluff! ‘You don’t want a caring society,’ she had told them, in effect. ‘You say you do, but you don’t, not really. You couldn’t care less about education and health and all the rest of it. And don’t for Christ’s sake talk to me about culture. You don’t give a toss about culture. All you want to do is sit at home and watch TV. No, it’s no use protesting! I know you. You’re selfish, greedy, ignorant and complacent. So vote for me.’
    And they had, over and over again, so many times that no one except me seemed to remember that things had ever been different. I felt like Rip Van Winkle, an anachronistic laughing-stock, a freak. Failure was no longer acceptable, particularly in someone with my advantages. I had thrown away my chances in life, pawned them off for a few cheap thrills. And it was too late to do anything about it. In the new Britain you were over the hill at twenty-five, never mind forty. The key to success, an article in the local paper informed me, was to sell yourself hard, but I had nothing to offer that anyone wanted.
    Except, perhaps, for Karen Parsons.

 
    So my phone call to the Parsons’ household the next day was in the best traditions of the society in which I found myself living. Indeed without any wish to evade my responsibility for subsequent events, I think I may fairly claim that in everything I did in re Karen and her husband I was market-led. There was a hole waiting to be plugged. I had identified a need and was aiming to satisfy it.
    Dennis answered the phone. I thanked him for dinner and said how much I’d enjoyed myself.
    The reason I’m calling, actually, is that my wallet seems to have disappeared and I wondered whether I could possibly have left it there.’
    ‘Hang on, I’ll ask Kay.’
    I stood looking down at the pavement below the payphone while Dennis padded across the wall-to-wall carpeting and called distantly to his wife. Half-eaten turds of Spud U Like nestled on a bed of throw-up curry. I looked up at the concrete-grey sky, still surprisingly free of graffiti. I tried not to look at anything in between.
    ‘It’s OK, we’ve got it,’ Dennis said in my ear.
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘When do you want to come and pick it up?’
    I got my wallet out of my pocket and held it up in front of my eyes.
    ‘You’ve got it?’
    ‘Kay found it when she was clearing up. She was going to ring you but we don’t have your number. Look, we’re going shopping this morning, we could drop it off if you like. Where do you live?’
    This brought me to my senses. I would rather have died than let the Parsons see where I lived.
    ‘No, I don’t want to put you to any bother.’
    ‘It’s no bother.’
    ‘Well actually I’m going out this morning too.’
    But I was talking to myself. There was another