“Murray isn’t seeing Dustbin Tits anymore,” I say, easing my aching feet into a bowl of cold water.

   “Really?” says Roper, hovering over the armchair with one hand between his legs. “Probably for the best.”

   I watch him from the comfort of my sofa, “What are you doing?”

   “Just making sure the gusset of my pants isn’t caught or wrapped around anything before I sit down,” he replies and drops slowly back into the seat. “That’s why I never go to the pictures.”

   “I’ve been to the pictures with you,” I say, drinking some red. “We saw Sirens together.”

   “Yeh,” says Roper, “but I went commando.”

   “Oh.”

   “Anyway,” he says, spreading his legs, “you can talk.”

   “What do you mean?”

   “Sitting there with your feet submerged in water.”

   “I’m none the wiser.”

   “I could never do that,” he sniffs, leaning forward to pick up his beer. “That’s why you’ve never seen me in the bath.”

   “Why would I have ever seen you in the bath?”

   “If my feet submerge in water they start to ache between the toes. Who knows what I would have done in the bad old days before showers.”

   “Peed on them, I expect.”

   Roper considers this, “Possibly…”

   I sigh and we drink in silence.

   “So how’s the new career going?” asks Roper after a couple of moments.

   “It isn’t,” I groan. “I honestly don’t know why I’m still doing it. It’s more soul destroying than a conversation with you.”

   “Commission only, eh?” Roper gives a sharp intake of breath. “How are you surviving on that?”

   “I’m not. I’m currently picking off the bones of my redundancy package.”

   “Pack it in, I would,” says Roper firmly.

   As if I’d take advice from him.

   “I’m going to give it another week. If I don’t start making some serious dough, then it’s down the road.”

   “That’s what I like to hear,” says Roper heartily and raising his glass. “Decisive action.”

   “Oh, shut up Roper. What would you know about decisive action?”

   “Well…”

   “Have you finished with Gussie yet?”

   “Well, no…”

   “Are you going to finish with her?”

   “I…it’s in the timing…”

   “So shut up.”

   This sales job is making me incredibly irritable. But it’s okay to be incredibly irritable with someone like Roper because he’s the kind of person who doesn’t register straight away when people have got the arsehole with him.

   I raise my glass.

   “To Gussie,” I say.

   Roper grins and leans forward with his beer and we clink, “To direct sales.”

   It’s a sad day when the only toast two people can come up with is for a girlfriend who has the personality of Vlad the Impaler and the body of an iron lung, and my dog’s cock of a job.