"Let's get this straight," he said. If "you leave your stuff around, I WILL move it." He leaned over towards me across the table. Face tired and puffy, cuts from yesterday's glass-throwing fandango. Every syllable was loaded with such malice, that you wouldn't have thought we were merely discussing revision folders.

There were hidden depths to this conversation, which took me a while to figure out.

"It was your fault," he hissed. "If things are crappy, it's your fault."

It was like a game of ping-pong, each of us attempting to hurt the other exactly the same amount as they had just done. In retrospect, I should have ignored him from the moment he stuck his face right close to mine. (As Trev says, "With hindsight you have 20-20 vision." I should listen to him more.) In my defence I can only say he brings out the very worst in me.

We kept going and going, hitting the ball of insults back and forth until he missed by making me laugh, ball bouncing from the table in one large leap of miscalculation.

"You're fucking twisted. You need psycho-analysis."

And laugh I did. Dropping my ping-pong bat.

Not for very long, though. It wasn't that sort of laugh.

There are little splatters of red wine on the lampshade.

I was doodling little hearts in blue ink around my name at midnight, and she said, "There is no such thing as lasting love." I pulled a face and didn't let on how bad it felt to hear that. Bowed my head and made a point in colouring in meticulously and silently the hearts in red pen.

"It's a wonder you've all turned out so...normal and sane."