'It's for research, you're right,' he admitted. 'I'm studying for a course.' He was determined to speak nicely and not drop his aitches, something he always tried when meeting new people but only managed to keep up for twenty minutes or so. The difference in their speech alone suggested an unbridgeable gulf between them. Sebastian's consonants were cut crystal.

'Oh? And which course are you taking?'

'History of London. It's just three nights a week. An aid to my writing.'

'Oh, a night course. The Open University. How exciting. And that subject interests you, does it?'

'All journalism interests me.'

'So why aren't you taking a course in journalism?'

'I've already taken one. Now I'm on the creation and maintenance of British social divisions.'

'Goodness, that sounds like heavy going. Your manner of speech is very clear. I like that.'

Vince thought this an odd sort of compliment. 'My parents taught me to enunciate clearly,' he explained. 'They felt it was important to be understood. My dad needed to be for his job. He was a bus conductor. He used to shout out the destinations. I was a bingo caller for a while last summer. You have to speak clearly for that. A lot of the customers are deaf.'

'How interesting.' Sebastian placed his hands behind his back and nodded, adopting the kind of pose Prince Charles holds when a foreman describes the cubic capacity of a drainage outlet to him. 'Of course, one mustn't confuse diction with clarity of intention. Did you know that there are as many accents in an English street as there are in the whole of America?'

'No, I didn't,' said Vince. 'Anyway, what you say is more important than how you sound.'

'True, but it's advisable to speak properly if you wish to be taken seriously. Listen to that.'

He looked down towards the lake. One small child was hitting another with a large section of torn-off branch. Even from there Vince could hear them screaming 'fuck off' at each other.

'Of course, one's language has a tendency to reveal one's class, doesn't it? Which position in society's beehive do you occupy?'

Vince closed his book and rose from the seat with more aggression than he had intended. 'I'll give you a clue. My dad rode Routemaster buses down the Old Kent Road. He died of a heart attack at forty-eight. My mum still works in a shoe shop. I grew up in Peckham.'

Sebastian dismissed the reply with a wave of his hand. 'Oh well, it's a classless country now, if the television is to be believed.'

'What class am I to assume you are, then? Upper middle?'

'Me? Heaven forfend. There's nothing remotely middle about it. Nobody in our family has ever held down a proper job. We just own land. Lots and lots of it.'

Vince studied his companion carefully. He looked to be about twenty-seven.

'Yeah, but you must do something.'

'Why must I? We socialise, support charities, run societies, that sort of thing. My father works for the WBI, an organisation that is attempting, wrongly in my opinion, to remove all trade barriers between European member countries. As a lord he cannot represent in parliament, of course, and as the House of Lords exists primarily to delay legislation, he has to find other ways of filling his time. At least that way we don't have to rush about raising money for the upkeep of the family pile.'

'And you?'

'Oh, I chair debates. Hold parties. Play all sorts of games. I like games.'

'Games get boring after a while. You must wish for a more substantial occupation sometimes.'

'Yes, perhaps even in the same way that you do. I suppose in that respect our lives run on parallel lines.'

'Which implies that they never cross over.'

'Except at moments like this.'

'But I work to eat,' said Vince. 'It's not a diversion from being bored. It may be stating the obvious, but I do it because I don't have any bloody money.'

They studied each other, equally intrigued.

'I take it you are in employment, then.' Sebastian made the idea sound disreputable.

'I work in a home entertainment store. Just to pay the rent.'

'Home entertainment.' He savoured the concept for a moment. 'What is that, exactly?'

'CDs, videos, laserdiscs, interactive CD-Roms, play-stations, you know.'

But one look at Sebastian's face told Vince that he didn't know. He masked his ignorance with a brave smile. 'Well, Mr Reynolds, I passed a coffee shop on the way in here. Would you think me exploiting the social orders if I offered to buy you a cup? As I'm to be the subject beneath your microscope, perhaps we should get to know each other a little better.'

Somewhere on the green slopes below, a bird was startled into singing. And somehow, through some mysterious osmotic process, Vincent Reynolds allowed himself to be gently drawn into a different world.

THE OFFICES of Stickley & Kent were located in a parade of shops heralded by a long purple-painted brick wall with the words 'Shambala Skins' decoratively sprayed on it. On his afternoon off, Vince headed to the Kentish Town estate agency to share lunch with his two oldest friends.

'Men are like taxis,' Pam was telling Louie as he arrived. 'You think the one you get inside is all yours until you realise that the seat is still warm from the last passenger.' She held a steaming plastic beaker at eye level and examined it, turning over the contents with a plastic fork. It was the first time she'd paused for breath in twenty minutes. 'You know, a simple anagram for Pot Noodle is Not Poodle. I shudder to think about what people stick into their bodies. Come to that, I shudder to think about what I stick in my body. Or rather, who.'

'Your choices take some explaining, I'll give you that,' said Louie.

'The trouble is,' Pam continued, 'everyone's become so knowing. Men are adept at making each girl they date feel special for a set period of time before moving on, like waiters. Hi, Vince.' Pam immediately broke off the conversation when Vince entered the office. She would never speak of other men in his presence because she loved him with every fibre of her being and longed to monopolise his every waking hour. The object of her adoration could not reciprocate, however.

'That's 'cause we've read all those magazine articles about what women really want,' said Louie. 'We know all the right moves.' Louie was a velvet-voiced Antiguan who had been raised in the neighbourhood and was now studying at the University of North London. The real problem was that the three of them knew each other too well. Vince, Louie and Pam had grown up a few streets apart. Vince was amazed that they were still friends, given the different directions their lives were taking. He was aware of Pam's infatuation with him – how could he not be when her eyes followed him around the room like peepholes in a gothic painting – but he also knew that they were not suited for each other. She entirely lacked imagination, a minor fault to many but a fatal flaw in Vince's eyes.

Louie had piercings and a white strip of hair running down the centre of his stubbled black head, a look he had designed to accentuate his independence and nonconformity. Everyone he hung out with sported this look except Pam, who as an estate agent was excluded from the world of exotic personal statements. Louie was six feet, two inches tall and wore tight black leather, a common look in North London but this leather was expensive, not the usual rocker-tat they sold on the high street stalls. Instead of skull rings he sported enough gold jewellery to suggest that he was the advance scout for a Barry White revival. The other estate agents in the office barely noticed Louie's attire; in this cosmopolitan section of London it labelled you a Neo-Punk, and was virtually treated as a job description.