Free The Insect Farm by Stuart Prebble

who looked like a refugee from the Billy Bunter books, and this was the way over-educated hooligans talked to each other in those days. “What I wouldn’t do to her given half a chance.”
    “I’m sure it would make her night to hear that, Roderick,” said his friend. “Shall I ask her if she’d like your telephone number?”
    The leer on Bunter’s face turned quickly to pain as I walked past with my tray of drinks and the heel of my left shoe accidentally trampled his right foot.
    “Oh I say, steady,” he squealed, and began to hop on one leg.
    “I’m so very sorry,” I said, but it had been my single moment of pleasure of the entire event.
    All things taken together, in fact, it was one of the worst evenings of my life, maybe actually the worst up until that point. Serving drinks and snacks, clearing huge stacks of empty glasses from tables, trying to stay calm and casual as these stuffed shirts got themselves more drunk and ill-mannered. Had the evening gone on for another half an hour,I guess I would have ended up decking one of them and being thrown out, or worse. As it was, after five hours it was all over and Harriet and I were sitting on the train on the way home to my parents’ house in Croydon, where she and I were both staying. Neither of us had spoken since leaving the hotel.
    “Well, that went well, I thought.”
    “What went well?”
    “Jonathan,” she said, clearly exasperated, “this was our first proper gig. It was important to me that it went well. I felt it did. I’m sorry that I have to ask you what you thought.”
    It is part of the folly of youth that we think that every event is all about ourselves, and instantly I realized that I’d been a total fool in failing to see and respond to the significance of the thing for Harriet.
    “Oh God, Harriet, I am so sorry.” I knew I had screwed up badly and it was too late to row back, but also that I had to try. “It was great. By which I mean that you were great. You looked great, you sounded great and you all went for it as though you’d been playing performances like that for years. You were fabulous.”
    It was late but it was working, and instantly I could see her indignation beginning to melt away. Of course she wanted more.
    “People seemed to enjoy it,” she said. “We got loads of people asking for contact details at the end of the evening.”
    “I’ll bet,” I said, then, making my next mistake of the night, asked, “Did any of them also want to get in touch with the guys?”
    It took Harriet a second to understand what I was talking about, but when she did, the blow across my arm from the case containing her flute nearly obliged me to divert to the nearest hospital.
    “Whoa, Harriet! Be careful with that. You could do some serious damage.” She didn’t reply. “Listen, I’m not saying that people didn’t appreciate the music. Of course they did. You sounded great, but so do loads of other quartets, several others of which were there tonight.” I was nursing my arm. “Let’s face it, you look bloody lovely, and even you cannot have failed to notice the army of gibbons lusting after you half the night. I nearly had to call the keeper once or twice.” Her silence confirmed that what I had said was undeniable, and her slight smile indicated that she did not mind at all.
    Harriet’s parents were still living abroad, but by now her father had retired from his job with the government. As far as I could tell, he was now some sort of go-between on behalf of Arabs who wanted to sell oil and newly emerging nations which wanted to buy it. The point was that she had nowhere to live out of university term time. My parents were happy for her to stay at our house, but were not sufficiently enlightened to allow us to sleep together, and so during the holidays I slept on a made-up campbed in the corner of Roger’s bedroom, while Harriet took the single bed in my old room.
    On this night, however, I would have given anything to