The smells of the past. The house's history.

Food, many different types of food. All the scents had lingered. People, babies, children, the elderly and infirm. Jimmy could smell them all. The nightmares of the recent past. Overcrowded toilets and inadequate plumbing. Unsealed skirtings and bulging wallpaper, beneath which Jimmy knew the bugs remained. The food and the people were gone but their smells and the bugs which had tormented them lived on.

The house was bare now, of course. The previous occupants' bits and pieces had been cleared out, leaving only the marks on the floor where their mats and strips of carpet had been and the nails, hooks and globs of Blu-Tack on the walls from which their decorations had hung. Jimmy thought that he would rather die than live in a place like this and yet right now he certainly meant to sleep in it.

He had intended to fold up his jacket for a pillow and lie straight down in the ground-floor front room. But to his surprise he found that the room was already occupied. A tramp was stretched out on the floor asleep. Looking at him, Jimmy realized that some of what he had smelt probably emanated from this sorry figure.

For a moment Jimmy thought he'd retreat back into the street and find another house. But he was reluctant to do that: if he went outside he might be spotted by one of the impatient builders or angry creditors and Jimmy did not want to meet any of them until he had had some rest.

He decided that it was a big house and he would simply have to share it, so he began to climb the stairs looking for the least oppressive room. The one with the least grease on the walls and stains on the floor. The one in which the ghosts of the previous occupants were least active.

Jimmy reached the third floor and selected the largest room. He rolled his jacket up into a pillow and lay down, his head already spinning in anticipation of rest. He fell asleep instantly. Asleep on the bare floorboards of his multi-million-pound nightmare. Had he not already been unconscious he might have considered the irony of the situation.

His phone woke him up, something which seemed to be happening a lot these days.

'Yeah. Hello. What?' he spluttered.

'Jimmy?'

'What, hello? Yeah?'

There was a momentary pause and then a voice of accusation.

'You've been sleeping! Where are you?'

Slowly consciousness was returning. He knew that voice. It was his wife. It was Monica. And she'd caught him having a nap.

'No!' he protested, still trying to get his brain and his mouth into synch.

'You have!' Monica said. 'I can tell by your voice. I woke you up! I know I did. Is that what you do when you go to work? Get secret sleeps? Have you been lying to me?'

Jimmy wondered whether she'd have been less outraged if she'd caught him sleeping with a girl instead of just sleeping.

'No, Monica. Seriously, I just nodded off for a moment. I'm working. I'm in one of the houses at Webb Street. I basically collapsed. I'm sorry.'

'Oh.' Monica's voice had lost its outrage. 'Well, I suppose it's good to get some use out of our street.'

'I'm not the only one. There's a tramp in the room downstairs.'

'Jimmy, you could be killed!'

'I don't think so, Mon. By the look of him he's half dead already. Oh, by the way, the car's been towed.'

'Oh no.'

'Yeah.'

'I was phoning to find out how it went with Toby's headmaster.'

'Not good, I'm afraid. But can we discuss it later? I have to find a way to say "next week" in Polish.'

'All right. Do we have a puncture-repair kit?'

'You want to go cycling?'

'No. My piles cushion's burst and now I can't sit down.'

'Oh. Try in my saddle bag.'

'I did. No good.'

'Sorry then.'

The conversation over, Jimmy staggered upright and steeled himself to face his obligations once more.

The price of everything Rupert and Amanda were hosting a small dinner party at their Belgravia town house to celebrate Rupert's elevation to the peerage, and because it was Rupert and Amanda it was likely to be pretty posh.

Monica was in despair.

Every evening garment she owned was laid out on the bed in a huge pile. A great big glittering, shimmering, skinny-strapped, cheeky-hemmed, plunging-necklined, figure-hugging mountain of memories. Memories of carefree evenings, saucy, drunken nights, sheer tights, best, most expensive knickers and a smallish size 12 figure.

'None of them fit,' Monica wailed. 'I am the walrus.'

'Some of them fit,' Jimmy claimed. 'That jacket fits. You're just being paranoid.'

Jimmy studied his wife in the mirror while pretending to adjust his tie. Certainly she was a bit rounder than when she had last worn some of those dresses. Their second child, Cressie, was only just a year old and Monica had not been vigorous about getting her figure back in that time. She was possibly the teeniest tad less firm about the curves than of old. Her tum did bulge a little. But she wasn't a walrus. Not even a large seal.

Monica's image of herself was just paranoid self-delusion. It was all those other women, Amanda and David's Laura and bloody Madonna with those ridiculous arms. Women who seemed to get skinnier as they grew older. Women who clearly spent every waking moment in the gym. Personally, Jimmy didn't go for the anorexic man-look in a woman. He would rather have a girl with a bit of a saggy tum and bingo wings than one with great big veins running up her forearms, and biceps like the thighs on a supermarket chicken.

'Your problem,' Jimmy said, 'is negative self-image. You look in the mirror and you see a Teletubby.'

'You think I look like a Teletubby!' Monica was on him like a Rottweiler.

'No, that's not what I said at all.'

'You think I've turned into Tinky Winky!'

'No!' Jimmy protested, struggling to find a way of making his point more clearly without digging himself in any deeper. 'I said that you are-'

'I have had two bloody kids!' Monica hissed through gritted teeth. 'Two entire human beings grew in here,' she said, slapping her stretch marks, 'and if you don't like what they've turned me into then you shouldn't have knocked me up, you bastard!'

'You haven't turned into anything,' Jimmy said firmly, refusing to rise to the bait. 'You were gorgeous before and you're gorgeous now.'

He meant it too, but Monica was only half mollified. There was a slight atmosphere in the cab which did not dissipate until they arrived at Rupert and Amanda's and had been given a drink.

'Drinking my investments,' Rupert said, as Jimmy accepted a glass of wine from the pretty catering girl who met him and Monica at the door. Amanda never cooked, ever. She arranged menus.

'Which is actually an equal challenge,' she always insisted, 'if you take the trouble to do it properly.'

'Investment, Rupert?' Jimmy asked, beaming and taking a deep swig from his glass. He was still basking in the warm afterglow of the surprise pre-prandial tumble he and Monica had shared on top of her pile of dresses. It was so easy to get out of the habit of sex, he thought, particularly with kids in the house. You just had to make a bit of an effort, that was all. It was certainly worth it.

'Yes,' Rupert replied. 'I've moved into wine, so enjoy it, you bastards, because this stuff is the canine bollocks. Absolute gilt-edged security. Every single bottle, if stored properly of course. Personally I'd have kept it locked up.'

'Can you believe it?' Amanda said, sweeping down the stairs in a glimmering strapless gown which perfectly showed off the tight, knotted, perma-tanned little biceps which appeared to have been bolted on to her arms as extras. 'He actually thinks we should leave good wine in some cellar near Bristol.'

'Perfect storage facility,' said Rupert. 'Believe it or not, it's an old government fallout shelter from the Cold War. Goes on for miles. Lots of people keep their wine there. Ours is next to the Lloyd Webbers'.'

'Yes,' Amanda said, 'and Rupert wants to leave it there.'

'It was bought as an investment, darling,' Rupert insisted.

'It's wine,' Amanda replied equally firmly. 'Wine is a gift from God and it should be bloody well drunk.'

'As should we be!' David said, emerging from the reception room resplendent in his new electric-green Armani glasses. 'We should all be bloody well drunk because Rupert, our Rupert, the man who, to quote dear Oscar, knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, is a fucking lord of the realm!'

'You clearly don't understand the value of that wine you're glugging away at like cheap plonk, you pretentious arse,' Rupert said, smiling and refilling David's glass. 'And yes, Amanda, wine is indeed a gift from God, which is why it's so bloody valuable and, what's more, getting more valuable every day. It is in fact extremely generous of us to share such a fine vintage with our old friends, as I'm sure they are all pathetically and touchingly aware.'

This of course provoked a chorus of sarcastic exclamations.

'The funny thing is,' Rupert went on, 'if I'd waited a year or two I'd be twice as generous because by that time the wine would have been worth twice as much. I find that fact both exciting and curiously depressing.'

'But of course it would have tasted pretty much the same,' Henry said. 'Cheers.'

'What's taste got to do with anything?' Rupert asked. 'We're talking about value.'

'The value of a wine is in its taste,' Jane snapped.

'And how pissed it gets you,' Robbo added.

'Honestly, Rupert,' Jane went on, 'don't you realize how boring it is, the way you pretend nothing has any value except what you can sell it for?'

'Please,' Rupert insisted, scooping up a passing canape and speaking through it as he munched, 'can you tell a hundred-pound bottle of wine from a thousand-pound bottle?'

'I don't know. I mi-'

'Of course you couldn't. Not in a million years. I'm the only person here who could, as a matter of fact. But then I might easily prefer the cheaper bottle, as might any of you. Therefore taste has no quantifiable value at all. It's subjective. A builder's mate's estimate is as valid as yours or mine, i.e., worthless. Price is the only true measure of value. Because the only real, quantifiable difference between a thousand-pound bottle and a hundred-pound bottle is nine hundred pounds. That's it. With wine as with all things, I know what I like. But if I want to know what it's worth I have to look at what it costs.'

'Nice nibbles, Amanda,' said Jimmy. 'Marks and Sparks?'

'How dare you!' Amanda replied.

'Wine is like modern art,' Rupert pressed on, never one to pass up an opportunity to ruffle feathers. 'Both are now all about investment potential. Their aesthetic value is increasingly irrelevant. Particularly with modern art. At least with wine you can normally find something decent.'

Rupert had clearly expected to get a rise out of David and he wasn't disappointed.

'Ah ha,' David smiled, attempting to look like an indulgent liberal amused by a reactionary philistine but struggling to maintain his pose, 'are we to be treated to yet another rant about your one visit to Tate Modern which has enabled you to diss all post-nineteenth-century art ever since?'

'I'm with Roop on that,' Robbo said. 'Come on, Dave. You're among friends. Just admit it for once, privately. Modern art is all absolute bollocks, isn't it? Just one big pile of pretentious, pointless, self-indulgent wank. I mean really, you have to admit that surely?'

'I don't think I can face this discussion again,' David said. 'I personally find beauty in the intellectual and sensual challenge of the abstract. You, Robbo, find it in nice, figurative, story-telling pictures preferably featuring nude women floating winsomely in ponds.'

'That'll do for me too,' Jimmy said cheerfully.

'David, the reason you don't want to discuss it is because there's nothing to discuss,' Rupert said. 'Whether it's wank or not, which clearly it is, is a matter of personal opinion. My point was that the value of modern art is quantified by its price. That is self-evident. It has nothing to do with its aesthetic value . . .'

'I know that's what you said, Rupert,' David said, still trying to look easy and amused but struggling even harder to disguise his irritation, 'and you are wrong. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but it is beauty nonetheless. And the fact that a rich man is prepared to pay for it does not stop it being beautiful . . .'

'A rich person, darling,' Laura corrected him. 'I think you'll find women enjoy art too and gosh, do you know, some of them even buy it.'

'Yes, of course. Absolutely,' David said apologetically.

'And transgenders. Don't forget them,' Jimmy butted in teasingly. 'Chicks with dicks and men with muffs go to galleries too, you sexist, genderist, trannyphobic bastard!'

'Face facts, David,' Rupert said. 'A sheep pickled by Damien Hirst is worth millions, a rat marinated by an A-level art student is worth nothing. If Hirst had marinated the rat and the student had pickled the sheep the prices would be reversed. Modern art is about investment. It's that simple. So much more wealth is being created these days that places need to be found to put it. Therefore an important financial industry has been developed where the product of certain artists is agreed to be a gilt investment, just like gold ingots or government bonds. You cannot possibly believe that when Tracey whatsit exhibited her unmade bed there weren't a thousand similar mouthy, ballsy-looking birds struggling away at art school producing similarly pointless and offputting mounds of old toss. Tracey got lucky, that's all. It could have been any old lesbian . . .'

'Actually, Rupert, she's not a lesbian,' Laura began, 'or at least I don't think she-'

'You are so offensive, Rupert, it's actually quite funny,' Jane added, but through gritted teeth and without the glimmer of a smile.

'We walked round the Tate together, David,' Rupert said. 'You insisted. Now come on. Honestly. Who knew which darkened tent containing a looped video of a pigeon breathing or the top of a bald head would become the looped video de jour and hence be worth a thousand times more than all the other looped videos in all the other little darkened tents? The financial market did that. Only the financial market can determine which bits of pretentious modern-art bollocks are of value and which aren't. And once it has determined which, it has to maintain that value. Art is a commodity, like property or football players and wine is catching up fast, so sip it slowly, you lot, because with every second that passes each sip is worth more than the last.'

'Ignore him, everybody,' Amanda said firmly. 'Glug it. Swig it. Pour it into a plant pot. He's being a pompous bore, that's all, besides which we've got five thousand bottles underneath Bristol so I think we can drink a few without worrying about the market value.'

'I just wanted them to appreciate it, that's all,' Rupert said, slightly huffily.

'Oh I am, Rupert.' Henry sniffed deeply over his glass and proclaimed with heavy sarcasm, 'Such an elegant nose with a strong bouquet of . . . is it pounds? Yes, I think I'm smelling pounds . . . plus a certain euro-scented aftertaste with hints of yen at the finish.'

'The problem with you lefty types always sneering at profit,' Rupert said, 'is that you've got so much money yourselves you no longer appreciate the value of the bloody stuff.'

'We haven't got so much money,' Henry pointed out (as he always did), 'and it's extremely difficult to appreciate the value of things, Rupert, when the value keeps appreciating. I mean at what point does one stop to appreciate it? Surely you'd always be thinking, hang on, if I wait a minute the value will have appreciated and I can appreciate it even more.'

'Well, it's delicious anyway,' Lizzie said. 'Now can we please get off the subject?'

'Dinner's ready,' Amanda said, 'so come on through. We're starting with foie gras but I'm assured it's humanely produced, and they've done poached pear and vegan stilton for Laura and Jane.'

'Lovely,' said the vegetarians.

'Don't tell us what it is, Amanda,' Henry said. 'Tell us what it cost.'

'A fuck of a lot, Henry.'

'Well, that's all right then.'

Socks full of food It took many hours to retrieve the Range Rover and it was pretty late when Jimmy got home, but Monica was still awake.

'I only just got Lillie down,' she said. 'I was about to clear up.'

'Sod that,' said Jimmy, heading for the fridge. 'I need a drink.'