Smoking opium with Mr Nazim – and a gecko

‘I used to go to India for a few months every year. A couple of times we even drove there. You could in those days. One year I went to Benares. I rented a place for next to nothing and stayed about three months. Back then there were a lot of hippies in India. They’d run out of money and you’d see them begging. In Benares the hippies all hung out in the same places but I was staying in another part of the city. I think I paid something like three quid a month for my place, which I shared with two other Indian guys.’

I’d brought a bottle of gin and two tall glasses and a lemon and tins of tonic. I’d carried these in a basket the 100 yards or so along the path between his house and ours. Michael was sitting at the table fielding emails on his iPad when I arrived.