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Why I took it I can't explain. I'd tried the usual stuff at university but only in the interests of science (I told myself). We did an experiment with LSD once: highly illegal, of course. So I puffed away, becoming more and more fascinated by the smooth tanned cleavage above Samra's magenta vest. She grinned like a Cheshire Cat through the smoke, chatting about her daughter as if she wasn't there.
"She had this imaginary friend called Benny," she told me. "It started when she was three or four. We lived in a high-rise at the time: a dreadful silent tomb of a place with invisible neighbours. Lucy never had friends ..."
"Oh Mummy, you know I did," her daughter objected.
"No friends but Benny," Samra persisted. "Not while we were there."
Lucy looked embarrassed. It had struck me that her accent didn't match a Lewisham working-class background. I smiled knowingly at Samra.
"Perhaps she made friends at her elocution class," I suggested craftily.
"Or the drama group - there were some odd people there," Samra agreed.
Odd? Odder than her mother?
"Though they weren't friends as such," she continued, "role models ..."
Lucy muttered something angrily and left the room. I wanted to follow but Samra wagged a finger at me.
"She doesn't like to be reminded of where it all came from. I was on the stage, you know, though I never starred. Her father (rot him) disapproved and wouldn't let me travel. Why I married him ..."
"He was a good earner," Mojo prompted from his corner.
Samra nodded.
"And without the cash where would we be now?" she sighed.
Lucy and I returned home in silence. The dope had made my brain drift. I went through all the pros and cons of our relationship (horrible word) and pondered that word 'love'. Could I find a better girl than Lucy to settle with? What if, like her mother, she developed a wanderlust? I'm a great believer in genetics and know all about female attraction to father lookalikes. Am I her father? I smiled at the idea.
Later, as we undressed, she asked what had amused me.
"I was thinking of how so many girls marry men like their dads. I suppose your Mum's was a civil servant with a little moustache and wire-rimmed glasses."
"He was, actually," she frowned.
"Did you get on well?"
"Yes, I loved Grandad. He understood about Benny."
We didn't make love. We lay on our backs, hands clasped - a horizontal version of Adam and Eve. I had my speech ready.
"Would you like us to be married?" I asked.
"Yes, Steven," she replied simply - and we continued to lie there.
We made adjustments to our working lives. I found a new post at the Faculty of Psychiatry, Lucy sailed through her interview for a job at the comprehensive close to her flat. The Asian girl left first - the day after she found Lucy and I making love in the shower. The other girl wouldn't take the hint so we ignored her and treated the flat as our own. And then - as if we weren't lucky enough - my aunt died.
She hadn't lived at Netherley Farm for years. Most of the land had been sold off and the house was rented out to a self-sufficiency New Age freak and his several women and children. But further down the lane there was a labourer's cottage. It had no name but was marked on a Victorian map the solicitor sent me.
"Your aunt had work done to make it fit to rent out as a holiday home. The valuer wasn't impressed: though it's sound enough, there's no electricity, water or even a septic tank. It'll cost thousands to bring it up to standard for letting."
Without telling Lucy, I went there with a camcorder. The commune made me eat vegetables and drink goat's milk. They were relieved that I wasn't a profiteering developer with plans to dump a clutch of holiday lets on their doorstep. The eldest boy led me to the cottage rather like an African guide taking Big White Carstairs to a hidden temple.
"Watch out for her," he called.
He left me when the brambles and stinging nettles blocked our path. I could see the cottage a hundred yards further on up a steepish bank.
"It looks lovely," Lucy said as we watched the video. "Is that a New Ager?"