Yesterday I cancelled my clients. This morning I walked by the sea. But surely that's why it was invented, no? To accompany our moods? It yields to everyone who needs a friend. A friend? I needed a lawyer.

Sweat on my neck. I took off my coat, then my jumper, my trousers, my tee shirt was soaking. Standing on the pebbles, I knew my pants looked ridiculous. Fuck it, I took them off too, and ran crashing into the sea. Why did I not think of this yesterday?

The gulls were screaming. What terrors did they see at dawn? Last nights dream, like a mist trying to condense on my brain, but no. It wouldn't settle. I swam out further, as if the dream lay on the horizon, near the coast of France. The shrill of the gull, pulverising itself. I turned back and began to remember the dream.

I was in a gallery. Musee d' Orsay? It was a Degas nude, one of his women bathers, washing herself in an old tin bath. She was leaning over, scrubbing her back. But I wasn't alone with this Degas. A security guard was standing to my left.

How much does it cost? I asked, as if the saturday boy had forgotten to price it up.

Thirty seven pence, he said. I thought this was probably beyond my means but I knew there was some money rattling in my pocket, so I took it out. Mmm, possibly. Could he see his way to doing it for thirty pence? He nodded, as if resigned. There were a lot of my kind around these days, and if he was going to make a living, he'd have to suffer it. Thirty pence it was. So I pulled out the pennies but the coins were not coins, they were Gareth's teeth. Slowly I counted out thirty of my colleague's teeth, the security guard watched me closely, then scooped the teeth into his own pocket. Carefully, I took the Degas off the wall, nodded again to the guard, and walked out.

I'll interpret the dream later, I thought. And so, feeling as though that were the only thing left in my life, I dried myself with my pants.

Who goes there? An early morning jogger with his headphones. How many cocoons does a man need? But even he is sweating, the drops falling into his tragic mouth.

No, I have to face Helen. I mean, what's the fuss. We've been friends, colleagues, lovers. What's a grab and a feel, next to that, all that history?What's the worst that can happen? And she has a big heart, Helen. Under a certain legal demeanour she has a wide appreciation of human need, and it's excess. But I did wonder, as I threw my pants back into the sea, that maybe she reserves that grace for her clients, possibly not her friends, definitely not her lovers. I really was in the shit.