The flat needs sorting before people arrive. You:

Deal with the bits people will actually see and hope for the best.Have been at it since Thursday. There is a system, and a schedule.Decide that the mess is part of the atmosphere.Move all of it into one room and close the door.

Somebody insults your friend in front of you. You:

Escalate. Immediately. Quite possibly too far.Say something so strange that they stop talking altogether.Stand up. That is the entire plan.Make a joke so sharp that everybody laughs and they bleed.

How you handle being wrong:

You were not wrong. You were working from different information.Apologise straight away, warmly, and mean all of it.Get there via four jokes, arrive sincere, leave quickly.Explain, at length, why you were technically correct.

Your relationship with your job:

It is what you love. The money is a separate conversation.You have done it for years and still cannot describe it.It is most of your personality and you will talk about it.You started late, by accident, and turned out good at it.

You are having a genuinely bad week. You:

Are extremely funny about it, which nobody should find reassuring.Tell everybody. Repeatedly. In considerable detail.Buy something. It helps. It shouldn't, but it does.Clean something enormous instead of mentioning any of it.

What you are like at a party you are hosting:

Explaining something nobody asked about to one trapped guest.The one everybody wants to talk to, which you are aware of.In the kitchen, managing all of it, enjoying none of it.Playing something you wrote, at volume, entirely unembarrassed.

Which one would you replay on the walk home:

"You built that yourself, out of nothing.""Nobody else could have pulled that off.""There is genuinely nobody else like you.""You would do anything for the people you love."

Your worst habit in an argument:

Needing to win it, including against somebody you love.Changing the subject to something faintly cosmic.Getting hurt and going quiet, which nobody ever expects from you.Deflecting until the other person gives up on being serious.

Your idea of a good evening:

Somewhere odd, with people who need no explaining to.Food, friends, football, in roughly that order.Somebody else's sofa, one drink, three hours of talking.A documentary and an early night, honestly.

How you fell for somebody, the last time:

Immediately and completely, and then again the following month.Slowly, while pretending that you weren't, for years.You decided it was fate, and then were unbearable about it.You realised at exactly the wrong moment and said nothing.

What people decide about you too quickly:

They think you are fine, because you are funny about it.They think you are arrogant. You are terrified.They think it came easily. You started from nothing.They think you are controlling. You are the only one doing it.

At the reunion, the thing you want said:

"They knew more about it than anyone, and they were right.""They turned into somebody nobody saw coming.""Nothing ever fell apart while they were holding it.""They were exactly themselves, the entire time."