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[...] A young woman, blonde, wearing a leather skirt and a white ribbed jumper tight over her breasts, was standing alone at the bar drinking coffee, her light mac folded over her arm because the night was warm. The bartender didn’t seem to know her. Perhaps she was a prostitute; Alex wasn’t confid…

Alex was the moody prince with his pent-up angst. He was still slight at the waist and hips, still had his thick hair with its bronze gleam cut in the old style, fringe hanging into his eyes. The hazel cat’s eyes and curving mouth – too often closed in disappointment – were sensual and feminine des…

Christine felt negligent then, wondering if she cared that Alex wasn’t writing. She didn’t think about it much. People did seem to like his poems. Although they hadn’t been much reviewed at first, in the years since they were published they’d acquired a certain cult following. Anyway, he had seemed…

A breeze fanned the newspaper on the table, the smells of a city summer were wafted through the open window: tar and car exhaust, the bitter-green of the flowering privet hedge. Police horses went past in the broad street, their hooves clip-clopping conversationally alongside the voices of the wome…

— I like their emptiness, the absences in them.

— That’s only because I can’t do people yet. I’m going to learn how to do them. I’ve signed up for life-drawing classes.

— Don’t put people in them. People only spoil things.

— Oh! So that’s why your poems are all about furniture.

Alex lau…