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AT THE FLAT, WE LEFT THE WINDOWS OPEN. AS THE LIGHT FADED, his looks took on a generic, mutable quality. Stripped of his tracksuit in the semidarkness, he could have been any one of my teenage boyfriends. I had definitely reverted to type with him, though it was a type so old, I’d almost forgotten …

[...] “Don’t worry about your missus,” they’d say to each other. “She’s not worrying about you. She’s busy getting nailed by Leroy.”

Leroy is to oil workers as Jody is to marines. A folk figure; the indolent civilian who hangs about on dry land, taking advantage of their absence. An expression o…

It was half past one on a Tuesday afternoon, and I was already on my way to being drunk. I’d been circulating around this room for a few hours now, buying drinks, inviting confidences, like the tipsy hostess of a dour, exclusively male cocktail party. These three men, I thought, could be ranked in …

I was in the pub one night and this woman went to sit down next to me, so I moved my coat out of the way. She laughed at me, because the coat was pink. I said, “It’s not pink. It’s light plum.” Bit of banter, you see? Broke the ice. I fuck her the way I can’t fuck my wife. Throw her about the roo…

And Caden. All night, he’d been swimming up through my thoughts like a fish, though I tried to push him back down. Every time I remembered the enormity of what he was about to do, the freight of responsibility I’d have to bear, my stomach seized. Ordinary nerves; a squirm of paranoia. This was it. …