I think about the one time we went to Spain, as a family, and none of us could take the heat, not really. Not properly, or naturally the way the Spanish can, and all the irritation which we felt towards each other got slightly out of hand and I wanted to hurt Jenny but I knew in my gut the way you can recognize true pain that it wasn’t right. Pain that is entirely unprovoked and irrefutable but exists, nonetheless. Throbbing away, inching towards you and I wanted to hurt her, to injure her somehow. I never said it but it’s what I felt and I don’t know if feeling something is the very same as doing something and where is my judge, hand me my judgement. Deliver me.

I think about the mosquitoes and how they seemed to go for me more than Jenny and I remember saying that it wasn’t fair, that it wasn’t right somehow. But it was the way it was and it wasn’t right. Why me? Me with my limited pain threshold.

And that one day during our holiday when Jenny sat in the living room at five o’clock in the afternoon, the sun had reached a fever pitch in our minds. She had laid her beautiful body on the floor. She had the air-conditioning on and I noticed she had the window open at the same time and the irritation I felt was way out of proportion. It seemed to take a fair bit of my resolve not to shout at her but my mother had told me not to shout at anyone, particularly not to a girl, so I didn’t say anything. I calmly shut the window and our holiday moved along. Strange how it comes back to me now, my annoyance with her for the smallest thing, all the time besotted by her beauty.

Yes, mine was a keen love but I didn’t truly understand the depth of my emotions at the time and I felt that the rapport I had with Jenny was verging on claustrophobia but it was a happy place to be.

I can still visualize those sweltering marks of reddened flesh left by the mosquitoes, how I picked at the blisters until a slightly yellowish liquid wept out and I could almost weep myself with the relief of bursting them.