A cormorant landed in slo-mo on the water’s surface, its black shadow flapping down on the dark water and in that lovely drunk, he said he was really into me, and I laughed and told him he was fucking daft, that I was actually quite a cunt, and he laughed, and said that kind of soft talk was mad. Sometimes it’s even dangerous talk, he said then, seriously. I tried to explain how mostly I was utterly mean. Or frozen. We settled on frozen. But he said that it was the drink talking – he didn’t believe it for a minute. We promised each other that this moment was the world, the best spinning drunken world we could muster. I said I’d better head on, it was so late, and he’d said grand, and that he’d have to sneak in his bedroom window for he was freezing. I reminded him to take the shoes off. Then he asked if perhaps we could think about going to the cinema or even for chips sometime. I laughed and said no, no way, I was busy. Washing my hair, hiding under my bed, going mad. I walked off quick into the dark night as he called out after me and I blew a kiss to the dark. I carried the peach schnapps bottle off into the night and the sugar hardened like a sweet glass coat as I sat in our garden and waited for the sun to come up.

Years later I met Schnapps at a business lunch in a fancy fish place. A loud woman with bouncy curls and shoulder pads was seated at our table. She handed over the large leather wine menu and told me to choose an appropriate wine, fast as you can, dear, as she flicked her hair towards him. I quickly chose a thick honey Chardonnay, for such was my limited experience and limited pronunciation of wine back then. She guffawed loudly like a pig might (and everyone there for her importance guffawed like little piglets and found her exhilarating, in the way wankers like people in power, finding them endlessly funny). Peach Schnapps rose up and said there would be no deal today or any day, then pushed his thin café chair backwards and threw some notes on the table. He kissed the side of my face and said that the wine, whatever fuck of a bottle the lady chose to choose, was perfectly fine by him, as it was accompanying crab. And crab, he said, sits at the bottom of the ocean and eats shit.

Lady.

He was the very first. Peach Snap. Large peach. Moreish.

Morello. A dark sweet cherry. Morning after. Delightful.

Morning-after pill. Necessary. Morning stars. Beautiful.

More of them hollowed out from the black sky.

iloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyouicanloveicanijustneedtorememberourlovemylove

More time. please. IlovehimilovehimilovehimIcanlove. Morphine. More time, I beg. Mother-of-pearl.

Midnight. Morgue.

Mortuary.

I went to sleepzzzzzzzzz.

Badly needed.

Dreamed about mud falls and large peach crabs at traffic lights.

Chapter 14

The sun was spinning, wisps of light danced across the apricot floor, refractions from the rainwater in the gutters. There was a low hum of dawn chorus and some wood pigeons hooting. Jane, perched beside the window like an arrow in a quiver, drowned them out by singing Amazing Grace at a ferocious pitch and then sat and pretended to knit a baby’s bonnet or a small tea cosy, something tiny and delicate. She needed a different shot. Nothing had been done with her since the lovely woman who spoke Portuguese to the air was sent in to calm her.