Sharif watched her leave from the window. So that was it. He had not only broken the heart of the woman he loved, he had made her hate him, too. He had made her afraid of him. He reflected that she was the lucky one; she would never miss him now, the way that he would miss her. She would never long for him the way he longed for her. He would become a footnote in her life, the boyfriend who went crazy and violent and dumped her for no reason, who she was well rid of. He wished she could become a footnote in his life, like Ali, and the girl after Ali, and the many girls before. But he knew that nothing but utter oblivion could take away the pain he felt in the deep pit of his stomach, in the throbbing chambers of his heart which was thumping so loudly he thought the treacherous organ might explode out of his chest and fly after Candida, falling in a bloody, irresolute heap at her terrified feet.

Oblivion. Sharif knew exactly where he could find it. He went to the kitchen cupboard, and pulled out the bottle of vodka that he had asked Micky to buy the other day. He poured it down his throat like medicine, letting it splash over his face in his haste. Sitting back on his bed, with a third of the bottle drained, he quickly realized that alcohol alone wouldn’t work. He went to the bathroom cabinet, and pulled out every bitter pill it contained, both medicinal and recreational. Popping them out of their foil containers, he thought how pretty they looked, like sweets. As he downed them with vodka, he started singing the counting nursery rhyme that Shona had taught him and Omar as children, to the tune of the Inch Worm song; Two and two are four, four and four are eight …’ he sang to himself, swallowing the pills as he went along, ‘eight and eight are sixteen, sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two …’ Having taken all the pills, he walked unsteadily back to his bedroom, finishing off the vodka with deep swigs that made him almost spit it back up again. ‘Two and two are four …’ he continued. ‘I knew you loved me, though it wasn’t what you said. But I won’t let us have a breakdown, I’ll let it have me instead …’ He felt nothing any more. In fact, he felt much better. He slumped on the bed, and as he passed out his stomach and guts spasmed involuntarily, so he lay comatose in a blissful stupor, in a puddle of his own vomit.