Devotion

Ros Barber

Chapters (6)

Prologue

A Oneworld Book

This eBook edition published by Oneworld Publications 2015

First published in Great Britain and the Commonwealth by
Oneworld Publications, 2015

The moral right of Ros Barber to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988

ISBN 978-1-78074-728-6
ISBN 978-1-78074-729-3 (eBook)

Typesetting and eBook by Tetragon, London

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Oneworld Publications
10 Bloomsbury Street
London WC1B 3SR
England

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For my brother Peter,
whom I am finally allowing
to slip under the ice.

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Prologue
Atheists
1. Biology
Left
Hole
Salmon
Reality
Surface
That
Contract
Lost
Found
Accident
Lodger
Trees
Gone
Beans
Song
2. Psychology
Alarm
Scrambled
Peace
Panini
Beastly
Epiphany
Acts
Stalk
Observation
Static
Interpretations
Wisdoms
Determined
Noodles
Compassion
Professional
Semi-transparent

3a. Chemistry
Reflected
Clinical
Turkey
Things
Bonds
Medication
Without
Off
Frozen
Floored
Deer
Perfume
Mad
Remembered
Breakers

3b. Physics
Through
Particular
Peculiar
Appreciation
Presence
April
Meditation
Revelations
Headaches
Ghost
Alert
Court
Achilles

Epilogue
Opening

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‌Prologue

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Atheists

Bone-houses. Flesh-renters.

Reeling down the High Street, swear-gobbers, spit-flobbers. Dull-eyed beggar-dodgers, toddler-smackers, gum-droppers.

Watch them. Oblivious breathing machines. Coke-swiggers and chip-munchers. Spouse-slaggers and wife-borers.

Bus-chasers. Tube-crammers. Rattle-throwers left to cry all the way home at the knees of strap-hangers. Gummed up slow, or lurching too fast in their kid-scarers: nose-pickers, horn-thumpers.

Night brings its own brain-wasters. Packet-rustlers and plot-spoilers. Street-drinkers and ear-botherers. Late-bar minidress-totterers, naked-in-winters: rape-fodder pursued or steadied by beer-breathers, curry-spewers.

Where is God in all this?

God is a tame swear word. God is a lame joke. God is unfathomable: disaster-monger, famine-seeder. OMG, God is a teen-texted acronym. God is for nutters. For old ladies and nutters.

– APRIL’S JOURNAL, 12 FEBRUARY

‌1.

Biology

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Left

This is his punishment. This is the price of blundering into love. Logan must trundle around the insensible world, grief snapped into his wallet, loss in his suit, and pretend to live. Pour coffee down his gullet as if he can taste it. Pick at a plate of food as though nourishment mattered. Have normal conversations with normal people on normal subjects. As if he cared about films, or laws, or the weather.

His daughter’s conception was a thoughtless act. A few minutes of drunken wrongdoing, succumbing to an urge to complete what he should never have begun. It was over with Rachel, whose insecurity had surfaced out of the deep pool of their lust sooner than expected; some brief weeks of buttock-gripping freedom dissolving into Where were yous and Who was thats. He became the stray tom she was trying to collar; had started to hook himself free on the chance branches of women who brushed across his path at work, or the squash club.