Before Tom got the part, I’d never heard of The Pure White Light of Morning – even though, as everyone kept telling me, it was a classic. An early nineteenth-century classic, over a thousand pages long, by the brooding genius Jean-Baptiste Dupont. I didn’t read books like that. I’d majored in economics and then gone to business school. I didn’t have time for melancholic sagas in which everyone gets to make a speech before they die.

One night, I was working in the living room when Tom walked in with the book under his arm. Usually he only read the sports section, or the reviews.

‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing. It’s for a part. An audition.’

‘A film?’

‘No, it’s a show.’

He passed me the book; there was an illustration of crossed, tasselled swords on the cover.

‘A timeless tale of rebellion and romance,’ I read.

‘What do you think? Could I play period?’

They’ll have to dirty up those teeth, I thought.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘What’s the part?’

‘Alexandre Boulet,’ he said, in a mock-grave voice which was deeper than his own. ‘A nineteenth-century war hero, struck down by poverty on his return to Paris. In desperation he turns to crime, and becomes captain of a gang of charismatic thieves, Les Sangsues. Which means The Leeches. In French.’

‘Oh?’

‘Of course, he only breaks the law to save the love of his life, Mathilde.’

‘That’s nice,’ I said, and went back to work, my hands blued by the glow from my laptop.

‘Don’t you want to know how it ends?’

I looked up, smiled tiredly. I had work to do.

‘They die?’

Tom frowned. ‘It’s very moving,’ he said.

Then he took the book into the bedroom, and closed the door.

I Wouldn’t Do That, If I Were You

One day, getting dressed, I bent over to slip my foot into a pair of pantyhose.

Then I registered an odd feeling – I was being touched, but not in one of the usual places. The approved places.

I looked down. Still lolling in bed, smiling, propped on one elbow, Tom was prodding the rolls of fat that hang from my abdomen.

They aren’t big, but they’re there.

He laughed. I think he expected me to laugh too.

At Least I Wasn’t the Tree

When I was in grade two, I won a part without realising I was even auditioning. The drama teacher, Mr Koch, told everyone in my class to line up on the floor of the gym, kneeling on all fours. Then he told us to bark like dogs. He told us that the best, loudest, most convincing dog would win a prize.

So I barked. I barked and howled my classmates into submission.

The prize? A part in the grade six play.