He came in late, and wandered through the hallway straight into the darkened bedroom.

‘Hey,’ I called out. Then, louder, ‘Hey. Tom!’

He didn’t come out, so I followed him into the bedroom, switched on the light. And there he was – not Tom, but Alexandre Boulet, tall, sweaty, pungent, determined. In full regalia.

He took a step back from me.

But I walked right up to him, took him by the waist.

‘This is very convincing,’ I said, whispering into the talcum and hairspray smell at his neck. ‘Totally believable.’

A hand – a slow but insistent hand, was placed between my breasts and pushed slowly backwards, until I was as far away as his arm could reach.

There was a pause, a silence.

‘Tom?’

His eyes weren’t shining and wholesome anymore. They roiled like the sea.

‘Tom? Where have you been?’

‘Leave me,’ he said.

‘Tom – stop it. You’re crazy. You’re being crazy! Hey! Look at me!’

He looked. Stepped close, until there was almost no distance between us; looked through me, straight down at all the versions of me there were to see. Then he huffed once, flared his nostrils, and walked out the door.

The Labradors (2)

In bed one Sunday I was reading the newspaper and came across an article warning the owners of loveable family dogs to beware. Rottweilers and pit bulls might have the bad reputations, it said, but really it’s golden retrievers and labradors who are the most lethal. Lethal because you think you know their limits but you don’t; their violent outbursts are all the more terrible because they’re delivered by that beatific face, that clean pink mouth, those teeth you paid a vet to polish up while the dog was sedated; dreaming, you thought, of your life together – of a quiet walk and a quiet meal, then curling up on the floor at your feet.

Animus

‘There are two more pieces to go in,’ Leonard said. ‘They’re a late addition. The owners took some convincing.’

Everything else for the exhibition was in place. It would open in a week. Before my shift began, I liked to wander among the treasure he’d amassed – the gilt frames, marble statues, parures glittering hyperactively against black velvet. I was always tempted to push over a vase, or pull out my keys and slash a canvas. I would imagine the scene in loving detail: the zipping sound of the painting as I bisected it, the shattered Sèvres littering the ground. Such were my daydreams.