He didn’t mention that his father owned a small island off the east coast, and that his fondest childhood memories were of summer holidays swimming in clear, deep emerald waters, frolicking with green turtles and clown fish, tossing a line into the sea from the battered sampan with his father, gutting the fish and cooking it over a fire on the beach. Moments like that stayed with him. Like the smell of fresh innards being ripped from fish bellies, and the taste of grouper and barracuda sizzling from the marinade of onion, garlic, lime and chillies over a charcoal fire. Licking the last flakes of fish from his fingers and nodding when his mother asked if he wanted more rice. Or more coconut water. “Yes,” it was always yes.

Within an hour, after five vodka shots, Jessica was riding him in the ladies’ bathroom, head back, shrieking like a banshee. A week later, she was unpacking a pink suitcase with wide-eyed glee in his studio apartment in Shoreditch, and he wondered how on earth he had gotten her there. He didn’t even want her there, but she had found her way into his life, his apartment and his bed.

A month later, after the news of Anwar’s arrest, he had decided to leave London for good and so he ended his brief, high-sexed relationship with Jess. No doubt, she was great in bed, but she also wanted to be his wife. He knew that she was in love with him—they all fell madly for him somehow. He had no idea why. Perhaps it was his nonchalance, the kind of easy parley that certain women longed for. Perhaps the less one gave them, the more they yearned for.

With Del, it was different. He hated to admit it, but yes, it was love.

We were viscous, we slid into each other like two halves from the two-headed four-legged mythic creatures that Zeus created. We finished each other’s sentences, we thought the same things, despaired over the same things, we read the same books, loved the same music.

I would spend my days at the Saksi office, write, edit, get the pieces out, upload them onto the website. And then he would come pick me up. We’d rush back to my place, tear our clothes off and make love till we screamed. The sorry state of politics incensed us. We made love with our tongues, fingers and teeth. There was blood. It turned us into animals; we fucked to stay sane, fucked to go insane.