A drunk’s fall, long-drawn-out, no drama, all ghastly farce, slow but unstoppable, a cringe to watch. The reason long-term, fatal drunks look so physically battered. The kind of fall that doesn’t kill you the first time, or the second time, but will one day.

Hitting the ground, all the breath was blasted from me, tearing at my throat and lungs on the way out. I had banged my head, front and back – the blow to the back frightened me at first, until I realised all the pain was coming from the right side of my face, which had made grinding contact with the wall. Ringing metal pain, all the way through the cheekbone, the upper jaw and around the eye socket, back to the ear. Everything felt twice as large as it should be. Pain elsewhere too, but nothing more than I deserved. I was soaked, and filthy, and lying on the soaked, filthy paving of the back garden, but it felt like the right place for me. Above, through black branches, the pulsing shape of the plume.

And Quin’s face. That fierce but honest face, a shining bald head.

‘I used to hate beta testing,’ he said. He had said? When? To whom? ‘The beta – when things broke, or went wrong. I just wanted everything to work. But now I love that stage. You learn so much. When things break, that’s when you see how they really work. You have to stop pursuing the ideal and respect the real, what’s on the table in front of you. Broken machines, broken software, broken cities, broken people. You can work with them. So much potential.’

Where had he said this? In the pub? We didn’t go to the pub when I went to interview him. It appeared he had said it to me, in person, I could see his face saying it to me, in person, in the pub. An unattributed quote.

Back indoors, I intended to strip off my ruined clothes, take a hot shower, dry off and settle down to some work. But the Need had spread out again, filling every corner of the flat, apart from the path to the fridge. A can first. I had been through a lot. I deserved one. Only two were left in the fridge, somehow. I drank.

The top of the can came away from my lips smeared with red.

I slapped my hand to my face. After coming in from the wintry garden, I was cold, very cold, but my cheek was scorching to the touch. My hand, when I took it away, was painted with blood.