If I could make it to the evening, if I could get that far. Just a few more hours at work before the weekend. Just getting home, eating, getting the kids bathed, their teeth brushed, getting them to bed, reading them a story with a happy ending, and then … That’s all I needed – a few hours on my post-birthday evening to myself.

Angry-era Bowie was my favourite: Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). As a teen, it had been Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust, but fuck that shit, I needed –

Beep. The music cut out.

Biddy: I’d love to see you! Come to mine and we’ll have an early night??

From me: Maybe tomorrow or Sunday?

I let Bowie sing – Biddy’s show about Aidan, just surviving it, was a triumph for her, but I was a wreck – opened emails that were obviously spam, pretended to read them carefully, took pretend notes, looked up Scary Monsters on Wikipedia. The biographer David Buckley described it as the perfect balance of creativity and mainstream success …

* * *

I yawned, let the shower water bounce off my head, leant forwards, hands on the glass, ah, oh, ah, let the water cascade down my back. Life was always better after a shower, unless you slipped and broke your hip. I turned down the cold knob, oh, yeah – hot, bring on the steam – turned, got my face under the jets, soaped my body.

In ten minutes, maybe sooner, I’d be dry and warm and relaxed, standing in the darkness of the back garden smoking a joint on my own. Just me. It had passed, I was better now – the anger, the silence, it had gone.

Sarah was in the bedroom. Dr Jekyll would go have a quiet word with her, make things better, but not yet.

I got the weed Josh had given me from the top of the fridge, the tobacco, the papers, rolled a joint – not bad – got a lighter from the cupboard above the oven extractor – no sound from the bedroom – opened, finally, the back door, took a deep –

Sarah was sitting on the herb garden wall, head down, smoking a cigarette.

‘Oh, hey.’ I held the joint up. ‘Want some of this?’

She nodded without looking at me – she was upset – looked back at the ground. A possum ran along the fence; she didn’t look up. I lit the joint, stood at the door, exhaled. Fucking Sarah. It was my fault, of course, but I was feeling better now – just. I walked to her, gave her the joint, stood next to her, shoved my hands in my hoodie pockets.

‘Anything you want to say to me?’ she said, her first eye contact since the dinner table.

‘About last night?’

She passed me the joint, exhaled. ‘Last night, yesterday, the past few days …’

I inhaled, exhaled. ‘Yeah, look, I’m sorry. I just really needed some time to myself … I’ve been feeling really …’

Tears. Was she crying? Fucking hell.