Lucas was aware of the tumbler on the table watching him. Waiting for him. Viewed from the floor, the flat struck him as unbelievably small suddenly; a soulless white cube; a prison. Keeping him safe, but keeping the world out. A memory stirred, not of a particular incident, but of an old feeling. Distress, that was it. Aged eleven and lying under the cold white tent he had made of his sheets, palms pressed against his ears, not managing to block out the slurred shouting of his father coming from downstairs.

Lucas sat up fast and opened the whisky. As he filled the tumbler, three fat fingers’ worth, he saw that he had somehow spilt several drops of wine across the newspaper he had retrieved so idly from the doorstep on his return from Ralph’s the previous afternoon. The drops had landed on the seedy little paragraph about his alleged crime. They could have been blood. His blood, Lucas thought bleakly, seizing the paper and making a roaring noise from the back of his throat as he hurled it across the room.

Drink was his only ally now. He pressed the tumbler against his forehead, trying to stop himself from downing it in one go. He ached for the oblivion that would follow. The demons of regret, of fear, crouching round the corner; he needed to dodge them. He would do this now, and then he wouldn’t do it again, Lucas vowed. Ever. He just needed to do it now. So he could sleep. So he could forget. For a little while.

He put the tumbler to his lips with fresh purpose. Come on, he told it, take me away. On he drank, doggedly, rhythmically, forgetting the chip in the glass and finding the metallic taste of blood entering the punch of each swallow. But no forgetting arrived. No sleepiness. Instead, shame began to fill him, as steadily as sand through an hourglass. The very same shame that had choked him during the endless endurance test of each school day; the sniggers, jibes and kicks; for being the son of the alkie doctor, who was gossiped about and despised by all, not just for the tell-tale tremors in his hands and pungent breath, but for his closeness to Iris, the practice nurse. Life went on, said Lucas’s mother, who didn’t have to go to school after the whistle-blowers had done their blowing; who had instead set her mouth and held her head high, taking on more houses to clean and longer shifts in the post office. Life went on. Until, eventually, it turned out that it didn’t.