Emboldened with brandy and its attendant stupidity,

that pleased him fundamentally.

she laughed once more, and the sound was bright and diamond shaped.

he only stared mournfully at the food, as though the meal itself was somehow melancholy to him.

‘It is always better to know for sure,’ he said, an obvious, somewhat idiotic statement to which I did not respond.

The story of Reginald Watts was a luckless one dealing in every manner of failure and catastrophe,

Accepting my role of nonparticipant,

She is stuck fast under the weight of her burdens.

The woman’s oyster-flesh eyes fell on me and I grew instantly colder.