“Depression comes in bouts. Like boxing. Dad is in the blue corner.”

“Oliver, we’ve got something to tell you,” Dad says, dumping a cardboard box full of garden waste into a toad green mangler. Unlike the doctor, when Dad says we, he means we because Mum is omnipotent. “Who’s dead?” I ask, shot-putting a bottle of Richebourg. “No one’s dead.” “You’re getting a divorce?” “Oliver.” “Mum’s preggers?” “No, we—” “I’m adopted.” “Oliver! Please, shit up!”

“For my last birthday, Dad bought me a pocket-sized Collins English Dictionary. It would only fit in a pocket that had been specially designed.”

“Anger does not come easy to me. It is something I have to encourage, like a greyhound in second place.”

“Thursday morning. I usually let my Mum wake me up but today I have set my alarm for seven. Even from under my duvet, I can hear it bleating on the other side of my room. I hid it inside my plastic crate for faulty joysticks so that I would have to get out of bed, walk across the room, yank it out of the box by its lead and, only then, jab the snooze button. This was a tactical manoeuvre by my previous self. He can be very cruel.”

“Jordana is in the umpire's highchair.I walk under the rugby posts and on to the tennis courts, stopping a few metres in front of her, in the service box.Her legs are crossed.I wait for her to speak.'I have two special skills,' she says.She pulls a sheaf of papers from under her bum. I recognize the font and the text boxes. It's my pamphlet.'Blackmail,' she says.She holds up her Zippo in the other hand. I can tell that she has been practising this.'And pyromania.'I am impressed that Jordana knows this word.'Right,' I say.'I'm going to blackmail you, Ol.'I feel powerless. She is in a throne.'Okay,' I say.”

“I don't know if I've come of age, but I'm certainly older now. I feel shrunken, as if there's a tiny ancient Oliver Tate inside me operating the levers of a life-size Oliver-shaped shell. A shell on which a decrepit picture show replays the same handful of images. Every night I come to the same place and wait till the sky catches up with my mood. The pattern is set. This is, no doubt, the end.”