“I stare at his forearms. I can make out a naked woman with a snake going up her vagina. She’s holding a knife, slitting her own throat. There are three playing cards on the back of his right hand: the Queen of Spades, the Jack of Hearts and the Joker. Red flames lick his elbow.There’s a watch tattooed on his left wrist with ‘Fuck Time’ inscribed on its face. Fuck o’clock.He’s not that tall, but his body is carefully cut. The lines of his face, his cheekbones and jaw, are sharp and precise. I can see the tufts of his blond underarm hairs and under them the ladder of his ribs. He’s beautiful, in the way that a knife is beautiful.”

“I’ve worked out a tattoo – if I had one” says Ryan. I look at what he’s done. He’s got the outline of my hand over his heart and in it he’s written, Her...”

“I bury my face in my hands. And then Ryan does such a nice thing. He wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me in against him. I can feel his body heat through his cotton T-shirt, and directly in front of me are the worn, faded knees of his jeans. But most of all, I can smell him. And he smells sandy-warm, like a beach. No one can see my face in there protected by his chest. Which is good because I can’t stop crying. I mean, I’m really going for the world record in terms of an inappropriate public breakdown. But it doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t matter. I’m sheltered.”

“He's kissing me, quick desperate kisses, like I'm something he needs to live; and I'm kissing him back, crazy with the ache I feel for him, trying to kiss him better, trying to fix him. I'm touching his face, feeling the roughness of his beard, the wet of his tears, feeling the tremors passing through his body, hearing his ragged breathing. And each kiss is a failure. A failed attempt to escape from all that's happening. And I only know this when he slows, drawing it out, letting me taste regret, letting things linger. He pulls away, and I'm saying "Don't, don't, don't", trying to bring him back, kissing his face. But I've lost him.”

“Have people been staring at you?’He frowns. ‘I don’t know. I guess so. I forgot it was there. Can you really notice it?’‘Well yeah, but … I think it’s great.’ To me, Danny rocking up to surf with graffiti all over his face is magic. I want to tell him that I think he’s precious, that the fact he talks to me is a gift. But of course you can’t say things like that to people”

“And what really struck me was that the woman still meant so much to Grandad after all of those years. She burned in his memory in a way that she never would have if he’d left his wife and sons for her. It got me thinking about how sometimes it’s the people we don’t get to have who stay with us the most.”

“He’s still singing to himself, eyes closed, pretending, I think, that I’m someone else.I shout in his ear again. ‘So you can’t just lay down and die?’He doesn’t open his eyes, but he nods. ‘You can’t just lay down and die”