“Ridiculous really, when you think that I come from a broken home and I probably have low self-esteem. But the way I see it, people who go around spending themselves easily don’t have low self-esteem. They have really high self-esteem. If someone like me tried to live like that, there’d be nothing left. I don’t know. It’s complicated. The girls who roll with guys like this are gorgeous. Somehow that makes them immune to being reduced.”

“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”

“Yet, in the middle of all this grief, I realize there’s a part of me clinical enough to want to document it. People talk about artists like they’re these sensitive, delicate beings who don’t use the toilet, but I think the real ones are something else. They’re users. They’re mercenaries. They’re hunters. And they don’t let anything – other people, or themselves – get in the way of it.”

“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.”

“After a while I get the feeling that Mum and Brian aren’t home. Kane either. It’s because the house is making so much noise; ticking and creaking as it stretches in the sun. Acting like a house does when nobody’s around to see it. It must have forgotten about me.”

“Without wonder, you are dead and I am older. The girl in the mirror looks devastated. Like someone really has pushed a brick through her ribcage.”

“See, I know what they think about me. That I’m some project. And, yeah, I’ll accept their help. But I’m gonna pay my way. ’Cause you can’t let people like that give you anything. They think they own you then. And you know what? Nobody’s ever going to own me.”