“Around the outside of the room other beautiful women wearing little or nothing at all flitted between the infatuated, intoxicated men, sometimes luring them away for a private dance. The men would follow obediently, weighed down by lust and credit cards.”

“Deciding to wait, Scott sat down with a pint away from the bar at a corner table and lit a cigarette. The clientele in there on Sunday afternoon were the same as most other afternoons. From middle-aged to old men, drinking and cursing at the world like it was the last bus which had just left the stop without them.”

“He had done nothing on Christmas day, just wandered around outside in the frozen woods. Hard ground, chill winds and bare branches that looked like they'd been dipped in sugar. None of it seemed real, like walking around in a desolate dream, but one he didn't want to wake up from.”

“He had an intrusive gaze and quietly confident manner, that seemed to strip away the layers of protective deception Scott would usually adopt around strangers.”

“Sometimes he missed the numbed, walking-underwater feeling feel that the cocktail of narcotics used to give him. But if a situation went down in here, he was going to need all of his wits to get out of it.”

“Decker smiled and shrugged off their laughter. The humour was only barbed if you sat on the outside, and now he was one of them.”

“If your world is out there and you are in here then the only things that will gather within these walls are time and bitterness. Eventually, that bitterness will eat away at you and leave nothing behind but resentment and hate.”