Drowned Sprat and Other Stories (20 page)

The nautical restaurant was full, the traffic was thin, the park oozed danger and the gradient of College Hill threatened to rise up and smack him in the face. His breath rasped in his chest; he had the strangest sensation that the pores in his back had opened, ready for the boom, which he knew would never come. The tethered cigarette, his tiny bomb, would have been extinguished
by the rain, which was now falling thick and fast, obscuring even the other side of the road. Outside what used to be the Gluepot he waited for a cab, drenched and shivering. When he got home, he decided, he would finish the half bottle of Jim Beam he’d hidden from himself in a cupboard. He would not answer the phone, he would take a new packet of fags from the carton, he would lie on his sofa and sleep.

PREVIOUS BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

Poetry
The Bleeding Ballerina
Moody Bitch

Short Stories
The Glass Whittler
All the Tenderness Left in the World

Novels
Crimes by Neglect
The Heart’s Wild Surf
The Whistler
Belief
The Shag Incident
Music From a Distant Room