Sex, though, was what she was good at. She could turn a twenty-year-old boy into a man, and a middle-aged man into a twice-a-night. Mother was a drinker who couldn’t stop. Mother had boyfriends who couldn’t stop. Thought her dad was Bill but found out too late it was George. That was a hard one to live down. The street found her out by the canal, stony-eyed with a mouth full of bluster and a fag between her lips that she’d cadged from a decent bargeman. Take me away, she’d asked him. When you’re old enough, he’d said. See? Decent. Men who wait.
