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A brisk wind from the sea moaned through the rigging and clonked the metal fittings together like cowbells.
EVERY HOSPITAL I’ve ever been to has had the same smell, that whiff of disinfectant, vomit, and mortality.
I opened the cast-iron gate, walked up the short path, and rang the doorbell. For a moment I smelled broken wood and cement dust but then the door opened and I lost interest in anything else.
She was unfashionably curved, plump and sexy in a baggy sky blue Shetland sweater. She had a pale pretty face and a mess of brown hair that would have fallen halfway down her back if it hadn’t been tied up in a crude bundle at the back of her head. Her eyes were chocolate brown and her mouth was big, full-lipped, and turned down at the corners.
Her accent was cut glass
The evening was still warm enough for shirtsleeves, and the city was clinging to summer like a wannabe trophy wife to a promising center forward.
you could count the number of decent trombone soloists on the fingers of one foot.
As she came close I smelled honeysuckle, rose, and lavender, the scents of an English country garden.
When you’re a boy your life can be measured out as a series of uncomfortable conversations reluctantly initiated by adults in an effort to tell you things that you either already know or really don’t want to know.
his hair was as resolutely comb-resistant as a hedgerow.
She had a Scouse accent so she managed to make it sound like this was personally my fault.
He was wearing a navy blue High and Mighty suit jacket over a black Led Zeppelin T-shirt; he also had no visible neck and probably a blackjack concealed up his sleeve. Staring up his hairy nostrils made me quite nostalgic. You don’t get old-fashioned muscle like that in London anymore. These days it was all whippet-thin white guys with mad eyes and hoodies. This was a villain my dad would have recognized and I wanted to embrace him and kiss him firmly on both cheeks.
In the days before rottweilers it was the sort of place where people kept a sawed-off shotgun by the front door—in case of unwelcome guests or social workers.
Then she just accelerated away. I’m a young man, I’m fit, and I used to sprint at school. But she just left me standing like a fat kid on sports day.
It’s weird watching an elderly parent when he’s half naked. You find yourself staring in fascination at the slack skin, the wrinkles, and the liver spots, and thinking—one day all that will be yours.
For a terrifying moment I thought he was going to hug me, but fortunately we both remembered we were English just in time.
