Clem ground out her cigarette and immediately wished she hadn’t. It had felt like something live she could hold onto.

She lay a moment longer. Oh it was queer; she was ignited. Now she understood it. Love. And she was changed.

Iris kissing the lips of a dying boy. Imagine! So very kind, so killingly funny! Cross-eyed Iris in her specs, whatever did the poor boy think?

And she comes, she actually bloody well comes, bustling down between the beds, bless her heart, in her best coat and vile black straw hat, more fit for a funeral than anything. He’ll get her another, whatever she wants, the best money can buy. He’s so pleased to see her he could nearly bloody cry.

The iris of his good eye was a curious pale grey, almost silver; the edges were darker, as if tarnished like a coin, and the artist made a brave attempt to paint the other eye to match. The eyebrow had been finely painted, with the most miniature of brushes, the most delicate of strokes, but it was a shade too yellow. The blank eye gazed beyond her.

He frowned, pulled her roughly against him. She could feel the tickle of his chest hair against her cheek and his bristles on top of her head. She could feel the outraged beating of his heart.

Right on the dot, Ted waltzes in as if he owns the place. Vince looks up from the pump. Christ he’s got his ice-cream seller’s jacket on, straw hat, moustache gleaming like a pair of brass handles.

And then came Mrs Fletcher, snapping her scissors, the soft scrunch of the blades through thick hanks, the gradual sensation of lightness. Now every scrap of hair that Powell had touched was gone.

Walking back in the lamp-stained dark, the duckboards greasy and glittering with frost, she wanted to sing, she wanted to scream, she wanted to make love to him, she wanted to die.

The infant’s eyes were as black as if night were trapped behind his lids, and when he opened them she feared she’d be consumed.