“Like fuck, she has. What’ve you done?” “Nothing!” He scowled. “Or, well, nothing new.” A pause. “Paulette, like, called her up.” “And—” “And! And what do you think, and.” “Ah,” I said, “right.” Paulette was Eddie’s sister-in-law—his wife, Emily’s, sister—and, about a year back, he’d fucked her. I’d found them pawing drunkenly at each other in the corridor of our local snooker club, their clothes all rucked up, her damp hair sticking to his wet mouth. I’d steered Ed, wobbling, home, Paulette had fled back to London, and they hadn’t seen each other since. Emily had classed the radio-silence from Paulette’s Acton flat as further evidence of her sister’s general fecklessness, and while Eddie’s guilt had left him shifty, it wasn’t a shiftiness you’d easily distinguish from his typical irritability. “So,” he said, “it’s like, she’s in therapy. And she’s exorcising her demons, or whatever, so she decides to confess. Em hears her out, you know, and hangs up. She calls me at work, and man, she’s screaming. Fuck this, fuck that, she’s changing the locks—the works.” “Shit.” “I’m all, I’m sorry, love, I’m sorry, but she’s going, this is it, you prick! Can you believe it? You’re out, she says.” “Well—” “She says she’s waking up. She says if I show my face she’ll have my balls. I mean, it’s my house, man! Can you fucking believe it?” His breath was thick with hops and misery. “Uh.” I plucked at the crotch of my trousers. Re-knotted the drawstring. “Well. It’s not like you, you know, did nothing.” “Fuck you! It was a mistake! It was eleven months ago!” “I know, like, but still—” “Fuck you,” he said, but then he was silent for a minute. “Oh Jesus, Conn, whatever. I apologised, is the thing—I kept on apologising, and she’s not listening, is she?” “I know, but—hang on, man.”
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