Robert waited fifteen minutes after she’d left before getting up out of bed, sliding on a green and white striped t-shirt and some grey dungarees, putting on his socks and shoes, tying his laces with bunny ears, laying out a couple of still-warm sausages and a bowl of chilled water for the dogs and a tin of tuna for Rachel, combing his hair to the left hand side, checking it in the mirror, turning on the gas, kneeling down, laying a satin cushion onto the grate, manoeuvring his head inside the oven, and closing his eyes.

Three chunky, grubby, streetlit men tossed limp hessian sacks between themselves in a chain, one to the other, until the last, the grubbiest and least streetlit, slid each one neatly onto the back of a worn-out pickup truck. The first man, “Steve!” he had been called, who was the chunkiest but the least grubby, dragged each off a disordered pile on the floor of the dock, for which he had to lean down and each time displayed the shiny crack of his buttocks. He was not using his knees to bend, which was of course very bad for his back, as Slim Tim, the chunkiest but only mildly grubby man in the middle, would tell him later in life, when it was already too late.

Hot wet rain slithers up between your toes from the puddles below. The balls of your grit-speckled feet tickle the tarmac. You rub them on the ground for temporary relief. Only temporary.

Ten stilleto heels click-clack towards you. The fleshy lumpy towers held high above them cackle and gurn, their skin sparkling with summer sweat and sequins. You feel underdressed, in your blue M&S dressing gown with the sleeves rolled up. But they can’t see you. You slip to the side of the alley so that they can stumble past. You catch a faint whiff of something. You’re close.

Joni Mitchell on the terrace and a tea with rum. Scorched breeze sashaying between the pines and tiles. The sea close enough to hear but not close enough that the waves ever seem anything other than perfectly still. Soft bread with seeds and olive oil that tastes like olive oil. A feeling that anything could happen but that nothing needs to, we could wait until next week, or the week after that, or never.

You fell asleep. And no one woke you up. And you missed the whole film.

You awake to the scratch of nylon against nylon as sugared-up bodies wrap up two sedentary hours in winter coats, picking bits of popcorn from their teeth. They kick and trample still half-full boxes of snacks as their legs shuffle past the folded seats, and they say to each other, “That was really good.”

They found her holding her breath under the water in the shallow pool, trying to hide. How could she have known the clarity of water? Before the explosion scorched her retinas the only liquid she’d known was milk. She’d probably have been fine, if she’d been hiding in milk.

“That’ll be £6.99”, she said, flatly.

“That’s expensive,” he replied, taken aback, “I’m only sending it down the road!”

“Then take it there yourself?”

She was not interested in his protests. He’d been in the queue for six minutes and considered whether the trouble was worth any more of his time. Mrs Fazackerly behind him pretended to be very interested in the display of twines of various strengths and lengths at the end of the shelves. He’d queued here many times. It went: colourful confectionery, serious confectionery, writing paper, pens and pencils, sticky tape, very sticky tape, and twines of various strengths and lengths. He had often wondered what all the different strengths and lengths could be used for. And then he usually remembered that the world had changed without him noticing, and surely there were all kinds of uses for these things that he’d never be able to dream of.

Behind Mrs Fazackerly, a young woman dressed in neon popped her bubblegum, and waggled her leg impatiently. Behind her, a young boy seemingly dead to the world stood staring at the screen of some thick grey electronic device.

“Very well,” he replied, feeling hurried, and handing over, exactly and in coins, the £6.99.

It’s been a long hot couple of weeks. But the sky finally broke a few hours ago.

Boy rests his chin on his fists. A tower: left fist at the bottom, pinky to the windowsill. Right pinky atop the thumb of the left hand. Chin on top. Cheeks puffed out. Lips restless. Nose an inch from the freckled glass.

The air smells like it’s been waiting. You know it. When the gases have been dry for so long and the molecules have all been rubbing up against each other with no release, and the tension builds and builds until eventually it all lets loose. There is electricity in the air, but nothing to show for it. Yet. Two trees to the left of the window down the hill shake with the pleasure of the wind and the wet, like dogs who’ve jumped in the lake even though they were explicitly, loudly, repeatedly told not to.

Boy is done. No more playing outside. A welcome break? Maybe. Hopefully there’ll be fireworks.

There was grass. It was brown. There was a river. It was dry. There was a big mac. But it was just three buns.

A bottom bun.

A middle bun.

And a top bun, holding its sesame seeds high as a triumphant symbol that things were still good, still fine, still delicious.

But there was no lettuce. No tomato.

He sat by the dry bank on half a bench. One slat for the back and one below. Four sets of empty bolts.

No onions.

The stream had dwindled over the course of a few months. The flow started to recede in January. He first noticed an algae-cloaked handlebar poking above the surface, and then spotted the dry sloping walls of the ill-fated waterway revealing themselves. As the weeks went by, another part of the bike, a shopping trolley or two, plastic bags, bricks, rubble, flytipped bags of who-knows-what. Whatever ancient murk was hidden finally taking its time in the sun.

No patty. No secret sauce. Just those three buns.

“I’m telling mother!!” screamed Alice, in the sort of of shaky, anguished convulsion one has when one has emotions they don’t know where to put.

But I carried on. I opened another tin and, one by one, threw each precious olive over the edge of the ravine.

Alice had worked hard for these olives. I didn’t care. I resented her for being better than me. In every way. How could she be better than me in every way? It didn’t make sense. Surely there would be something…

I think that’s how she operates. I think she’s fuelled by jealousy, and it’s always her move. She sees me getting good at something, getting interested in something, and she seizes it, fast-tracks her skills by observing my trajectory, and does it better than me.

I throw her an uncaring grin. “Mother is dead.” I say this every time. One day it’ll be true.