‘I don’t remember when it started. Maybe it was simply a function of the hour and the camaraderie of a shared snack from salvaged bits in the fridge, but it became a tradition. Ask-anything and tell-all sessions over midnight snacks.’

‘One morning before work, I noticed blooms of mould on the bathroom ceiling. When I got home, sweaty from my shift, the bathroom walls were egg-freckled with black marks. I showered with a sense of unease.’

‘When I first met Kate she preferred Chekov to Tolstoy, did not like travelling, knitted scarves and hats, loved wine, detested beer. We had eleven good years of marriage before I enlisted to fight the rogue state of Yunnan.’

‘I kept dreaming about him night after night. In my dreams, I was holding him tight while walking up a mountain. Just before reaching the top, I tripped and dropped him off the cliff.’

‘When Sonja texted not to be scared, that she was on her way home from the airport with her boyfriend who would be staying the night, I was more surprised that she had a boyfriend than anything else.’

‘Until he died, my father always called it the “gallery”. I argued that a gallery was a room – or set of rooms – dedicated to the display of visual art.’

‘The facility is located several hundred miles north of the nearest urban habitation and roughly two days’ hike from the nearest civilian road. It stands at the centre of a mountain range and from the ground it is hidden by a dense body of trees.’

‘The pharmacist hands them over in an unmarked bag, whispers about how he takes them with no worrying consequences. His skin’s luminous; undeniably beautiful. He smiles and says: It’s my last day.’

‘I don’t know how it is in Ireland now, but here if you want to see old people and babies, go to Mass.’

‘There are four things you need to know about my brother. Sorry, I know it’s late. You’re tired. The book keeps slipping from your hands.’

‘Before I was born they built me an enormous cage. I remember it well.’

‘I had a barn and we lived in it. The planks were rust red, the edges piped white like wedding cake icing – horse ghosts galloped over the floor, but we didn’t mind a bit. It was fall then, the end of harvest season.’

‘My head is buzzing like a wasps’ nest. A jumble of dates. Marks on a calendar. My last period.‘

‘I had been worrying a lot about the world lately, about burning rainforests and burning futures. Could I form some kind of prayer?’

‘Beach cafe with a humdrum feel. Sky through the window shows low-lying cloud. Lacklustre afternoon, sense of the everyday.’

‘My great-grandmother's attic was devoid of dust and full of skins. ‘

‘And when I was a child, clutching golden gewgaws proclaiming I could kick the highest kicks or jump the cleanest jumps, I was a competitor, an athlete.’

‘Vivien walked deeper into the inlet. Her mother would have known the names of the rocks on either side, would have been able to tell you how they formed, would have relished the cold water.’

‘“Where you going?” asks a being shorn of hair and eyebrows who plunks down beside me and smells of baked bread.’

‘She took him home to eat with her parents. When a girl does that, it’s partly to see if they can stand him and partly to see if she can, when he meets Mum and Dad.’