ALICE TURNS HER key stealthily, like they’re breaking into someone else’s life. She pulls Drew after her, kicking the door shut behind them. Relieved to see her flat still looks the same. Home sweet home: all exposed pipes and rising damp, metal entrails and the hole in the wall. Renovation? More like devastation. She turns on the fan: what wouldn’t she give for a cool change? She wouldn’t give him, Alice smiles, pushing Drew towards the bed he’s thought about for the past week. She wouldn’t give tonight. Still, she figures, she’s about done with the city. Or it’s about done with her. She’s begun to crave a big house on an endless beach with a fine sugar daddy to ice every cake she has her eye on. She wonders if this one wants the job.

Alice slips off her shoes and kicks them aside. She lifts her arms over her head and peels off her top before heading towards the fridge and the gin in the freezer: thick as syrup, sticky as lust. She can already hear the ice cracking like the floorboards above or her futon yielding beneath their weight.