QUINN’S ON THE porch. I can see him over Mum’s shoulder through the smudged vertical strip of glass next to the front door. Golden porchlights flicker and zip with midges and moths. Occasionally, his shifting shadow cuts off the light. I’m sitting with Mum and Dad at the dinner table. We finished eating an hour ago and are barely talking. We’re drinking and waiting for him. Red wine furs my tongue. The room’s too hot, air jetting from the ceiling ducts, and smells of meat and salt. Crickets drone, punctuated by the sudden, dropping bonks of frogs. I wonder what would happen if I were to say: ‘He’s standing there, outside.’ But I want to give him more time to savour the cold, to slip on a second skin. 

The table’s bone-coloured with a burnished steel frame. Mum bought it around three years ago after Dad got his new job. I think she still feels guilty about the cost, even though we have plenty of money. Sometimes she rubs its leg like it’s a dog. Opposite me is a crystal vase with faceted edges. Hyacinths droop over its flared rim. Their stems look like fleshy specimens in a greenish solution. Mum makes us keep flowers until they’re long dead, as if she wants to squeeze every last drop of beauty out of them. I hate watching the flowers shrivel, brown, rot, turn inwards on themselves. It’s worse when they bloat: colours blooming from petal tips then changing all at once like a gas flame suddenly overtaken from orange to blue. When I can’t take it anymore, even though Mum complains later, I sneak them onto the compost pile, trying not to look at their skeletons.