Extracts

Sarah kneels on the captain’s chair to reach Playground’s steering wheel, hands gripping at ten and two o’clock, exactly like Mum and Dad taught her.

When Merl Perlman reads about the murder in Saturday’s paper, she has an uneasy feeling that she might know the victim.

The house looked like any other house and the door looked like any other door. Normal.

I checked my horoscope this morning (Aquarius), like I do every day.

I kiss my wife on the lips. Her breath smells of last night’s toothpaste mixed with sleep.

“Daddy, what’s an ‘eejit’?”

Waste not, want not.

I was born dead.

It was a perfect day for walking. The morning had broken and washed the sky in technicolour; palest lemon blending into brazen orange and deep, dark ochre.

Winter was an unforgiving time on Holy Island.

We Are All More Than Our Self-Doubts

THREE AND A HALF YEARS EARLIER

Economics is mass psychology.