Mr Devereux walked out on his wife of 20 years that morning, not just because she had developed a sudden passion for weaponry. Wearing a bowler hat, as he had for the last 20 years, it wasn’t difficult to step out into the soggy streets and hitch a bus to Hastings. “Y’all having a nice day?” he said to the harassed woman sat next to him who held a toddler on her lap. The little boy kept reaching for Mr Devereux’s hat, but when he took it off and handed it to him he started to cry. The woman tutted, her arm all drenched in the rain that had dropped from the top of it. “Im going on a road trip today” Mr Devereux told her, “I’m going to meet a real pistol”. When he arrived at Hastings bus station he was the only passenger left. The bus driver looked right through Mr Devereux, all the way to the back of the bus and then stepped off, leaving the doors wide open. “Get off when you please, old man, he said, “they’re no pistols left in this town’”. For a while Mr Devereux stayed seated instead, listening to the...

I was told it was a car crash. But at first Facebook told me different. Someone said you had passed away of natural causes, followed by dozens of comments. It seemed the whole world was sorry. Someone from Kenya who I was sure you had never known, posted a picture of an idyllic beach and the words RIP beneath it. People had posted pictures of you on nights out, luminous coloured drinks in your hand. You had brushed your hair recently on all of them. Robert telephoned me with a runny terror that transferred itself over the phone and made me tense. That’s when he told me that you had had your body broken in two by a double decker bus. You had been driving a Mercedes, which I couldn’t believe you could have afforded. How much could a low level bank employee be earning? I quickly did the maths and found you must have had help. Someone, somewhere had handed you tatty working class notes. I thought about asking Robert right there on the telephone, but he seemed fairly cut up. That expression for when people just can’t be put back together. I thought about leaving the house...

You expertly boil tomatoes. It is a skill you have perfected since the age of eleven, when your mother first handed you the spoon. That glorious bubble of temperature and the steam floating in your gnarly curls. The slim man across the street curving his head to look through the window at the figures which evaporate so neatly now. Daddy somewhere, his head tight as his knuckles, tasting sweet tomato sauce plunging down his open shirt. And prising that window open, each time the bolt so stiff it hurts your fingers, aware of your mother washing the tomatoes so carefully by the sink. Watching as the tomatoes boil, punch out of themselves so you cannot avert your eyes. Your poor efforts spent trying to catch them lightly, fingers ready to burn.And the ease with which your mother takes them out , one by one, hoofing hot breath. You standing by the window watching the slim man plug his headphones in, get some courage. And your mother cooling her thumb in the acid cold, a sticky plaster tagged in her mouth. Looking at you so red and proud, knowing you will practice until you have the right scars and expressions...