I. Let me be clear I have no feeling for pigs. I eat them, etcetera. When I was a child I had some kind of feeling for pigs but then I attempted to make my own pig with a pink sock and some cotton wool and a needle and thread. This, according to the instructions in a favourite book of mine.

Eva loved Tobias, same as anyone, but he wasn’t what she wanted so she left. Tobias was all right. He was a lovely and charming baby when he wanted – he made ducks with red paint on squares of white paper and called his father Twebba, which Eva adored. Eva did adore Tobias, same as anyone, but he wasn’t what she wanted so she left.

The boy is running again. You can tell by his feet that’s what he is doing. It takes you some time to understand he is running – in the beginning the sound of those feet isn’t any way peculiar to the other morning sounds. I was once a boy myself but I was never like that: my steps never made that small smacking sound, smacking in their little rhythm along Sadlier Street.

Karl had sharpened the knife exactly as I’d asked and he’d also brought home a bottle of Japanese whisky because he knew this was coming. He’d got started on the whisky in the car, out the front. I was drinking myself, watching him through the blinds, trying to decide if I would really do it or not. When he came inside I was sitting on the lounge. I had two clean glasses ready and he sat down beside me, stinking of beer, smoke and vegetable fat plus the cleaning products they use on the grill that take me way back to preschool.