PICKING THROUGH THE BONES
Loss joins us for dinner at 10.43pm. Well after the main course and just before dessert.
Our lips are greasy with olive oil and our cutlery lies spent. We are all red from the sun.
It must make you feel at home, I suggest to Seb’s parents as I open the French doors.
The room fills with hot-wet tarmac, heady grass, sweet-pea scent. It’s never like this there, they tell me. There, they know how to handle weather.
I’m staring at a steady ring of red on the table. It’s seeping into the grain of the wood.
I press down hard with my napkin to soak it up, although I don’t know why. The dining room table is covered with stains – every one of them from a meal like this. I yawn. It ripples through each of us, in succession. The cadence of empty chatter starts to peter out and I keep dabbing, thinking about going to bed, when Jorge brings up the bombs.
Maybe it’s the mention
