The baby was asleep, but must have been dreaming: he was moving his face – now frowning, now amazed – as if he were trying out all the expressions he would need, Viv thought, when he was grown up.
They had taken off their shirts, their shoes and socks, rolled up their trousers, and were running to the water. […] They were young – much younger than Duncan and Fraser, perhaps fourteen or fifteen. Their hands and feet were too big for their bodies, which were all very slender and slight. They looked as though they had too much life in them, that the life was rushing about inside them, giving them awkward angels and tilts.
And a month in prison was an age. A month in prison was like a street with a fog in it: you could see the things that were near you clearly enough, but the rest was grey, blank, depthless.
It was liking things you weren’t supposed to like; and feeling things you weren’t supposed to feel. Never being able to say the thing that people expected. And Alec felt like I did.
