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when he says “hid his face amid a crowd of stars”?’
    Mrs Coan had seen countless kids like me wriggle their way up through the grammar school: first-generation middle-class with an unstable core of entitlement and parents poised at home for results; for
a better way for you, easier than I had, one with options
. I didn’t know much but I knew I had to impress. And as Pope said (Pope! Listen to me! I told you …): ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing …’.
    Mrs Coan didn’t smile as she acknowledged my raised hand. A slightly exasperated tone in her voice. ‘Yes, Laura.’
    ‘Did he die?’
    ‘No, but I can see where you’re coming from.’
    I got the next one in fast. ‘Did he get famous?’
    Mrs Coan ignored me and looked expectantly at the rest of the class. I kept my hand up, Rolodexing options and collating them into a list of descending likelihood. Meanwhile Rachel Atherton lifted a slender, tanned arm. She was the girl I always vied with for top of English. We wound up sharing the sixth-form English prize – the first time in the school’s history there had been joint winners. A photo from the ceremony, in a silver frame on my parents’ dining-room radiator shelf, showed us gripping the small plaque on either side in an almost invisible tug-of-war. Rachel was smiling in the photo. I was not. We might have locked horns intellectually but she surpassed me when it came to dignity.
    ‘Yes, Rachel?’ said Mrs Coan.
    Rachel cleared her throat. Took her time. Knew she had a winner. ‘Did he retreat into his art?’
    Mrs Coan clasped her hands and smiled as though all her years of pedagogic graft had finally been validated. Here it was! Lo and, while you’re at it, behold: a shining pearl in a sea of gritty little oysters. ‘What a beautiful answer,’ said Mrs Coan. ‘Yes, Rachel. He did.’
    My inner swot hawked and spat and I spoke again without being asked to. ‘I disagree,’ I said. ‘It’s not just that.’
    Mrs Coan rolled her eyes.
This girl. This girl who chews her fingers and won’t sit still, who whispers in assembly and reddens when she’s looked at.
She levelled me with an assassin’s grim, unimpeachable gaze. ‘Your problem, Laura Joyce, is that you
try too hard
.’
    And yes, that’s my name. Laura Joyce. Quite a blinder from the great beyond, I think you’ll agree. A fine example of blistering cosmic humour – and one I didn’t truly appreciate until I first started sending out submissions and received several rejections referring to the discrepancy between my own writing and that of my streamy namesake. Want to know what the mysterious ‘dark matter’ they’re searching for actually is? It’s Irony – billions of tons of the stuff, lurking, ready to go. The Universe is not indifferent; the Universe is
amused
.
    To get out of my bedroom I had to slide a clothes rail out of the way of the door. It was tricky getting back in again. In addition to the clothes rail and a small desk I had a single bed, which was why I often ended up in bed with Tyler.
    I went to the fridge and found a beer – the last. The kitchen was in its usual state of neglect – the fridge full of things mouldering or threatening to moulder. Philadelphia Light with a green, hairy thing in it that had almost as much character as a muppet. Curling dried bacon, half the pack used and left ripped open as though it had been attacked by a badger. An array of slowly rotting condiments, pickled this and that, bought on drunken whims in express supermarkets. A bowl of withering fruit on the top of the defunct microwave. Bananas that had furiously ripened after being placed beneath apples and grapes (how many times had I warned Tyler that the banana was not a sociable fruit?) that had themselves softened in more sanguine defeat. We didn’t really keep on top of things (Tyler:
I’m thrilled when I put the right fucking bin out on the right fucking day
).
    I drank my beer looking out of the window. The pub