Sam Youd as John Christopher

Hilda started to go upstairs with Patrick; on the turn, halfway up, she stopped and looked down to where I stood in the hall. She said: ‘I wonder if I could have a glass of...

‘I should never have let us drift apart as we did. I blame myself for that.’ ‘I shouldn’t worry about it, Jinny,’ I said. In fact, Jinny had made tentative moves towards a resumption of...

‘Taken in error,’ Poley said. He threw over a square envelope, with the flap tucked in at the back. ‘A bill. Some hopeful tradesman.’ I recognized Isaak’s writing on the address. The card inside was...

Poley plunged forward and began to swim away from me. ‘Don’t finish that bottle off,’ he called. ‘I’ll want a drink when I get back.’ I watched him until his head was very small, and...

Poley said: ‘Got the bottle? Good. Climb aboard.’ He drove along the coast road, westwards, towards the distant enemy. I let him drive in silence, feeling that in that way he would be most likely...

‘I haven’t been cursed by a priest since Father Reilly caught me doing a mock of his sermon back in Dublin, when I was a girl of eight. This one’s an Italian’ (she pronounced it...

I was always anxious to co-operate with Anna in avoiding subjects about which she was sensitive; sensitivity made her ferocious. But I raised the matter with Dadda in the office one day. I had come...

‘Not that I admire your choice,’ I said bitterly. ‘My choice? David, is your mind as dirty as the others’? You mean you really thought Henry was my lover?’ ‘The poem,’ I said. She had...

‘So she told you it was just a boy-friend, and we had something against him? She’s a liar as well as a slut. Look at that.’ Mamma tossed her the poem. I was standing near...

I had been so concerned with seizing this chance to hit back that I had not considered the implications of the words I had read and was now speaking. I have never had much taste...