Big Sky

‘First rule of book club,’ Rhoda said, ‘there is no book club.

When he was younger, Jackson’s politics had been on the side of the Roundheads, now he felt a certain sympathy towards the Royalists. It was the trajectory of age, he presumed

The Girl with the Unicorn Backpack. It sounded like one of those Scandi noir books that he didn’t read. Jackson didn’t like them much – too dark and twisted or else too lugubrious. He liked his crime fiction to be cheerfully unrealistic, although in fact he hardly read anything any more in any genre. Life was too short and Netflix was too good

but she was Russian, which was synonymous with cash

they never did anything together, never went anywhere, not even a day-trip. That was the working class for you, too busy working to have time for pleasure, and too poor to pay for it if they managed to find the time