Then he saw my dark grandmother, drinking whiskey and soda in The Red Lion. She and her sisters flitted through the cobbled streets on Saturdays like a swarm, settling in pubs and on benches, sipping from the glasses of strange men, moving away when something sweeter came along. Papa saw no reason why he could not have this girl, like he’d had others before.

But there was a reason. Betty lumbered after her daughters like a fat sheep dog, herding them towards the Cornish men they preyed on, demanding drinks imperiously, sitting with her legs held open to let the air in. She was a monstrous thing, with her crimped tobacco-white hair and drunken leer. All her girls deferred to her absolutely. Cornish men were to play with and steal from, not to keep. She managed their romances like a theatrical agent.

Ignorant of these rules, Papa caught my grandmother in his cupped hands, and felt her fizzing furiously against his palms like a passionate kiss. The waspish girl struggled and stung, but finally gave up the fight. Her submission was the greatest triumph in his life. Livid, Betty set a curse on them. Even years later, with Betty long dead, my grandmother would still cry out at night, in fear of what might come for her while she slept.

My Papa would sit by the house with his tobacco tin and watch his wife work, like a goblin enjoying a fairy slave.  I would loll on the grass near her, close to her warm smell of sweat and smoke and something more troubling that I didn’t understand. She threw stones at the dog if she saw it, despite its pained attempts to appease her. If someone made an unfortunate comment about her cooking, she would snatch their plate from under their fork and fling it through the back door like a frisbee. I remember plates lying in pieces and an assortment of birds gathering to scavenge.

In later years, after Papa was long gone, I found the garden the saddest thing. Where there had been, in her glory years,  a scandalous excess of colour, now there was grey earth and a sagging clothes line. Rubbish blew in from the street and the gate creaked all night.  I resented the cheap symbolism of that neglected garden. I hated the way the balding lawn flaunted its eczema patches and cracked heels like it was trying to make some kind of point.

I sat near her whenever I could, and soon we were talking. Back at her tiny bedsit, I pitied her. The room was so small I could probably have touched both walls with fingertips. Her eccentric belongings were ordered neatly. Her little kettle, theatrical props, a large doll with glass eyes. On one wall, a huge mirror framed by shells. On another, she had pinned a beautiful silk gown, its arms extended, the skirt wide, something she had worn for some triumphant occasion years ago. There were photographs everywhere, of her smiling, glamorous, sunglasses and dark lips. She was in thrall to her past self, it was clear. She kept these trinkets clean with an almost erotic tenderness.  She was in love with herself.

And my word, I could see why. I have never seen such a compelling woman as that depicted in those many images.  I readily sat and let her show me teeth and legs and hair. There was an obscene perfection in the balance of breast to hip, a troubling child/adult confusion in the clear skin, wide eyes, powerful mouth.  It was clear from the many male figures that she’d had an interesting life, full of passionate attention. And, from her commentary, she’d been cold and cruel. You could see it in the eyes of the younger woman, but now, on the older, you could see it in the lines around her mouth. Discontent, boredom, arrogance. She’d played her hand badly, it seems. This damp little room was a poor reward for years of seduction.  All that power built up hotly and then tore her – the result was the slowest explosion, which lasted the rest of her life.

And now it’s the length he goes on about, all the time. I say, stop reading those stupid articles. All evening he’s there, huddled over the screen, reading about adding seven inches this, Monster Dick that. That and the girls, always. I see them pinkly writhing, mouths and eyes open wide, reflected on the lenses of his specs. Yours is fine, I say to him. I say, I wouldn’t let that Ron Jeremy touch me for a million pounds, long or not. You’ve never worried before. It’s always done us alright. What do you care what people think?

He says it’s not for other people. He’s doing it for himself. I saw the credit card there, him punching numbers in carefully.

I’m used to coming across him with his elbow twitching, his face all funny. That goes with the territory with him. No point objecting. But these days it’s different. I walked in the wash room today and there he is. A cardboard box open on the side. His trousers round his ankles. Pumping away on some contraption, in out, in out. Looks a little embarrassed, for a moment, but he doesn’t stop.  One minute love, he says, I think I’m getting somewhere.

But towards the end, he used to creep away at night. I’d find him downstairs, sitting in the dark. His skin was becoming a sickly colour. Falling out of love was worse for him than falling in. I felt the loss like grief. Though come to think of it now, I never liked him much.

But these lights and pictures have led nowhere. I can see only gloom clearly. I can carve only shadows. So now words are a lasso. I fling my sticky nooses out like tongues, to lick and snap. I fling my sticky nooses out, and trust that what I catch is sweet, and struggling, and can put up a fight.

“You can’t really expect me to do this. I would love to help you, but..”

She put her hand on my arm. And there it was. The essence of the difficulty here, the reason why I didn’t push my chair back and storm off huffily. The bones in her hand craned out through the skin, the veins tracking across like an underground map. My arm is plump and glowing with life in the candle light.

She leaned back in her chair, and poured us another drink. Her hand was shaking, but her gaze was steady.

“Half a million is a lot of money, though, isn’t it? And it would only be for one night.”

I spent hours in bookshops  browsing, reading, watching other customers. If someone attractive or intriguing came in, I watched them, feeling a strange stirring as their eyes moved across the page. I’d spy on their choices and then go along to the shelf after they’d left, feeling like a voyeur. I got a thrill from touching the pages they’d just touched.

I stole so many books from that shop. Books with glossy, arty covers by Picador.  Stern thin-paged books by Penguin Classics.  Gorgeous Faber and Faber poetry books with their rough skins and slender spines.  I stole green Virago books with their watercolour pictures of women gazing out blankly.  I stole Mein Kampf. I stole the Bible. I stole everything ever written by Jeanette Winterson. I stole plays. I stole biographies. I stole Ullysess. I stole Paradise Lost. I stole something by Milan Kundera but wished I hadn’t. I stole Brighton Rock and Of Human Bondage. Of Human Bondage raised a melancholy in me that I’m not sure I’ve ever shaken off.

I couldn’t stop. I felt a nausea of longing as I stood by those shelves. I  stayed up all night reading, lying huddled in blankets. Books were littered across my pillow and piled up dustily underneath the bed.  Eventually my head would fall forward onto the paper, and the crease of the page would be marked on my cheek when I awoke. I’d open my eyes, remember the long night, the sleeplessness, the intimate preoccupation which lasted almost till dawn. I’d regret those hours, aware that I would be tired and dull eyed all day.  But despite myself, helplessly, the following night I’d do it again.

When I came down, my face blotchy, she came and stood close to me, her hands on my arms. I’ll miss you, she said. I’m sorry I am leaving you. There’s something I want to do. She kissed me. I laughed and told her she was drunk. Yes, she said. I want you, she said. She sat on the worktop and I stood between her legs. Her wooden bangles clunked together. Her hair was in my hands.

You were so thin and so sad, huddled in your clothes like a hidden puppy on the backseat of a car. You had huge eyes, outlined by a crudely hopeful blue, and the slow nervous smile of one who never trusts a joke.

You were devoted to your son who understood the world far better than you, who understood it for you, who learnt how to leave you and then left. And you were devoted in your own way to your suitor, the dumb adoring Geoff, who you abused and despised, and used and used. I remember the two of you wandering up the hill to have your joyless drink in the pub, hardly speaking, walking out of step on the way home.

I feel so sorry that the goodness in you was worn away and you never had the fire to get it back. I feel sorry that you lived only to launch your son and then, the job done, to die so ignobly in a bathroom. And not even suicide, not even that decision made – just a quiet pale death on a quiet pale day. No chance for the melodrama I sensed behind your eyes.

And Geoff outside the bathroom door, politely knocking, a gentleman needing a pee, that old half-deaf fool who staked his last lonely years on you and lost.