From the upstairs window, I see him appear. The young boy – running on legs as thin as matchsticks – comes into view at the end of the street.

Suggi watched crows pick at a dying dog’s flesh. One pulled at the skin to stretch it while another pecked to cut. The dog’s guts spilled. Blood oozed. Nerves and clots pulsed outside Suggi’s cage.

“Mom, how did you actually meet dad?” I ask. She glances through the family photo album in my hands. “Margo, I’ve already told you. I nearly drowned in my three-day swim and he was the lifeguard who saved me,” she says. She smiles, save for her worried eyes.

Singapore in 2022, just beyond the brink of discussions about preventing global warming, is hotter and wetter than it has always been.

You are unborn. You are minus one day old. You jostle for a place in the future. Half-sleeping, without thinking, you become. You are one. A day. You are.

Gavin hasn’t changed a bit. That much is obvious when he comes barrelling over to me.

Ah laid the boax ae painkillers alongside the boattle ae Smirnoff vodka oan the coffee table. It doesnae even matter tae me that ma flat is that cauld it wid gee an Inuit the shivers.

5.30: DAWN The boy with the body of a man lies inert. Lips that habitually crack a smile, now still. Chest barely moving. Long legs bare, thin, immobile. The police officer gestures to the door.

I never intended to be a tree. Like so much in life, it just sort of happened. I suppose the first sign was the stiffness and pain in my joints, although at the time, I didn’t know what it meant. My knees and elbows tightened, so they were hard to bend and soon it became difficult to move around.