The Tailor of Panama byJ John le Carré

And fuck Emily too because without Emily to compete with I would never have taken the moral high road, never pretended to disapprove of everything, never kept my virginity so long it became a world record, just to show everyone how pure and serious I was by contrast with my rucking beautiful sister! I would never have fallen in love with every minister under the age of ninety who climbed into the pulpit in Balboa and told us to repent us of our sins and Emily’s specially, never have set myself up as pious Miss Perfect and the arbiter of everyone’s bad behaviour when all I really wanted was to be touched and admired and spoiled and fucked like all the other girls on the lot.

And fuck the rice farm too. My rice farm that Harry won’t take me to any more because he’s put his bloody chiquilla in it – here, darling, keep looking out of the window for me till I come back. Fuck you. Gulp of vodka. Another gulp. Then a great big gulp and feel it hit the parts that really count, oh boy. Thus fortified, she swept back to the bedroom to resume her gyrations with greater abandon – is this erotic? – go on, tell me! – is this? – all right, so get a load of this! But no one to tell her. No one to clap or laugh or get horny with her. No one to drink with her, cook for her, kiss her neck and talk her down. No Harry.

Breasts not bad for forty, all the same. Better than Jo-Ann’s when she bares all. Not as good as Emily’s but whose are? Here’s to them. Here’s to my tits. Tits, stand up, you’re being toasted. She sat down abruptly on the bed, chin in hands, watching the phone ring on Harry’s side.

‘Go fuck yourself,’ she advised it.

And to make her point more strongly, she lifted the receiver an inch, yelled ‘Go fuck yourself’ and put it down again.

But with kids, you always pick up in the end.

‘Yeah? So who is it?’ she yells, when it rings again.

It is Naomi, Panama’s Minister of Misinformation, preparing to share some choice piece of scandal with her. Good. This conversation has been outstanding for too long already.

‘Naomi, I am pleased to hear you because I have been meaning to write to you and now you have saved me a stamp. Naomi, I want you out of my fucking life. No, no, listen to me, Naomi. Naomi, if you happen to be passing through the Vasco Nunez de Balboa Park and see my husband lying on his back enjoying oral intercourse with Barnum’s baby elephant, I would be grateful if you would tell your twenty best friends and never tell me. Because I don’t want to hear your fucking voice again till the Canal freezes over. Good night, Naomi.’

Tumbler in hand, Louisa puts on a red housecoat that Harry recently brought home for her, three big buttons and cleavage according to your mood, fetches a chisel and hammer from the garage and crosses the courtyard to Harry’s den, which these days he keeps locked. Great sky. She hasn’t seen a beautiful sky for weeks. Stars we used to tell our children about. That’s Orion’s belt with the dagger, Mark. And those are your Seven Sisters, Hannah, the ones you always dream of having. The new moon, pretty as a foal.

This is where he writes to her, she thought as she approached the door to his kingdom. To my darling chiquilla, care of my wife’s rice farm. Through the misted window of her bathroom, Louisa has watched him for hours on end, silhouetted at his desk, head tilted to one side and tongue out while he writes his love letters though writing never came naturally to Harry, it is one of the things that Arthur Braithwaite, greatest living saint since Laurent, neglected in his fosterchild’s education.

The door is locked as she has anticipated, but presents no problem. The door, when you really beat on it with a good heavy hammer, taking the hammer back as far as it will go, then smashing it down on Emily’s head, which was what Louisa dreamed of doing all through her adolescence, is a piece of shit like most things in the world.