Nine
John Cameron sat eating his breakfast at the kitchen table of the cramped apartment that he had called home for the last ten years. The apartment was on the fifth floor of a block of sixty identical dwellings, constructed by an unimaginative property developer twenty years before John had moved in. For the last five years, he had shared the place with Sharon, but she’d left a week ago after being on the receiving end of one too many of John’s alcohol-infused violent outbursts.
Sharon had packed a bag and fled to the women’s shelter in the city. He’d been served with a court order telling him to stay away from her, which he hadn’t bothered reading. She’d always come back after a few weeks in the past. He’d thrown the envelope onto the table in the main living space, which was still l
