As a baseline response to emotion, he uses the word affect with contempt. On other occasions, with horror. At other times yet, with no longer repressed anger. This would be funny if his duties weren’t to oversee the lives of young people who have weathered heavy trauma – some, less well than others. Of one such young man they now truncheon with neuroleptics when panic overwhelms him, he says: “it’s all a show. You don’t know how far they’ll go to weasel their way into this country.” Apparently, they will go as far as running away at night and cowering in dark corners, bowels loosened and teeth chattering, waiting for the killers to descend.

My copy of William Shakespeare’s complete works in the RSC edition rests on the low table in the living room. Makes for easier reading than attempting to hold close to two-kilos worth of book at arm’s length as bedtime reading.

So it was at about two in the morning when questions concerning a few of my characters pulled me out of bed, up the stairs and in front of the book, presently open at Act 2 Scene 3 of The Tragedy of Macbeth – Knocking within. Enter a porter.

Because of the heat, the windows were open with nothing but the rickety shutters between me and the street. I’d just read the porter’s first line (“Here’s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell gate, he should have old turning the key.“) The shutters rattled and at least two unseen someones moved with stealth outside my window.

I froze. I listened. I wondered if I should close the light, reach for my phone and punch in the emergency number.

Whispering followed and more stealthy movement. Someone opened the door of the nearest car with great care. I understood someone was trying to drive away without waking the neighbors – a most unusual and considerate someone. The whine from the starter and the chug from the motor thwarted his kinds efforts.  But, by then, I was back to the porter and to my characters too.

Affect, he says with fear and disdain. As if fear and disdain weren’t as much part of those loathsome affects as the less toxic ones twisting and gnawing at his innards (incipient ulcer, maybe?). In real life, he inspires burning indignation and questions about his upbringing. Those questions may prove useful in fiction – I don’t remember who it was that said fiction, not reality, inspires fiction. This is true – without a by-pass through the imaginary, there’s not much of real life you can lift straight from the street on to the page or screen.