At the same time, though, I have to confess that the thought crossed my mind, not once, but several times, that he might drown out there and, though I didn’t linger over this notion, I know that it didn’t bother me. I didn’t care about him, and I knew there was nothing that could connect me with his apparent accident. For that next hour or two, I felt elated at having done what I wanted to do and, if I gave thought to it at all, the only thing I was certain of was that, if Malcolm Kennedy drowned, I would be free of him. Not that I ever considered this a seriously possibility. He wouldn’t drown, because nobody drowned in a twelve-foot-deep pit of water, a few miles from the town.

John Burnside, "The Limeroom," in Granta 96: War Zones (41)