Rain patters on the window (tomorrow will be bright and new). There is faded, flowery wallpaper, a rickety wardrobe, a wash-stand that gurgles shamelessly in the dark.
How strange, how incomprehensible, that whispered phrase. How unreal, even as he speaks it. How impossible that either of these young people, whose lives, this night, have never been so richly possessed, so richly embraced, will ever come to such a pass. He took his life, he took his life.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GRAHAM SWIFT was born in 1949 in London, where he still lives and works. He is the author of eight previous novels: The Sweet-Shop Owner; Shuttlecock, which received the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize; Waterland, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and won the Guardian Fiction Award, the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour; Out of This World; Ever After, which won the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; Last Orders, which was awarded the Booker Prize; The Light of Day; and, most recently, Tomorrow. He is also the author of Learning to Swim, a collection of short stories, and Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry, and reflections on his life in writing. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages.