Naoise Dolan

In Hong Kong English, ‘helping someone do something’ could mean you did it and they did not assist.

In Russia, Edith had said, you could get Putin’s face on anything. Vodka, bread, you name it. In Hong Kong, the same was true of Hello Kitty.

Most were backpackers who left once they’d saved enough to find themselves in Thailand. I had no idea who I was, but doubted the Thais would know either.

We ate our salads and he asked if I’d dated in Hong Kong yet. I said not really, feeling ‘yet’ did contradictory things as an adverb and there were more judicious choices he could have made. In Ireland, I said, you didn’t ‘date’. You hooked up, and after a while you came to an understanding.

He smoked cheap cigarettes – to encourage himself to quit, he said.

He’d add: ‘I’ll text you.’ He seemed to think only a man could initiate a conversation. Worse still, it meant I couldn’t send him one first.

I was trying to be funny, which was an error. You couldn’t joke with Mam on a long-distance call.

I’d say, it’s like English grammar. It doesn’t make sense but it’s too late to change it.

Not all women idly contemplated whether their partners wanted to murder them and whether the prospect appealed, and if they did it was society that was sick, not them.

I’d never know if other people were as graphic as me in their daydreams and we all just pretended we weren’t. I’d once googled ‘what do serial killers think about’.