The Paper Eater

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If there’s one thing to be said about life in captivity, it’s that you get to travel.

Welcome aboard the Sea Hero, a former Attractionworld cruise liner rescued by the Liberty Corporation from the ship-breaker’s yard and converted at a cost of squillions into a floating fibreglass cage. Two male humans per cabin, and trans-hemispheric incarceration conditions apply. The pros of this include human-rights entitlements to craft-hobby materials and language cassettes. The cons: curtailed freedom of movement, seasickness, no smoking, and a Babel feel. Human detritus being big global business, you can be sure the profit margin looks crakko. That’s the backdrop.

The hero – me.

Bonjour. Harvey Kidd. Forty-four, balding, ink-stained and alone. Divorced, beclobbered and unfree. A defective product of society, a nobody, briefly and catastrophically catapulted to somebodydom against his will. Not a real hero, but the opposite: a coward, a human ostrich. Prone to nightmares. Sometimes I’d rather not sleep.

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