How Not to Die Alone

My 7 highlights

• Meredith prefaced her thoughts by saying, “This isn’t a spoiler,” before revealing the death of a lead character, two plot twists, and the dialogue from the final scene of the show in its entirety. He’d cross that one off his list, then.

• In the end he managed to contain himself and jogged halfway home, buying four cans of lukewarm Polish lager from the corner shop, drinking them in quick succession and waking up hungover and afraid.

• A man marched by them in an electric-blue suit, shouting incomprehensible business jargon down the phone, like a peacock who’d managed to learn English by reading Richard Branson’s autobiography.

• Sitting on the train to work (wedged into the armrest by a man whose legs were spread so far apart Andrew could only assume he was performing some sort of interpretive dance about what a great guy he was), he found himself thinking back to his very first day in the office.

• “We’ll be in touch,” Cameron said, spoken with the sincerity of a politician pretending to like an indie band during a radio interview.

• Meredith was laughing at something Keith had just whispered to her. Just as parents are able to recognize variants in the cries of their newborns, so Andrew had begun to understand what Meredith’s differing laughs denoted. In this particular instance, the high-pitched giggle indicated that someone was being cruelly mocked.

• The music that was playing from concealed speakers throughout the house was, Meredith cheerfully informed him, by someone called Michael Bublé. “It’s jazz!” she added, taking the wine from him. “Is it?” Andrew said, looking around for something hard and pointy to bash his face into.