Excerpt from Eyrie by Tim Winton, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The stain was a metre long. It squelched as he stepped out of it. He noted, for what it was worth, that there were two distinct wet patches – one large, the other small – like the elements of an exclamation mark. Like two blasts of a horn, which at least had the courtesy of signifying something.

Keely’s place was ten storeys up, top floor; this was unlikely to be a plumbing issue or an overflowing bath. A leak in the roof? The last time a decent spot of rain graced this city, he’d been in a job and not quite so comprehensively divorced. Anyhow, there were no watermarks on the nasty stucco ceiling. It was low enough to reach on tiptoe. The surface wasn’t simply arid, it felt powdery, left white grit on his fingertips. And the rest of the flat – galley kitchen, bedroom – was normal. Floor, walls, ceiling. Even the kitchen sink was dry. The only other wet surface in the place was the grout-sick shower stall he’d just left.

Keely slumped into the solitary armchair and looked out across the balcony with its coralline aggregations of dove shit. No reason to panic about a bit of damp carpet, he knew that, but his heart knocked like a sick diesel. And it was with him again, that evil shimmer. Fucking head. All these weeks. Mersyndols, codeines the size of bullsharks; they’d kick in soon. Surely. But he couldn’t even feel them in the water yet. Swim, you bastards. It was an effort to think straight, to glance past his hairy knees at the gunmetal carpet and find a reason for such provocation as this wet floor, to reason on it and not panic.

With a single big toe, he dabbed at the nylon weave. Positively marshy. He stood again. Pressed his foot into the disturbing lushness of it. The towel fell away and there he was, naked, flabby, heat-blotched. He was a long way up, but knowing his luck some unsuspecting ratepayer was getting an eyeful. Hoary morning glory, ahoy! He kicked the towel against the wall, swayed a moment from the effort. And then an awful thought reached him, as if on relay. The room swam a little.

What if he’d made this stain himself? Had he done things last night he didn’t remember? Had it come to that? He’d hit it hard lately but he didn’t drink to the point of passing out. Well, not blacking out, that wasn’t his form. He got hammered, not crazy. But who else could have spilt something here in his living room? And spilt what, exactly? He hoped to Heaven, and by all that was green and holy, that he hadn’t found a new means of disgracing himself. Couldn’t endure it.

But he had to know.

So he knelt on the carpet and sniffed. He dabbed at the fibres, smelt his fingers – delicately, tentatively at first, and then more boldly – pressing his palms into the dampness, snuffling, rubbing, squinting. Until he thought of the picture he made, truffling about on all fours, date in the air, tackle adrift, whiffing out his own spoor like a lost mutt in full view of whichever bionic parking inspector happened to look skyward at this awful moment. Which – yes – seemed funny enough in its way, just didn’t feel very amusing. Not yet, not while he was trapped in the dread of not knowing, with shame looming behind the flashes of colour in his head. He’d laugh later. Right now he had to make sure.

Safe. All he wanted. Was to be safe. In his flat. In himself. So he kept at it. Until he was satisfied. Reasonably, moderately sure. Unable, at least, to detect a hint of urine. Or faint notes of puke. Or any other bodily fluid.

Thank God. Thank Ralph Nader, Peter Singer – the entire sandal-wearing pantheon. Comrades, he was in the clear. Which solved nothing, of course, but you had to hold onto any little triumph that came your way, didn’t you? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. For three seconds Keely was exultant. Until the thought sank in. There he was. A middle-aged man of moderate intelligence, nuddied up and egregiously hungover. Almost high-kicking and spangle-tossing at the prospect that he had probably not gotten up in the night, off his chops on the fruit of the Barossa, and pissed on his own floor.

Excerpted from Eyrie by Tim Winton. Copyright © 2014 by Tim Winton. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.