It was not that I had quite forgotten, not yet. Sometimes I deliberately remembered the other life, for in order to feel the gleam of the selfishness, I wanted to have a comparison, something against which the selfishness, the goodness of it, balanced. It was early, still, in my learning.

The remembering was quite detached and calm. There was no link now that might trigger fear or pain.

I remembered Stephen, who could not live like this, who was responsible still for what I had left behind; who had to be on time and do the things he was supposed to, and although he might feel he wanted it that way, he really, as it was, had no choice.

There were pictures in magazines, scenes on television that I remembered that were to do with death: a man being shot, a pistol at his head, brains spilling, surprise more than pain on his face; mothers Abra had cried for at one stage, carrying dead children, anguish so terrible it seemed all the hearts must burst. It had seemed to her, for a while then, that something should be done; that someone should stop these things; and yes, that she should do something, that just seeing put some burden onto her. But what could she do? She might have joined a political party, or sent money and clothes, adopted an overseas orphan, gone back to school and become a social worker, she could have done all those things and helped, and she’d been through all the arguments. All that was long ago.

Instead I was here, out of sight and sound, an example to no one, away from all of it. There was pain everywhere out there, just, it seemed, because people existed and created it, just as Abra had dragged screaming Katie through the streets, manufacturing pain out of nothing. Did I have a right to be out of all that? Having, I assumed, inflicted much hurt, did I have the right to avoid retribution?

I was invulnerable to the arguments. I remembered, but the memories were pictures and sound, movies of what was not real.