He drives to his dentist knowing this: she’s not right in the head. She is, as true lunatics are, free of her troubles. She is Hamlet’s Ophelia at the flower-bestowing stage, smiling sweetly as she dances towards her oblivion.

The dentist, a Mrs Akbar – he seems to have been allocated a different dentist every time he visits – is equally clear on the source of his molar pain.

It’s your wisdoms trying to push through, she says.

At my age? he says, uncomprehending. Why now?

One of the mysteries of the universe, says Mrs Akbar, snapping off her disposable gloves. Like volcanoes, they can remain dormant for years. They might push through in your teens, or sit quietly in your jaw your whole life. She washes her hands in the small sink. Logan wonders if she has a rubber allergy.

What next? he asks.

Mrs Akbar’s assistant – a mousy young man with painted fingernails – removes his bib and presses a button. The chair hums back into an upright position.

Who knows? says Mrs Akbar. What will life throw at us next, eh? That is the bigger mystery.

I mean for the teeth, says Logan. Are you going to extract them?

Mrs Akbar sits on the small stool beside him.

Tell me about the pain, she says, and for a moment he thinks he will tell her everything: how his daughter threw herself out of an aircraft and hurtled to the earth, how her death severed him from normality, time, his wife, how everyday things like supermarkets and train journeys and city parks have become dangerous, how paninis dissolve into ants and his dead daughter sits chewing wine gums next to him in the car, how he is vomiting in front of neuroscientists, how he is hanging on to his sanity by the skin of his teeth… oh. The skin of his teeth. She only wants to know about his teeth. The pain of his teeth.

It started off just aching, he says. Now there’s throbbing. And the last couple of days I’m getting this shooting pain.

Yes, says Mrs Akbar. Unfortunately you have a major nerve involved. For that reason, I wouldn’t want to do an extraction. There is a risk of nerve damage. You wouldn’t want to lose your jaw function, would you?

Something about her serious brown eyes makes the question sound almost like an invitation to consider it.

No, he says. But can you give me something for the pain?

‌Determined

Jules has gone to stay with her sister. This fact is easily determined by a note on the kitchen table.