‘She stopped reading them. Or I stopped writing them . . . I forget which.’

‘Why?’

‘You see, poetry . . . it doesn’t really solve anything. It shines its light on things but it doesn’t give answers. It was never going to keep us together.’

‘I’m glad you’re a poet.’

‘I’m not a poet. I’m just somebody who write poems.’

‘Same difference,’ said Dylan, and we packed up and headed back to finish reading A Surgeon in her Stocking.

Thursday August 16th

The Incidence of Oxymorons

Alone together at last,

I told her how I thought that –

in my unbiased opinion –

the incidence of oxymorons

in the English language

had been growing smaller.

That’s old news, she said,

claiming it had been the case

for almost exactly ten years.

Strongly held convictions

were thrown across the room.

Things got pretty ugly.

But this felt strangely normal;

ours was a bittersweet relationship,

a tragi-comic civil war

of violent agreements

and deafening silences,

going nowhere.

For the first time in years, I dreamt about Sophie. We were arguing. I’d spent the day writing poems for her to find when she came back from work, scattering them around the house like confetti. She wondered why the fridge was empty when I’d promised I’d go shopping and why the house was in such a state when I’d promised to tidy up.

She said it would be good if ‘just for once’ I could drop the ‘obsession with poetry and join the rest of us in the real world.’ Later, I found a Post-it note she’d left on the kitchen table. It said: ‘Brian, I give up. Can’t live with you anymore. I am off to Mum’s’.

It was the saddest haiku I had ever read.

Dylan woke me up.

‘I’ve got my results!’ he shouted. ‘Seven A*s and two As!’

I hugged him and held him close. Later, we headed out to pick up the trail through the woods until we reached the foss, the sudden thunder of its fall drowning out the last vestiges of my troubled sleep.

Friday August 17th

We followed a different route today, tracing the slow curves of the river until it broadened like a fan as we neared the coast. We searched the bank for stones, flat and oval, the size of our palms, and launched them down the river, with varying degrees of success. Legs bent, I watched the stone as it sliced shallow scoops out of the water – one, two – and Dylan started talking – three, four – about how they were moving to America – five, six – the stone barely touching the surface – seven, eight – travelling further and further – nine, ten – disappearing from sight.

Saturday August 18th