I felt like an idiot, caught out in an obvious lie – but as I walked out of the surgery, it ceased to matter. The street was dappled with leaf-shadows, the breeze from the south was soft and cool. Junk DNA was over, and I felt as unburdened as if I’d just been granted a reprieve from a fatal disease. Epping was a quiet suburban center: a doctor, a dentist, a small supermarket, a florist, a hairdresser, and a couple of (non-experimental) restaurants. No Ruins; the commercial sector had been bulldozed fifteen years before and given over to engineered forest. No billboards (though advertising T-shirts almost made up for the loss). On rare Sunday afternoons when nothing else claimed our time, Gina and I walked up here for no reason at all, and sat beside the fountain. And when I came back from Stateless – with eight whole months to edit Violet Mosala into shape – there’d be more of those days than there’d been for a long while.

When I opened the front door, Gina was standing in the hall, as if she’d been waiting for me to return. She seemed agitated. Distraught. I moved toward her, asking, “What’s wrong?” She backed away, raising her arms, almost as if she was fending off an attacker.

She said, “Andrew, I know there’s no good time. But I waited—”

At the end of the hall were three suitcases.

The world drew itself away from me. Everything around me took one step back.

I said, “What’s going on?”

“Don’t get angry.”

“I’m not angry.” That was the truth. “I just don’t understand.”

Gina said, “I gave you every chance to fix things. And you just kept right on, as if nothing had changed.”

Something odd was happening to my sense of balance; I felt as if I was swaying wildly, though I knew I was perfectly still. Gina looked miserable; I held out my arms to her – as if I could comfort her.

I said, “Couldn’t you tell me something was wrong?”

“Did I need to? Are you blind?”

“Maybe I am.”

“You’re not a child, are you? You’re not stupid.”

“I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to have done.”

She laughed bitterly. “No, of course you don’t. You just started treating me like some kind of … arduous obligation. Why should you think there was anything wrong with that?”

I said, “Started treating you … when? You mean the last three weeks? You always knew about editing. I thought—”

Gina screamed, “I’m not talking about your fucking job! ”

I wanted to sit down on the floor – to steady myself, to regain my bearings – but I was afraid the action might be misinterpreted.

She said coldly, “Please don’t stand there blocking the way. You’re making me nervous.”