She goes out for coffee and sits in the weak sunshine cradling her cup. She knows it is not wise to be out here, feeling this way, only streets from Hannah’s flat. She knows the scent of him is still on her, knows she is drenched in it. Men stare at her. She is a battery that has been charged again. It is simple electricity—it is outside of morality. There is a dangerous, shimmering elation to the way she feels.

Hannah

SHE BEGINS TO SLEEP IN THE LITTLE ROOM. THE SOUNDS HERE are different from those she has been used to—she can hear the wind in the tree, the sounds of the canal: bikes clunking over loose paving stones, the mangled yowl of foxes, the shouts and laughter of drunken kids. She lies awake, staring at the play of light on the ceiling, and if she sleeps, she sleeps lightly and her dreams are full of strange, unknowable things.

In the mornings, for a few moments she is disoriented, lying here in this bed alone, and then she remembers—Nathan has gone, her husband has gone, and for the first time in over thirteen years she does not know where he is.

Outside, the winter city presses on her and she feels flimsy beneath its weight. She forgets to shop and eats little, small mouthfuls of food she has in the cupboards: crackers and butter, a slice of apple. There is no joy in cooking for herself. She is getting thinner. She knows this but does not care; there is nothing to take care of herself for, no future to safeguard, no limits to keep within.

She gets a text from her brother. She’s here! Rosie Eleanor Grey. A picture of a small wrinkled bundle of humanity held in her brother’s arms. Her niece.

She writes back. Congratulations!! Can’t wait to meet her.

You’re still coming for Christmas? her brother replies.

Yes! Can’t wait! she lies.

The next morning she writes to work and says she is ill—a virus, that she needs to rest. The weather has changed again, grown bitter and cold. She puts on the radio, but does not really listen to it. She moves slowly through this place that has all the hallmarks of her previous life—the same rooms, the same furniture, the same books on the same shelves—but is utterly foreign. She has arrived at a destination, but it is an unknown place. She is aware that she hurts, but that the hurt is so large it is beyond her. There is no solace outside, in the sky, the grass, the animals, and the trees. She is not like them. She cannot multiply herself—she is aberrant, outside of nature, and she knows it is better for her to be up here, alone.