“She wasn’t loud,” says Nathan. “No.”

It is as though she is drilling down into something hard and deeply satisfying. “How does she fuck? Did she turn you on?”

She slides the straps of her dress off her shoulders; slowly the fabric falls to her waist. Her nipples are hard.

For a long time she does not move, until she slides out of her dress, and now she is just in her knickers. “Do you want me?” she says.

He nods, and his face is slack with desire.

“Do you want me as much as you wanted her?”

“More.”

She stays where she is, in the sun, on the floor. The animal in him. The animal in her. “Say it again,” she says.

“More,” he says, then slowly crosses the floor towards her. When he reaches her he kneels before her, his head on the ground. Then he lifts his head, pushes her knickers to the side, slides his fingers inside her, and she arches to his touch.

Lissa

THEY SPEAK LITTLE ON THE TRAIN AS IT MAKES ITS WAY through the western edges of London. They are in an un-easy truce—this trip an offer of Lissa’s accepted by Sarah, the first day they have spent together in weeks. Once they leave Reading, the land opens up and there are wider skies, smaller villages. The summer is in full, glorious bloom.

Sarah dozes, her hat beside her on the seat, a novel open on her lap. Lissa studies her mother’s face. She does not look ill—she looks, if anything, more beautiful than ever. The weight she has lost serves only to display more clearly the fine architecture of her face—which in sleep has none of the slackness of age. Her hair is as long and thick as it ever was.

Her mother opens one eye, latches it onto Lissa, and Lissa turns away.

They get off the train at a country station and cross a river. Sarah walks slowly, leaning on her stick, a red scarf trailing jauntily from her wide-brimmed hat. There are swans in the river—two cygnets that have not yet turned white. They swim closely to each other’s side, their parents close behind. Cows meander in the opposite field. It is lovely, but in the way of certain country roads there is no pavement, only a thin grass shoulder, and the traffic is fast and loud and harries their backs.