Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black. Pinpoints of light swell, sparkle, burst and shrivel within it, countless as stars. Every month there is a moon, gigantic, round, heavy, an omen. It transits, pauses, continues on and passes out of sight, and I see despair coming towards me like famine. To feel that empty, again, again. I listen to my heart, wave upon wave, salty and red, continuing on and on, marking time.

I’M IN OUR first apartment, in the bedroom. I’m standing in front of the cupboard, which has folding doors made of wood. Around me I know it’s empty, all the furniture is gone, the floors are bare, no carpets even; but despite this the cupboard is full of clothes. I think they’re my clothes, but they don’t look like mine, I’ve never seen them before. Maybe they’re clothes belonging to Luke’s wife, whom I’ve also never seen; only pictures and a voice on the phone, late at night, when she was calling us, crying, accusing, before the divorce. But no, they’re my clothes all right. I need a dress, I need something to wear. I pull out dresses, black, blue, purple, jackets, skirts; none of them will do, none of them even fits, they’re too big or too small.

Luke is there, behind me, I turn to see him. He won’t look at me, he looks down at the floor, where the cat is rubbing itself against his legs, mewing and mewing plaintively. It wants food, but how can there be any food with the apartment so empty?

Luke, I say. He doesn’t answer. Maybe he doesn’t hear me. It occurs to me that he may not be alive.