He’s silent for a while, careful of my distress. When next I look he is staring at me.

‘You’ve forgotten about the trunk?’ he says, testing the ground.

‘The trunk?’ Whatever it is he means by that, I have clearly forgotten it.

He is about to say more when the bell rings. ‘Food,’ he says brightly and gets up.

I hear him walk down the hallway and click open the door. The exchange there at the door is muted and jovial.

The word softens as I turn it over in my mind. Bens? Or is it Benz? Bends?

My memory has been crumbling for years, like it has for everyone, probably. But the concussion and the lack of sleep must have rubbed away some of the finer details. When they return, the memories come not as you would imagine, in gossamer threads, but in waves. And again, as I remember remembering, I see the madeleines, and Proust. All of that is embedded now, entwined with all remembering. It is enough to exhaust any mind.

The door slams and then Seb is rustling through the corridor with what must be bags of food.

As I enter the kitchen, he says, ‘Just grab some plates from that cupboard.’ He points with his chin as he lands the bags carefully on the table.

We eat mostly silently. He is avoiding something and I am too. But everything in the air between us is heavy and fecund and wants to be born. We eat until there are only ruins. He flicks his eyes across to me every few seconds, on the verge of saying something. Eventually he can’t help himself.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ he says, squeezing the foil edges of a container together.

I don’t look up or speak but he reads it as assent anyway.

‘How were you okay out there for so long?’

I stare at him because I can’t believe he thinks I was okay. I begin to speak when he adds, ‘I mean mentally. Psychologically. Being—’ he stops. ‘I just. I’m not sure I could have done it and survived like you.’

I think about this while he decants the empty boxes into a bag. ‘I don’t know,’ I say at last. ‘I’m not sure I have survived.’

19

Sunday

It is late and the house shrouded in darkness should be enough to help me drift off, but it isn’t. There is wine in my veins but not enough to bring on sleep so I go downstairs. In the living room I see that Seb has left the turntable spinning. Then in the back of my head I remember that as a student he’d leave his record player spinning empty – something to do with the mechanics suffering more wear by being switched on and off. The smoothness of the motion throws me back and the memories come. All at once. Sheets of them.