Seb was shocked and at first I didn’t understand why. I walked over to the bags and tried to inhabit his shock – seeing it for the first time, a quarter of a million, in cash.

‘Dollars are a better bet than sterling right now,’ I said, to help rationalise it.

‘Xander?’

‘What?’ I said.

‘It’s not normal,’ he said. ‘People don’t have this much cash in a bin-bag.’ His palms out in exasperation.

‘I just … I just need to simplify my whole life at this point,’ I said and tied away the paper faces staring up at me.

I remember that Nina wasn’t there. But I have the sense now looking back that she was about to walk in on the scene. And that we – Seb – were desperate for her not to see this.

‘And what do you propose to do with it all? You can’t keep it here,’ he said, looking around the kitchen as if I was asking him to put it in a cupboard.

‘Well, where else do you expect me to put it? I don’t have a place yet,’ I said.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Xander. Why not?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can’t face it yet. And maybe. I don’t know. I’m still hoping that we can use it. To buy the house – Grace and I.’

He stopped and considered me for a minute before walking around the box to put an arm on my shoulder.

‘Oh, mate. Don’t do that to yourself. It’s over.’

‘It was over before but that didn’t mean we couldn’t get back—’

‘Not over like this,’ he said, letting go of me.

‘What? How can you know that?’

In the gulf between question and answer, I thought he’d begun to understand but I was wrong.

‘Nina told me. It’s finished, Xander. It’s time to move on,’ he said, smiling sadly at me.

And then the memory fades away once again. That life is a dream away, a whole dimension away. I shut my eyes and curl into the thick roots of the shrub. The scent of mulch and wood fill my nose. As I breathe I feel embraced back into the Earth.