I bustled about, devoting myself happily to the too few domestic tasks, and my mind busied itself planning the route. I kept going over the list of things I needed to take, enumerating, repeating, summarising, to the point where I began to feel very irritable. Soon I’d have done everything it was possible to do: the floor was swept, the mattresses turned, the blankets shaken, there was nothing left to wash or put away. I went out and sat on a chair facing Laura. She was staring at the sky, at the point where the sun would set later, and her gaze was more vacant, more absent than ever. Her breathing was even. Her hands were once again resting on her thighs palms upturned, and I could see a tiny artery pulsing on the outside of her wrist. It was regular, clear and strong. That’s why I don’t think she died of a physical illness, but that she abandoned her unflagging body which would have carried on for years, except for her eyes. She heard me coming, muttered a few words, so softly that I didn’t understand, but I didn’t feel like asking her to repeat them. What could she have to say to me? What did we have of the slightest interest to tell each other? That it was a fine day, that it was unlikely to rain that night, that the sun was going down? She was no more interested in telling me than I was in hearing it, and most likely she’d only attempted to speak to me out of politeness, to show that she was glad of my company, which was probably not entirely true. What could I give her, other than food and drink, which would only prolong an existence she no longer desired?

‘Yes, of course,’ I said.

That satisfied her. We were in agreement, without being too sure over what. Or perhaps over the fact that we had nothing in common. And so we sat in silence.

I didn’t watch the sky. I was fascinated by Laura. She seemed to be disappearing inside herself, withdrawing further and further. At first, there was still some expression on her face, the ghost of the smile she’d given to welcome me, a hint of weariness, a faint grimace when an insect settled on her hand. She didn’t budge, I brushed the creature away but she seemed oblivious. The setting sun illuminated her face. There was no shadow, nothing to see except for skin, taut over tissue that was still living, a live model, with peaks and troughs, different from those of a plain or a hill, that the eyes could explore but without learning anything other than their configuration. I could have touched her, for sure, run my hands over her cheeks, but would she have felt it? There was a moment when everything was as if suspended. I could see clearly that the little artery in her wrist was still beating, but I was certain that Laura was dead. Her breathing was soft and regular, with an automatic rhythm that was unable to stop, but she was no longer thinking. In the past, Anthea had explained what an electroencephalogram was: Laura’s would have been flat. Sitting on the bench, gazing towards the setting sun, she lost her mind in the cerebral convolutions, the mysterious nooks and crannies of the memory, she had gone backwards, seeking a world that made sense, losing her way among the labyrinths, slowly deteriorating, dimming, noiselessly being obliterated and then fading away so gradually that it was impossible to pinpoint the transition between the flickering little flame and the shadows. As the sun touched the horizon, her wrist stood out clearly in the evening light and I saw that there was no more movement under her white skin. I let out a deep sigh. My last tie had been cut.