I have settled back into my home after the expedition to visit Essie September. The air has subsided around me and the walls have ceased to vibrate. My feet sink into the thin carpets and the armchair sighs as it shifts to make way for my body. I don’t want to leave it ever again. For a while I won’t have to, because I have enough to sustain life. Powdered milk. Loaves of sliced bread in the freezer. A family-sized tub of margarine—it looks a little orange but still tastes okay. Tins of tuna. Tins of peaches. Water that comes out of the taps. I won’t die.

(Sometimes I wonder if my house smells, the way I imagine John Coetzee’s apartment in Adelaide to smell. I wouldn’t notice it if it did. I sit in here day after day with the windows closed. My nose is too accustomed to this house to say whether it smells or not.)

(Sometimes I wonder if I smell. I try to shower most days, but sometimes I forget.)

I peck at my keyboard by day, whittling away at the little editing tasks that cover the bills. Just.

By night, I “listen to my stories on the wireless,” just like my grandmother used to. I have let my Netflix subscription lapse because television is too vivid and absorbing these days. If I watch it, I don’t sleep at night, consumed by anxiety for the characters and the cliff-hanger endings that beset them.

Reading is also off-limits. It stimulates my imagination. The literacy advocates are not wrong about that. And just now, my imagination needs quieting, not stimulating.

The radio is soothing. The presenters have learned to speak in soporific tones. I have found a channel that broadcasts The Archers.

I am sitting in my armchair one evening listening to the shipping forecast when there is a pounding on the front door. My heart tries to escape through my throat. Then it settles down to a pounding every bit as aggressive as the one on my door.

If I sit very quietly, the person will go away. The curtains are shut. No one can peek in and see me sitting in my chair with a crocheted blanket on my lap and the radio next to me.

“Dammit, Lucy. Open up! I know you’re in there.”

It’s Moira. I feel besieged. She knows I want to be left in peace. Why must she persecute me like this?

The pounding continues.

BANG BANG BANG

“I can keep this up all night, bitch.”

BANG BANG BANG

With a trembling sigh, I unwind the blanket from my legs and stand up.

“What do you want?” I open the door a crack and peer at her with one eye.

She shoves the door open, sending me stumbling backwards. “A drink. I want a drink.”