In the afternoon I walked to the fruit market, one hand in E’s hand, the other pushing B’s stroller. Words flew by all around me, like flocks of birds, feathers and wings, filling my vision brightly but leaving nothing for me to touch.

I pointed at baskets of blackberries, tomatoes the size of champagne bubbles, wheels of cheese. By opening my hands wider or narrowing the space between them, I could ask for more or for less. E ran off, disappearing into the crowd, and came back to me with the pockets of her little blue dress filled with apricots.

Back at the apartment, we ate at the kitchen table. I sliced blackberries the size of B’s fist. The apricots were soft, fuzz-covered fontanelles, we chomped them up greedily, the warm juice staining our necks. The afternoon went on and on inside the apartment. M was travelling. I tried to call my mother but I couldn’t find my phone. Look at us! I said to E. All alone!

After it was dark, I crept out the front door, and locked it, checking that I had the keys in my pocket. E and B, I left sleeping in their beds. With M gone there was no one to take out the garbage. Really, I was doing a necessary thing. I lingered by the bins. Sorting papers, pulling the plastic film from boxes, slipping the slick pits of apricots one by one into the compost. Touching everything. B might wake up at any moment. E might. Any moment was a moment they might wake and find me gone.

There were people across the street, sitting at the precarious cafe tables. A woman, alone, and a few men at a table behind her sipping wine from tiny glasses. My fingers were sticky from the apricot pits. The woman wore a long wool coat despite the heat. Her white hair was pinned into a complicated arrangement. She reached into her purse and began counting out coins, laying them piece by piece on the table next to her cup. Each coin looked like it had been polished at home, maybe she too had minutes, hours, time overflowing. Long afternoons. A waiter collected her money but she made no move to leave. Instead she put a cigarette to her lips, struck a match and lit it and settled back into her chair. She wasn’t waiting for anyone. She wasn’t going anywhere. She would, maybe, sit there smoking all night.

I hurried back to the apartment. The children were still asleep. I rinsed my hands. I wondered about my phone. Tried to find it again, couldn’t. Tried to remember the notes I wrote to myself on it. Milk! Toilet paper! All the bookmarked pages filled with the various protocols I had been advised to keep always accessible. What signs of shock might result from a bee sting. What to do after a blow to the head. What to do for a burn, or for an even worse burn, what to do then. What to do in case of choking. CPR chest compression numbers. Thirty pumps and then a rescue breath.