What does the card say? E asked me. Who are the flowers for? Wondering perhaps, whether they were for me, or for her.

They are for the Princess Aurelie, I told her, inventing. Who lives in a white castle with golden gates. We’re keeping them for her, I said, here with us.

When will she come and get them? E asked, watching me.

In the middle of the night, I told her. Princess Aurelie will come and get them when we’re all asleep.

There was an Aurelie though, a real Aurelie out there with arms and legs who sometimes got flowers given to her that were beautiful. Flowers that were just like these flowers, from someone who liked to imagine her at her doorstep, bending at the waist, picking them up.

I unpacked the bag from the market and discovered it was full of tram tickets. There must have been at least twelve of them, all time stamped with the date, today, and the time, right now. They were all good for an hour of travel on any bus, tram or water taxi in the city of Geneva. Handfuls of opportunities, there in fresh ink. Coffee on the Île Rousseau, macaroons at Ladurée, shopping or a dip in the wading pools at the Jardin Botanique. Anything.

It was just that I couldn’t remember stopping at the ticket machine. I could recall nothing of filling my bag with long strings of useless tickets. E and B ate the tiny tubs of yogurt. They were so fresh that they tasted like meadow grass. We ate them all up, one two three and so on, gobbling.

After breakfast I washed E’s hair and dried it with her favourite towel. I cut B’s nails and packed our bag for the park. The beautiful red tools. A purple watering can for the plants. Crackers, cucumber slices, a hunk of cheese. Simply getting ourselves to the little park behind our apartment was momentous.

E wasn’t helping and B was crying again. I thought maybe I would shout, Put your shoes on! Or else, Where is your other shoe! Or, Where is your hat! Then, suddenly and inexplicably and just like that, I was crying. I was holding B and my diaper bag and my beautifully packed snacks and toys in the hallway and crying in front of the door, and I found that my face was wet and also my hands from wiping my eyes and also my neck and the front of my shirt and B was looking at me and E was, and there we all were and there was no way to explain.

We threw a party when we left, M and me, for all our friends, to celebrate. His new job, our new lives, all of it. A real dinner party in our house, after he signed the contract and before it was empty, the house I mean. When we were still surrounded by everything that we loved and everything too that we were leaving. We threw a party and so many people came that finally M shouted, Leave the door open, just leave it, and I cooked salmon that was pink inside like kisses and we opened so many bottles of wine.