I ran through the train station when I got there, following carefully the raised track in the centre of the floor that is laid down in order to get blind people from one place to another. The track that is only wide enough for a single foot. A man stepped across the track in front of me and I almost reached out and pushed him. He saw my face, the way I was pulling it, or maybe the way I jerked suddenly towards him, and I knew that if he had fallen then, I would have thrown myself on top of him and eaten him up. That I would have scratched at his smooth skin until there was blood beneath my nails.

What I’m trying to say is that I was suddenly boiling, that it was almost like the ground might split and melt beneath my feet. A woman in a green dress crept out of the corner of my eye and I thought, Got you! But it was only nothing and there was no one there and I thought of that fine gold chain winding around Aurelie, winding around M. I thought about her, Aurelie, who was the type of woman who could leave her house with only such a delicate purse and all my shopping bags turned to so much cumbersome ash in my swollen hands. There was something in that chain, in the fineness of it, in its dainty winking effervescence, that I could never buy or pretend to have for even just an afternoon.

I got to the end of the little path and left the train station and found my place at the tram stop and thought, There, I’m through it. I waited in line and bought my ticket, counting out the change just right and feeding the coins into the machine one by one. I was proceeding calmly, putting in the coins and collecting my ticket and standing with the other people who were waiting for the tram.

The tram came and I got on it, and other people got on with me, just pouring onto it like water or krill or like garbage. There was a single woman in a green dress on the tram, and she stepped backwards towards me, dripping her long hair down inside and all across my delicately wrapped eiderdown and I reached out and pulled her hair hard, hard enough to yank back her long neck. The woman screamed and put her hand up to her hair and I admit that shocked me but I waited and nobody had seen who had done it. We were so many arms you see, in the crowd. I buried my hands in all my shopping and cast around, with all the other passengers, my most innocent looks. The woman started to cry, reaching around and holding the back of her head, almost cradling it, but she didn’t turn to see me.

When the tram pulled up at my stop I ran all the way to the front door of the apartment, fast with my eyes almost closed, feeling better and better the tighter I shut them.