Emmanuel Bove’s first novel is called My Friends. It was published in 1924, when Bove was twenty-six. I’ve been looking for this book for years. To no avail. The only part of the book I’ve read is the title. I think it’s beautiful because it’s so simple. If I weren’t going to the cinema tonight, I’d write a version of My Friends. Tania, Carolina, Julia, Guillermo, Tepepunk, Antonio and Luis Felipe would be the seven chapters of that novel I’m not going to write. Jonás would feature in all of them.

I’m back from the cinema. Part of the magic of the ideal notebook is that hours, days and weeks can go by from one paragraph to the next, but because the paragraphs live side by side like neighbours, it’s as if only a few minutes have passed. Amazing – something that takes years to write could be read by someone else in a couple of hours.

The dwarf, Jonás and I form this story, but we could also form a band. Music for two identical notebooks and a piccolo cane.

On the way back from the cinema, Guillermo pointed out an advert in the street. ‘Do you want to grow taller?’ it said, beneath a photo of some platform shoes. I asked him to drive more slowly so I could read the small print. He said that when he was a teenager his mother took him to a growth clinic. The doctor told her he was the height of a Lacandon Indian. His mother was worried, she wanted her son to be taller. Guillermo refused to go ahead with the procedure: ‘We’re the same height, mum, what are you talking about?’ His mother bought him some platform shoes. ‘Mum, please!’ said Guillermo when he opened the box.

I haven’t mentioned this, Jonás, but if you were here, I can assure you I wouldn’t be writing.

A question. While she was waiting, did Penelope masturbate?

Do you think this trip is pushing us apart or bringing us together? I’ve also set off on a journey. This journey. Twenty thousand leagues under the notebook. A journey with no destination. An infinite queue. An eternal waiting room. I don’t really know how it will end. I don’t know where I’ll end up. Or if I’ll end up anywhere. Where am I going?

Now that I’m phosphorescent I can see Jonás in a bedroom in one of his aunts’ houses in Valencia. In my phosphorescent state I can see Julia smoking before she goes to sleep, and Carolina lying on one side, her belly large, and Tania getting an early night, because she said she was jetlagged today after coming back from her exhibition in Basel. In my phosphorescence I fly over all the people I love, and my light goes out when I get into bed.