She doesn’t see Santi for a month. She’s used to him disappearing for weeks, reappearing with a head full of questions and a book full of notes and drawings. She’s not exactly sure what he does without her. Mostly, she’s too absorbed with Jules and Oskar to wonder. Only sometimes does she get a feeling like an itch inside her, a prodding from the part of her that always needs to explore. Next time, she tells herself. She’s in no hurry. Her life is no longer bounded by her birth and her death: perhaps no longer bounded at all.

She’s up feeding Oskar at two in the morning when the buzzer rings. She lifts the receiver. “Santi, it’s two in the morning.”

“I know. Can I come up?”

“What’s wrong?” she asks when she opens the door. “Did you get kicked out?”

“How did you die?”

Thora blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“The life where I was your teacher. I died a year after you left, of a heart attack. How did you die?”

“Keep your voice down!” Thora grabs his arm and pulls him into the kitchen. Santi takes out his tobacco pouch and starts rolling a cigarette. “You’d better not be planning to smoke that in here.”

He gives her a look. “Of course not. Stop stalling and tell me.”

Thora arranges herself with Oskar in a chair. “I died in an accident when I was eight,” she says. “First term in the new school. Served my parents right for moving me, I guess. Remember when that cable car fell in the river?”

Santi nods.

“I was in it.”

He looks up, his attention caught. “You drowned?”

“Yes. That’s one death I’m not keen to try again.” She can’t deny that it’s a relief to talk about this. She watches Santi finish the cigarette and pull his memory book from his tattered coat. “Jules was asking what you’re always writing in there. You’d better not ever let her see it.” He ignores her. He’s busy writing what she just told him into a square in a neat grid. “Your handwriting’s different,” Thora says, tracing the italics that lean forward as if they can’t get their message out fast enough. “Guess it’s not surprising. Your personality’s different.”

“Graphology is a pseudoscience,” he mutters.

Thora smiles. “So you’re still committed to the idea of being one Santi? Constant through eternity?”

He doesn’t reply. She holds her free hand out for the book. Surprised, he slides it across to her. She pages through endlessly repeating versions of the two of them: police partners, fireworks bursting in haloes above their heads; teenagers chasing their wavering shadows down the beach. He’s getting better. She remembers when his drawings were tentative, unsure. Now, they are almost masterful. She supposes he’s had plenty of time to practice.