Everything during those weeks we spent together seemed poignantly heightened. I turned down translation jobs. He postponed his flight back to Japan. We often stayed up until the dawn chorus sang us to sleep. We ate dark chocolate for breakfast. We watched films in empty cinemas at midday. We fed the ducks and geese in St. James’s Park. We did all the things that lovers do when the city is their playground. Though I knew that it couldn’t last, when he asked if I’d move to Kyoto, I said yes.

Only hours later, as I returned to my flat, I got a call from a woman with a Japanese accent. Could I please stop chasing her husband? Could I please leave her Xavier alone? He had promised to be at Akihiko’s birthday. Who’s Akihiko? I asked. She said, Our eldest son. If Xavi didn’t leave soon, he would miss the occasion. Could I please just let him come home?

I rang Xavier the moment I got off the phone but he didn’t pick up. When I hadn’t heard from him by evening, I blocked his number. Then I blocked his address from my emails and activated a vacation auto-response on my account:

Away for some time. Will reply to messages only intermittently.

I couldn’t block my postal address, and it was through the post that Xavier sent his single addendum to our affair. A rectangular package covered in postmarks from Japan. It contained the scarab pendant with My Sabine engraved on the back. His note provided no apology, no explanation—just, I gave this to Sabine. She’d want you to have it. X

After the affair ended, I began battling with insomnia. I started out doing everything you’re supposed to do. The things I’d done when I worked nights, updated with contemporary extras. A strict sleep schedule with minimal time in bed. Rigorous daily exercise with no naps. No tea or coffee after midday. Plus sleep stories, hygiene checklists, and soothing meditations on smartphone apps.

None of it helped. The moment I lay down in the dark, I saw Sabine as painfully thin as she had been at the station. The way she had turned her face into my punch. At Piccadilly Circus licking her fingers by the bin. I heard myself ask if a lover had given her the pendant, and her say that was one way to put it. I remembered her face underwater in the Hampstead Pond. I got stuck on morbid last scenes in a way that would have made her angry. But when they weren’t at the forefront of my mind, it was worse.