She was mid-conversation with the best-looking director, the one who with a lot of imagination could look a little like Richard Gere. I tapped her shoulder. The pub was loud. I yelled in her face, “You’re changing to nights?”

“Yes,” she yelled back.

“Why?”

“I’m not a day person.”

I nodded; I could smell her perfume, her smoke and mint breath.

“Are you a day person, Meggie?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all.”

“So you must do nights, too.”

The director tapped his shiny brogues. He put his pint down heavily; the froth spilled. I was wrong about The Healing Energies of Trees. I interpreted her gift wrongly.

I considered asking the director for a transfer then and there, but it didn’t seem like quite the right moment. When he started talking as if I was a midge he wanted to bat away, I mouthed “à tantôt” to Sabine and left.

Until I heard of Sabine’s move, working nights hadn’t occurred to me. But over a Christmas break more toddler-centered than I’d anticipated, the idea took hold. On Graham’s sister’s computer I checked the schedule. Fourteen nights on, followed by fourteen nights and days off. Parents changed their body clocks for the sake of their sprogs. Surely, I said to Graham, I could do it for the sake of my studies?

If the rationale sounded disingenuous, Graham wouldn’t question it; he thought my academic efforts were linked to my late father’s career. The misconception wasn’t my fault, though nor was it easy to correct. I’d told him I didn’t miss what I hadn’t known. But over the years I’d noticed that people who came from ordinary, stable families didn’t believe me.

Usually I was careful not to take advantage but in this case the truth was complex. It wasn’t just about working with Sabine; it was about doing what she had done. Inverting the notion of living by day seemed subversive. She’d slipped stream, and invited me to do the same. If I turned it down would I ever get the chance again?

The first weeks of January were grayer, rainier, and more drab than usual. The essay I’d been trying to write was stuck. I hadn’t heard about my application for nights. And Graham was pissed off that I wanted to do them so much.

“What about us?” he said. “Shift work’s shit for relationships.”

“Shit work’s shit for relationships too,” I said, crabbily.

And shit work it was, shittier than ever. Without Sabine around, my tolerance for the job was shot. My whole life seemed to be a cycle as tedious as my summaries of tire news.