Another dark room, a different one, but I am grown sick of them. They are too much, and too many. We will go outside soon; I need the light; have always needed it. The light in winter is softer; it colours the world with more delicacy. It is more tender; easier to make memories in, but I will always love summer the best. Áoife soaks the cloth, and daubs Joseph’s forehead. His throat rattles. There is nothing human in this sound; it is from some other place, from a creature they don’t know of yet. She leans forward and sucks in his breath, thirsty for his disease.

‘This is something, but it’s not love,’ Joseph whispers into her mouth. ‘I don’t know what it is. Selfishness, perhaps.’

‘I will die with you,’ she says.

She sucks his breath in again.

‘Stop,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t make it any better.’

He tries to shake his head, but his neck is too thick with swelling.

‘Why can’t I die?’ she says.

She tilts her head back, puts the cloth over her mouth and squeezes it so his sweat drips down her throat.

‘I don’t care,’ he says.

She daubs her own face with the cloth, and then falls to her knees, begins kissing his feet.

‘You must forgive me,’ she says. ‘Forgiveness is gentle. You are like that; soft and kind. I need forgiveness.’

‘I’m not ready.’

‘But—’ she says.

Joseph cannot turn his head, so he cannot look away from her, though he wants to. He can’t bear the sight of her any more; for him, her beauty is too cruel now.

‘But I’ll be dead in a few hours,’ he says, ‘and you not forgiven. That is all you care for. Not me, or my hurt.’

‘I will die too,’ she says.

She puts her head on his legs, and he moans. She is hurting him. His groin is full of a pain like fire.

‘You would have caught it already,’ he says.

Every movement of his mouth is an effort to him, a tiredness leaching away his power; he is moving beyond words. Perhaps, he thinks, you are only given a certain number of words in your life, and once you’ve spoken them all you die.

‘But I love only you,’ she says.

There is a knocking on the door; her eyes widen in outrage.

‘Leave us alone,’ she yells. ‘Have you no respect? My husband is dying. He dies, and you knock, you band of sluts.’

The knocking stops, but she is still in a rage. She upends a chair, stamps on it. She is strong, energetic. I am too healthy, she thinks; my punishment is that I will not die.

‘Beggars, perhaps; give them food,’ Joseph says, ‘but they can’t come in. You could spread it even if you can’t take it, but maybe the food has the sickness. No, keep it closed.’