‘Eram?’ She sounds okay, Eram thought, just groggy. ‘What happened?’

‘What happened? Nothing happened, you just tried to top yourself is all. Do yourself in. Long walk off a short pier. Suicide. Or attempted suicide, anyway.’

‘Oh.’

‘With Crocin.’

She didn’t speak for a while. Eram could sense her embarrassment.

‘Is that not . . .? I mean, I couldn’t find anything else.’

‘It’s paracetamol. You have to take painkillers or sedatives. But hey, on the plus side, you won’t be getting any more headaches in this lifetime. Listen, you mind telling me just what on god’s green earth you thought you were doing?’

‘They killed them, Eram. The dogs. Those bastards butchered thousands of doggies just because of some primitive bullshit tradition.’

‘Well, yes, but—’

‘No. Don’t you dare. I admit it, okay? Me eating chicken is the same as those Chinese eating dogs, but I’m at least conflicted about my meat eating. I don’t go around having a party over it with goddamn lychees and . . . and . . .’

‘I get it. You’re mad. I’m pissed off too. But I was going to say that removing yourself from the equation doesn’t help. It doesn’t change anything. That’s ostrich-like behaviour and no ostrich ever made a difference in the world. “Bury your head not in the sand”. Pretty sure Confucius said that. Or Yoda or somebody.’

‘Rubbish, you just made it up. And besides, did you know ostriches don’t stick their heads in the sand to avoid threat? That’s a myth. They bury their eggs in the ground and occasionally lean down to turn them over with their beaks,’ Gehna sighed. ‘I think that’s what I need to do to survive. Just go underground once in a while to turn my eggs. So they can face this crazy world as fully matured ostrich. Is it ostrich or ostriches?’

‘Ostriches. A wobble of ostriches.’

Gehna giggled. ‘Ooh, that’s a good one. Almost as good as a prickle of porcupines.’

‘A rhumba of rattlesnakes.’

‘An implausibility of gnus.’

‘Erm. A murder of crows?’

‘Oh, please. Everybody knows that one,’ Gehna turned to nestle her head more comfortably against him. ‘So lame. A lameness of Erams. My implausible gnus win.’

Later, as he lay still next to Gehna, Eram was not thinking of much in particular. He let his mind fill with white noise. It was soothing and had practical application, such as, if anybody asked him what he was thinking, he could always say nothing and mean it.

He was sure she had fallen asleep when Gehna mumbled into his shoulder. ‘I think there’s something wrong with my heart.’

Gehna’s dread of the future was vast, her moods baffling. She was not easy to love. And yet, a new collective noun for animals could tickle her pink.

You take a girl, thought Eram, who really knows her gnus and life will always hold at least a little hope for her.

He wasn’t presumptuous enough to believe he could change her. To make of her a permanently sunny and pleasant country. He had no wish to try. It was enough simply to visit.