I hadn’t started on my reading list yet. There was no reason to delay. The semester began in earnest in a few days and I was tired of walking the streets. On the first page of the biology compendium it said in bold letters

All natural objects belong to one of two primary categories: The non-living and the living. What we call biology is the study of the living.

I liked what I read – the study of the living – and when I went downstairs to make tea, I noticed the living all around the house: a small white spider crawled on the windowsill, the boards bulged as if beetles and larvae were crawling inside them, and in the kettle on the kitchen counter the water had begun to bubble, a sign that I was among the living. While I considered whether I should put milk and sugar in my tea like a Brit, I repeated the words out loud: What we call biology is the study of the living, and after I had said it, it was almost as if I heard the words continue to move between the concrete walls, as if I stood in the wild between two cliffs listening to the echo. Did the beetles, the larvae, and the spiders hear it?

When Carral came back and I looked up from my compendium, I was surprised to find it was already evening. Outside the window the sun had set, and the city’s contours were sketched out in electric light with the sea behind it like a black mouth. I climbed down to Carral from the living room as she arched her back and lifted a white carrier bag to the kitchen table.

‘Look what I got!’ she said, and from the top of the bag a whole pile of apples rolled out onto the kitchen table: coloured pink, burgundy red and gold. ‘They were being thrown out.’

Together we put some in a fruit bowl and the rest in the fridge. Carral was clearly thinking that we would eat them all. ‘They just, like, lay there,’ she said. ‘Do you like apples?’

I nodded. I liked the sound of Carral’s mouth as she took a huge bite out of one of the golden apples and crushed the sweet flesh between her teeth. The soft yellow of the peel was almost the same as her hair.

‘They have pretty names,’ she continued. ‘I saw in the shop. The pink ones are called Pink Ladies, and the yellow Honeygolds. Isn’t that nice?’

‘Very. What about the red ones, what are they called?’

‘That’s the best one. Bloody Ploughman.’

‘Wow,’ I said.

Carral held up a red apple.

‘They look like the apples mum used to hang on the Christmas tree,’ she said.

‘Real apples?’

‘No, they were wooden, painted red. They looked so nice that I tried to eat them.’

‘Oh no!’