The apples spread all over the flat. Half-rotten fruit was left in the bin, on dirty plates and in used coffee mugs. Some apples were left forgotten on the bigger mezzanine, others rolled into corners and under cupboards. Every morning while tying up her shoelaces and buttoning her jacket, Carral put an apple for lunch on the chest of drawers by the front door. Every morning she forgot it. Every evening she took a bite of an apple as she came home, and left it on the kitchen table or the bench. Sometimes I sat and watched the apple; how the juices dribbled from the bite marks. I wondered what was apple juice and what was her spit, and thought about licking the place where she’d bit to see if I could tell the difference. But I didn’t. I continued to study it, watching the flesh turn yellow and then brown.

After a week the remaining apples had turned soft, and we stopped eating them. Instead I used my fingernails to make patterns in the skin of a Honeygold while I read Introductory Mycology:

But what are fungi? Traditionally, biologists have defined fungi as eukaryote, organisms that produce spores and that reproduce sexually and asexually.

When I looked up from the book, I saw that I’d made a little circle-shaped nail mark in the middle of the yellow apple. The edges had already dried up, and the tear was brown, a small dark nipple in the golden skin. My fingers smelled of yeast.

When I returned home from that week’s last lecture, I found Carral and a pile of apples on the floor. She had tried to collect them and put them back in the bag, but the bag had torn and the apples were rolling everywhere.

‘They stink,’ she said, picking up a Pink Lady apple and squeezing it until the skin burst. The fermented pulp oozed over her hand. She dropped the apple and shook her fingers. Muscles tensed in her arm and in her neck under her yellow curls.

‘They’re just a little old,’ I said.

‘They’re not that old,’ she replied and picked up a new carrier bag from the drawer. ‘And they’re rotten already.’

‘They were old when you got them. All fruit rots when it gets old.’

‘Sure,’ she said.

I walked towards her and picked up the apple she had dropped. It was yellow-brown and shiny around the tear in the peel. ‘It’s when they tear that they go mouldy,’ I explained to Carral and pointed to the tear. ‘Look.’

‘Just throw it out,’ she said. ‘Some previous tenant left a composter outside.’

‘I’ll take them.’