A month ago, I was staring out my double-height window at the gringo café across the street, on Calle Río Balsas in Mexico City, when the intercom buzzed. Five floors down, the doorman said I’d received a package. I asked him to let the messenger in and waited at the door to my flat. My ex’s driver emerged from the elevator. He’d come to deliver a box of letters sent before I moved, accompanied by a childish note in clumsy handwriting that asked if I had time to talk. I told the driver to wait and wrote on the same piece of paper: ‘No’. I went back inside, tossed the box to the floor, pulled on some faded jeans, a white t-shirt and trainers, and left to take a walk around the city, not bothering to shower. I wanted to walk patiently, like when I first arrived, when I was still awestruck by neo-colonial façades, art deco, and monuments to History.

My divorce, as I’ve dubbed it, overlapped with a call from the woman who was taking care of this house on the island. From six thousand kilometres away, speaking in the accent my childhood taught me to associate with affection, she said she was selling her things and leaving San Andrés for good. Her mother was ill and alone in a village in Sucre; besides, island life was getting more and more stressful. She asked me where she should leave the keys in mid-July. I said I’d call her back on Monday and hung up. My mind raced every which way, but it wasn’t hard to connect the dots.

That Saturday after she called, I started counting my steps, which I felt pounding in my temples. I was still dazed in the aftermath of a recent relapse. I walked and walked, taking in the cafés and empty restaurants. Unlike the rest of the city, the neighbourhood was still quiet at that hour. I didn’t greet anyone in passing, even though every face looked familiar to me. After a while, after a certain number of contacts and routines, any place begins to feel like a village, no matter how vast.