It seemed to me that rather than buying ready-to-eat foods she was purchasing ingredients. But what was she eating, exactly? Not much at all, I know that now. That wasn’t the best year in Ruth’s life. She doesn’t like to talk about it. But back then it seemed to me like a wholesome way to shop, and I liked that, though I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the hell she was making with all those eggs and all that sugar. Baking cakes? But I never saw her purchase any kind of flour. I looked up some recipes online and thought it might be meringues, but could she be living off meringues? There was something charming about that idea. I pictured her whipping up clouds of raw egg whites and sugar, blending plain milkshakes: she survived uniquely on angel food. I thought that suited her. I pictured her eating under her desk in class or with her knees up on the fireproof chair in her student room, still wearing her short white smock. Or sprawled out on her bed in her white underwear. Always in white. No one wore their uniform on the way into college or for any longer than was strictly necessary, except for her. I always saw her dressed in white. The first thing the other nurses did, when lectures were over, was unbutton the smock in a single quick fire of snap buttons, ball it up, and stuff it down their backpacks. I began toying with the idea that maybe she had nothing else to wear, maybe she was very poor. Maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t wearing anything else. I imagined how her skin hidden underneath must’ve matched her clothing. Do you get the picture now? She was so clean. So devoted. An angel.

I got away with writing my lists for about three months, and I thought I was being subtle, but eventually my colleagues noticed that something was going on. A girl called Aimee who sat at the next desk watched my every move. She was always trying to lure me to after-work drinks, pursuing me passive-aggressively with endless post-its and gifted soy lattes. I had renamed her ‘the Itch’ because of the psoriasis on her elbows, which tarnished her otherwise tanned arms. Other than that, there was nothing noteworthy about her, nothing much that registered as human. She had no sense of humour. She wasn’t attractive, not even for the quick fuck she’d made clear she was very much available for. Perhaps fucking Aimee was exactly what I needed to do to stave off my obsession with the girl. Thing was, I didn’t want to stave off my obsession and perhaps that was part of the problem.