Several of the people who came to the readings were grown-ups, or they passed as grown-ups. Late twenties, early thirties, and they glared at me from the back of the room, like I was still too young, or, suddenly, without permission, I was now too old. I was never sure which. Afterwards, they sloped off, maybe ashamed that a children’s book still meant something to them. I had this gesture I did – it made me smirk – where I put my hands up as if to say, ‘I don’t have all the answers but, at the same time, I have most of the answers.’ I crossed my legs. I sipped my water. I said some words about the imagination. That’s just how it went. The problem was people asked boring questions and when they asked boring questions, I gave boring answers. But if someone had asked, even once, the right question, I would have told the truth. Mostly, it was young girls who enquired – the world kept spurting out young girls who looked at me in an awful, worshipping way – and what they always asked was, ‘Do you have a sister in real life?’

‘I do,’ I would say.

Their follow-up questions were hard to predict.

‘Is she tall?’

‘She’s slightly taller than me.’

‘Is she your friend?’

‘Yes,’ I always said, ‘she’s a very good friend of mine.’

Finally, the microphone was switched off, the sound extinguished, and I went back to the hotel.

*

At one of the readings in a generic city, an older man, visibly nervous, the words sticking in his throat, stood up and asked if I thought there was a parallel world alongside this one, a world we knew nothing about? I said yes, I believe that to be true and he looked satisfied, like life had suddenly been solved. That night, when I returned to the hotel, anxious for reasons I couldn’t identify, I rang a friend. He sounded relaxed, like he was lying down on the other end of this call. I wanted to say, ‘Stand up, treat me with respect,’ but it was far too late to start treating each other with respect.

‘If you were,’ I asked, ‘to name a fork something other than “fork”, what would you name it?’

He was silent. ‘It’s a fork. A fork is a fork.’

‘I disagree. A fork is never just a fork.’

We had been in love once. It had been sloppy and hurtful. On the hotel television, static black lines, like determined swimmers, swept across the screen. I couldn’t hold down furniture and I couldn’t hold down people. It all just peeled away from me.

‘If you want,’ I said, ‘you can hang up and I will just keep talking.’

He stayed on the line. Despite everything we had done to each other, we remained close.

*