‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘I think I’m scared of death.’

‘Depth?’

I considered. ‘Both.’

We listened to the track together until dawn – the curtains closed, the darkness making our bodies indistinguishable shapes. It felt like intimacy, or as close to intimacy as we could get. The track had a sedative effect on him, steering him out of his manic period. I ran my fingers through his hair, soothed him, promised it was normal, that anyone would do it if they had the equipment. This was what he wanted more than anything, more than sex, more than love – to be told he was normal, to feel normal. As the sun came up, he encouraged me to read aloud online comments about him, bizarre and unflattering posts that implied he was past it. While I recited he looked bemused, like he was hearing outlandish conspiracy theories. At eight in the morning, I whispered him to sleep, kissed his eyelids. It wasn’t something I would usually do. It was a gesture I didn’t know I was capable of. In Ireland I would have dismissed it as sentimental but here, like entire days of solitude, dinners of pressed juice, it seemed fitting.

As the day his show returned closed in, he became increasingly agitated and his insomnia worsened. I didn’t sleep well either and we wandered the apartment separately, moving in and out of rooms, ignoring each other like strangers. When I was sure he was asleep I got up and had a glass of terrible wine, wine that redeemed itself only by being alcoholic. I told myself I was okay, the best okay I’d ever been, but it was hard to believe it any more.

*

The night his show aired I got dressed up as I normally did. Even getting dressed had become a source of confusion for me. The comedian told me to display my body but that felt wrong to me – some small-town hangover. I wore an impersonal costume. I felt like I had ordered myself from a store window.

The dinner table rang with ugly laughter. My boyfriend was in public form. The desperation darted across his face, clawed up his cheeks. It was him but it wasn’t. It was like walking into your house after it has been discreetly burgled. To his left was a young man in his early thirties, who talked constantly about wanting to learn a new language. Everyone at the table agreed that this was an excellent idea, self-betterment, refusing to allow dust into the brain.

‘Get a foreign girlfriend,’ my boyfriend advised, ‘that’s the only way you’ll learn.’

‘What language are you learning from her?’

This was something that happened. They discussed me in front of me. I looked the other way, pretended to be obsessed with the tablecloth.

‘Poverty,’ my boyfriend smirked.