I’ve been living in seclusion ever since Blake left a month ago. The last conversation I had with Vik was at the start of the year in this café with its jungle of ferns. Here I am again, this time with Rohini. We face each other under a languid fan, stirring demerara sugar into our cappuccinos. I am gathering all the distances, all the grand vistas and low-lying ditches, wondering what happens to the days in between. What are they filled with? Life seems so wasteful. I cannot account for much.

There are some memories that play repeatedly. The initial burn of desire with Vik. That first kiss. Leaning towards each other in the car, drinking of each other. I remember driving to the beach, listening to Nina Simone, laying my head down in his lap, watching the moon. I remember snatches of loving. But I don’t remember the exact words. What did we say to each other? It’s as if the rooms where these things happened still stand somewhere like an exhibition. They carry smells – salt, murk, rose petal – but the words are gone, even the actions are ghost actions. A caress. A crushing of limbs.

‘Do old boyfriends always seem diminished to you?’ Rohini asks.

‘Not really. I’m the one who feels diminished. It’s as if they’ve been released. As if I’d been the one holding them back in some way, stifling their potential. Blake is going to have a baby, you know. Finally, he’s going to have a baby.’

‘And Vik? Has he reached out?’

‘A drunken text. One measly drunken text, saying, Jaan, what have we done? That’s it.’

‘You deserve better.’

Such a strange thing the body is. Sometimes you’re living in the skin of it, you’re inseparable. Then there are times you can’t even hear one another. Everything is far. And there’s dryness, such dryness. Is it about love, then? The body needing to be in a state of desire?

Rohini tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. I have thought of her disparagingly in the past, and I’m sorry for it now because I see she is not as cunning as I make her out to be. ‘You’ll find someone else,’ she says.

‘I wonder what the point is. But tell me, how do you survive marriage? Isn’t there always the inevitability of decay?’

Rohini laughs. As always it is an unexpected sound. A gurgle. Those tiny pearl teeth flashing. That small pink tongue flickering, lizard-like. ‘It comes down to a kind of duty, doesn’t it? Everything is designed to wear us down, but we can’t just abandon things when they become difficult.’

‘But doesn’t everything begin to drag?’