His warmth. His closeness. His intelligent, warm eyes in that famous face with the laughter wrinkles that has been staring out from so many posters on bus stops since he recently won his second literary award. His hands that work such wonders with me, whatever they’re doing. A feeling of being on the same side of life. And yet . . .

I stare into the fish-eye camera. In its reflection my eyes look brighter than in reality. I can see a thousand white lies in them. And that is the only reason I shake my head.

Silence. Then Wilder says, “I’ve been through times like this. You can’t be with or behave with other people any longer. You have to get out or else you’ll choke to death or rage at everyone because you feel pressure from all sides to behave, adapt, and belong. To act properly.”

Breathe in, Eddie, and breathe out.

“I’ll justify it to the others as a quintessential moment of literary quirkiness. After all, they almost expect us to be peculiar!”

My body is longing to run and move. I’m cold, but I want this cold—it’ll keep me awake and remind me to breathe.

Wilder’s words flow out of the interphone into the darkness. “I can live without you, Edwina Tomlin, but I don’t want to. I want to go through life by your side—now, tomorrow, for as long as possible. I love you.”

I’ll never forget this moment when, for the first time, he tells me that he loves me. He can see me as he declares his love to my image, whereas I have no idea what he looks like as he pronounces those words.

I should now gaze at the lens and say that I love him too. It is now that he most deserves to hear it—and I the least. I kiss the index and middle fingers of my hand and silently tap the camera.

I run and run and at some stage I take a taxi. I weep the whole way home. I hate Henri. I love Henri.

I love Wilder. I must let him go.

I can’t do it. I cannot bear to be alone again, without loving and being loved, without touching and being touched.

BACK HOME , I take my phone and sit down in Henri’s chair. I’ve taken to having a drink as covertly as I make my daily visits to the Wellington. Just a little tipple, I think, but I know I’m fooling myself, all the time. I’m struggling to keep everything together, while every thought and fiber of a different me is at the hospital, waiting to hear Henri’s voice again.