When I opened the ceiling hatch, a breeze swept over me. A slight draft.

I lay down on the berth, feeling the woolen fabric in the mattress prickling against my skin. And then I cried.

Then I cried. I cried for everything I’d had.

The cramped apartment by the wharf. The rooms that were sticky in the heat. The tiny kitchen with clutter in all the cupboards. The sofa bed we argued on, made love on.

Mommy, Daddy, Alice.

Anna, her eyes, her mouth laughing, yelling. I cried for her body, the hollow in her neck, her breasts, everything I wanted to bury myself in.

I cried over August—God, how I cried for him. Our baby, the gurgling sounds he made, which nobody else managed to imitate. The porridge he spit out, how he laughed while spitting. His tummy, the new belly button bulging against the world. Even his diapers, I cried for his diapers, which I hated changing.

And I cried about myself. My bungling. My voice that was too loud. That I always came home too late after a night on the town. I cried about the time I’d forgotten to pick up Lou from the babysitter. About the key hook I never put up in the hallway. About being the kind of person who was unable to pull out in time.

I cried over what had been a life, over how it had been taken away from me.

And while I was crying, it was no longer possible to keep that day at a distance. The day Anna and August disappeared.

Anna had wanted us to leave. She talked about it every day. Almost nobody we knew was still in Argelès. She wanted to go north, showed me photos of the camp near Timbaut. We’ll be safe there, she said, we can travel on from there.

The streets were empty. The stores closed. We had hoarded, but the food would soon come to an end.

But I couldn’t leave. We had an additional responsibility, those of us who worked at the plant. That’s what we told each other, that’s what I told her.

And we had water, as much as we needed. As long as we had water, we could manage.

More people left, including those who worked at the plant. Finally only Thomas, my boss, and I remained.

The electricity came and went, being cut off for increasingly long periods of time. And without electricity, no production.

Thomas laughed about it, about how well we had messed things up for ourselves, we humans. It was the electricity production from coal-fired power plants that had contributed to creating global warming and the water shortage in the first place, and now we needed even more electricity to produce water.