Vanessa had only turned around briefly, but I’d seen her expression. There was no remorse in it, I thought, only a blank kind of non-­recognition, as though she’d never seen me before. The river, previously a melting, soothing length, was now disturbed by the wind, a coolly rushing water, Vanessa’s look running through it.

The trees blew in my face. My T-­shirt stuck under my arms, was damp at my neck. A pain radiated from my chest; my heart was burning, it seemed, turning pink-­orange like a saint’s on a statue. It was dripping, I could imagine, seeping into me.

I got home, kicked my shoes off in the hallway. There was still an hour before I had to get the boys from school. I walked up and down, pressed my hands into my eyes, dug my nails into my skin. These hands: they’d always looked gentle to me, small and soft, almost like a child’s hands, more densely patterned the closer I looked. But now they looked different, larger somehow, the nails too long and curving. Not a writer’s hands, or an academic’s hands, as it turned out. Something else.

I left the house again, slamming the door, not checking – as I usually did – to see if it was locked. I walked towards the shops: I’d made myself a list, some things I would need. Along the pavement, across the sky, I saw the rest of the day laid out in front of me: how pleasant I would be, how helpful and composed with the boys, with their squabbles and pains.

I would go to my room when they were occupied, with television or each other. I would look out of the window, across the field, at the trees in their perfect lines, unchanging, the kind of witnesses I needed, signs that I was still alive.

It is the last time. He lies down, a warm night, his T-­shirt pulled up, his head turned away.

•

The first cut doesn’t seem to be enough. Jake continues lying still, his eyes closed peacefully, as though he hasn’t felt anything.

I lift a piece of tissue and catch the drop of blood that is rolling down his leg, towards the bed, the white sheets. It spreads out across the thin paper, a circle, a red eye.

Okay? This seems a stupid question, even as I am saying it. It is exactly what the anaesthetist said to me, as the surgeon split my body apart.

But Jake nods, clearly, without opening his eyes. I take this as permission, as an invitation to continue. Surely, if it was over, he would sit up, would show me it was finished. But he does none of this. He stays, continues to be still.

•