Back in the bed-sitting room, she opened the manuscript she’d been working on and stared at the hundreds of neatly drawn runs of notes. The work had grown, covering both sides of fifty or more pages, but she suddenly couldn’t remember why she’d even started it. The melody she’d been so entranced by, that she’d based the whole thing on, seemed trite, derivative. No one would want to hear this, let alone play it. Not even the Devil—especially not him. There was nothing mischievous or dark there, nothing clever or profound. It was all dull, repetitive, predictable. She got up, dropped the entire sheaf of papers into the recycling chute and climbed into bed. There, in a fit of recklessness, she shook four sleeping pills into her palm and crunched them between her teeth before lying down, closing her eyes, and letting the drugs drag her consciousness away.

Waking in the afternoon, Ruby realized she had only half an hour to make her appointment at the GP’s. She threw on some clothes and rushed out, hair and teeth unbrushed, bare feet shoved into old trainers. The doctor looked her up and down and briskly signed her off work for another six weeks. He peered at her over the top of his spectacles. “How are you finding taking the antidepressants?”

Ruby said, “Oh, fine. I feel much better, actually.”

“No side effects?”

“Nothing significant, no.”

She did not mention that she still had no plans to take even a single one.

The doctor gave her another prescription, which Ruby shoved in a pocket on her way out of the surgery. What would happen, she wondered, if she took all of the pills in one go? Would she die quickly, floating away in a blissful cloud of obliviousness? Or would her liver implode, causing untold pain and suffering? It would be interesting to find out, in a way. At least she would feel something other than shame, or loneliness.

On the tram, exhausted and listless, she stared out the window so that at first she didn’t notice him: Yoga Man was sitting two rows in front of her. She looked once, then away, wondering, Is that really him? She recognized the back of his head, the curve of his neck. Her heart began to pound. She pressed the button for the tram to stop, got up and went past him, holding on to the rail near the door as the vehicle slowed. Don’t make it too obvious, she told herself, and allowed herself only a short glance in his direction as she got off. He was staring right at her, a slight frown creasing his forehead. She panicked then, hurrying out the doors before they were fully opened, keeping her head down until the tram was out of sight.