When I stand I notice the paintwork of the house is chipped and faded, bleached beneath the baking sun. I run my fingers over it and small flakes come away in my hand. I crush them in my palm and let the powder sift through my fingers.

I look at Phil’s house. I see his manicured lawn, his immaculate house, and I wonder if he was born with a sort of internal GPS. A divine navigator. Something that helps him glide so casually, so effortlessly, through life.

I think of the rotting vegetables in the garden, the peeling paintwork of the house, and I feel a great pressing weight. Houses, lifestyles, relationships. Everything in need of such constant maintenance.

I consider for a moment abandoning Simone. Just taking the car and leaving. My shame radiates through me. I stare up at the sun, the sweat rolling down the length of my back, soaking a gradient into my shirt, and I feel my vision begin to tighten. I see the world around me vignetted at the edges. My vision, my entire body, funnelling downwards. The light around me growing ever dimmer.

XXVIII

I stumble up the staircase, swallowing deep panicked breaths. I feel a great rumbling beneath my feet but when I reach out to steady myself I realise that the house stands firm, that I am the one who is shaking.

I hear the sound of falling water like a drum. I clasp my hands over my ears. It thunders throughout the hallways of the house, reverberating off ceilings and windowpanes.

I know that I should phone the numbers they broadcast. That I should report my symptoms. But to what end? In the dark of my mind I see unmarked cars parked on the street, men in uniforms rushing up the driveway.

I had spent hours, entire days, begging Simone to flee the oppression of the house, the encroaching terror of the sickness. But she remains tethered to this place, to an obligation that no longer exists. She changes his bedsheets. She straightens his room. She waits by the door as if she expects him to walk through it at any moment. I know that if I leave without her, if I allow them to take me, I will never be able to return. That I will lose a part of her, of Phineas, forever.

I stumble into the bedroom and hastily check my eyes in the bathroom mirror. There is no redness, no signs of any inflammation. I call out to Simone but she does not answer. She either cannot hear me or simply chooses not to.

I strip myself naked and lie on the cool of our bed.

I think about the boy on the highway. I close my eyes and try to imagine Simone’s face fading before me. I see her reduced to nothing and I feel a prickling across my skin. A chill that radiates from the base of my feet and out of the tips of my fingers.