But when I looked I saw that I was changed.

No longer a man at all but a blanket of the same crystalline water. And upon seeing myself I wept, my tears rippling out across the surface of the water. Across the surface of my own body.

XLI

The car crests the top of the mountain road and I realise the tree line has disappeared. That it is late afternoon and we are sitting on the road outside the house.

‘Is any of this real?’ I whisper.

The therapist leans forward and kisses my neck gently. ‘Only the parts you wish weren’t,’ she says.

‘I don’t know who I am without them,’ I say.

She runs a gentle hand through my hair and I close my eyes. She leans in close and whispers, ‘You are everything they knew you were, everything they hoped you could be. And you are everything they wished you weren’t.’

‘They were better than me.’

‘Then you must be better for them.’

‘Where do I go from here?’ I ask.

The therapist points to the front door of the house, which opens softly to reveal a cold yellow light. ‘It’s time to say goodbye,’ she says.

XLII

I find Simone upstairs drawing a bath. I take her hand and turn her in to me. Her pale face red from a day in the sun, her hair bound by lilac ribbon. She smiles at the sight of me and I cup her face in my hands.

I feel a tugging at my waist and lift Phineas into my arms. I kiss his alabaster cheeks, dotted by a constellation of freckles, and brush away the loose sand that seems to have worked its way into every crevice of his body.

He rests his weary head on my shoulder and I resist the urge to draw him into me, to absorb his entire being. Instead I place him into the water and kneel at the side of the tub to wash away the detritus of the day.

I wash his hair, working the shampoo into a thick lather that I press against his chin to create a comical beard. He shrieks with laughter and the sound makes me weak.

I towel him dry and Simone disappears downstairs to prepare a meal. He chooses a story and we lie together on the bed as I regale him with tales of giants and golden geese. Faraway lands.

When I hear him breathing softly against me I bury my nose into his hair and breathe him in. It is like food for the hungry. I hold him and imagine the man he could have become, and for the first time I mourn not for him, but for the world. For its collective loss.

Downstairs Simone hands me a glass of wine and we sit and eat dinner on the porch swing. After the dishes are finished she lays her feet on my lap and rests herself against a cushion. A faint breeze whips at the tops of the trees, taking the edge off the heat. I look at the vegetable garden, bursting with life, and see a similar vibrancy in Simone.