But it is. Too late. Simone is disgusted by the pathetic lump that Noah has become. He is useless, defective, merely a bulging bulk in her periphery, like a tumour sapping them, almost as fast as it sapped Noah’s father. He drinks more than she ever did, and now that she chooses to be up instead of down, she cannot stand to see him lying lifeless. Sometimes he collapses unmoving on the floor of the living room and she has to step over him to reach the sofa. She kicked him once when he was laid horizontal like this, kicked him like a bag of rubbish, or a defective machine, as though with one sharp nudge she might be able to knock back into him the energy he once discharged so keenly. Still, he lays motionless, and her stomach twists with resentment and revulsion. By the end of the year, she has asked him to go.

A space unfurls itself. A cold, beautiful, serene moment that lasts as long as it is able, though she feels its transience even as it is around her, aware of its fragility. She imagines herself during this time as an ice skater upon a frozen lake, pushing herself effortlessly across the dark, solid liquid beneath, gliding, gliding, walking, impossibly, on water. The wind is in her face. Frost nips with friendly tidings at her fingers and toes, and feel this, says the breeze, feel everything. She does. She feels with an intensity she’s never known. No longer content with walking she spins and leaps and flies through the chilled air, not noticing the cracks opening beneath her sharp, razored feet, snow cut into thin, dangerous lines.

Into the space, Dominic grows and though the weeks and months are jumbled, there are moments of clear euphoria. Love has arrived now, fierce, boundless, finally imprinting itself into her bones. Even in her sleep she smells Dominic’s infant skin, she can feel his warm, clutching arms wrapped around her neck, and she accepts the stabbing in her heart as the price for such pleasure. The stabbing comes most often when she is in the living room with a friend and a line, and he, her son, is locked asleep, or crying, in his room. It comes in waves that wash over her, lifting her high, dropping her low. It comes and comes. But even this is not strong enough to pull her from her other love, the substances that not only lift her high but stop her from falling. Only they can keep her standing up as she needs to. The ground beneath her is slippery. It is made of ice.

Even with Noah gone, Lewa comes for Dominic. She takes him to the family home his father has returned to, eyes glazed by booze and life, and she sings to them both at once. When Simone arrives to pick Dominic up, she stands sometimes at the window before knocking, watching, stifling a yearning deep inside her for the warmth she used to feel in this place, for the energy, for the reassuring sense of the insider, of wholeness. Sometimes she catches a glimpse of Noah side-on, and she doesn’t see the vacant glassiness of his stare; instead she remembers how fast and how deeply she fell for him, and loved him, and loves him still. But she hasn’t the strength. Not now. Not yet. She is only just staying standing. She is not strong enough to hold up another.