None of the idiotic things we did felt like they were Nick’s fault because he always just followed along with what I suggested.

gazing out onto the sea, which looked flat like a sheet of plastic.

Our breath hung between us like fog.

Then I blinked several times quickly, as if I could blink the thought out of my mind, or blink the entire hospital away.

The bus took us through verdant countryside, which a white mist had settled over, shot through with sunlight. On the bus radio, voices chatted lightly in French, laughing sometimes, and then there was music. We passed farmland on either side, vineyards with hand-painted signs and immaculate drive-through bakeries advertised in neat sans-serif

I managed to get undressed. My clothes peeled off wet like skin from a wound.

The world was like a crumpled ball of newspaper to me, something to kick around.

He and my mother looked like characters from different films, made by totally dissimilar directors.

I thought of her mouth, the strange familiar taste of it, and shivered. I seemed to have no power any longer over what was happening, or what was going to happen. It felt as if a long fever had broken and I simply had to lie there and wait for the illness to pass.