Then she said: ‘It must be great. Not to miss things. Not to long to get back to something. Not to be looking back all the time. Everything must be so much more…’

uncouth,’

At the same time, what was becoming clear to me was the extent to which humans, in their wish to escape loneliness, made maneuvers that were very complex and hard to fathom, and I saw it was possible that the consequences of Morgan’s Falls had at no stage been within my control.

‘Sufficiently generous and liberal to be open to all students of high caliber, even some who haven’t benefited from genetic editing.’

‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘at special moments like that, people feel a pain alongside their happiness.

cadge

I’d begun to understand also that this wasn’t a trait peculiar just to Josie; that people often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passers-by – as they might in a store window – and that such a display needn’t be taken so seriously once the moment had passed.

And I tried to imagine how I would feel if Rosa and I, a long time from now, long after we’d found our different homes, saw each other again by chance on a street. Would I then feel, as Manager had put it, pain alongside my happiness?

‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘at special moments like that, people feel a pain alongside their happiness.