In bed that night I asked him: When will we know if this was a bad idea or not? Should we already know? Because now it feels good.

Death was, of course, the most ordinary thing that could happen, at some level I knew that. Still, I had stood there waiting to see the body in the river, ignoring the real living bodies all around me, as if death was more of a miracle than life was. I was a cold customer. It was too cold to think of things all the way through.

I felt like I was presenting a radio show about travel to an uninterested audience.

It was raining a weird, humid mist

Lights reflected garishly on the linoleum and people chatted and smiled, as if standing in the lobby of a theatre or university rather than a building for the sick and dying.

he kissed me. I felt feverish and stupid, like a thirsty person with too much water suddenly pouring into their mouth.

Outside the restaurant window it had started to sleet, and under the orange street lights the wet flakes looked like punctuation marks.

We were predictable to each other, like two halves of the same brain.

Nathan’s physical closeness had a sedative effect on me, and as we moved from shop to shop, time skimmed past us like an ice skater.