The dishwasher gave a little growl and a grunt, and then beeped three times.

She’d had to run it again. Last time the dishes had come out all dirty.

“Oh no, they’re all dirty!” she’d said. And then she’d started to turn her head to see his response but had stopped herself as she’d remembered that she was alone. It would have come across as a sort of a strange twitch had anyone been there to look. And she’d sighed and slowly pulled out a plate and had angled it about in the light to see the extent of the muck, and then had pulled out a bowl that had turned itself the right way up and had filled with sad grey water, which she had poured slowly into the sink saying, “Oh…” with a wrinkled nose. And she had rifled through the cutlery as if looking for some mischevious spirit to blame. But there had been none, so she’d reached past the knives and forks and spoons and removed the filter and bashed it on the side of the bin and filled up the salt and set it running again.

And now it was 11:39pm and the dishwasher had gone vrrrrrpkhhhts and then beeped three times. And she couldn’t face getting up to check if the dirt was gone.

Elena filled up the worn, tired, creaking sneakers with soft loamy soil. The toes were padded with pebbles from the yard and bits of fine gravel that she’d scooped out of the fish tank in the kitchen. Sarah didn’t mind. Sarah was a fish.

The laces were loose. All but one of the ends had lost their little plastic sheaths, and were fraying and beginning to unravel. She gently tied up the left shoe, so that a little of the soil squeezed out of the top, but most of it compacted itself safely and securely inside, and then she did the same with the right shoe. She pulled the tongues up a little and prodded into the opening of each foot a few little seeds. And then she covered them up with the last of the loam and sprinkled on some river water, and left him by the bank to grow back.

On Tuesday I was so sick that I vomited.

Just a little bit of sick but a cascade of thundering wretches nonetheless.

I guess I’d already sent my meal southwards. I thought I’d eaten a lot, but, thinking about it, it had been a while.

There was something in the water, I think.

Grapes, probably. Old grapes that had been trodden on and left weeping until they liquefied.

Okay.

Wine.

Whine.

It’s Saturday and my intercostal muscles still ache.

Everything aches. And you’re not here.

Or, you’re not here, and everything aches.

I can’t tell.

A squirrel lost her footing.

It was three in the afternoon and it had been a long day.

Scurrying from branch to branch. Tea with Esther. Hang the washing out. Pick the kids up from school. See the dentist about that damn tooth. And those bloody nuts won’t bury themselves.

What she needed, Esther said, was a spa day.

And Esther was right.

But the squirrel lost her footing while rushing to pick up the cake for Cheryl’s birthday before the shop closed.

And she fell off a tall branch, hit her head on a conker, and tumbled straight under the tyre of a Citroen C3 Picasso.

Yesterday I was chatting to a man at the bus stop.

He wore brown leather shoes and a short sleeved shirt. He was eating a salad with a wooden fork from Pret. I didn’t know the fork was from Pret but I guessed so. Pret wasn’t far away.

The forks from Pret are not very practical, really, because the prongs are so small. I’d been looking at him for a while thinking this. The prongs are really small.

I think he noticed me looking. I think there is a way of eating a salad when you know no one’s watching, and there is a way of eating a salad when you’re being watched, and I could sense a real change in the air.

“These little forks eh.” I said, because I knew he knew I was watching and I thought it would be weird if I didn’t say anything.

He was perching on one of the little red seats that aren’t really for sitting on at all.

“The prongs are so small.”

He looked up from his salad and said, “Hm?”

And then I said thank you and left.

The woman in front of him fumbled in her pocket to find her ticket. Presumably. Or, to not find it, so it seemed. To be sure she inverted the inside of the pocket and pulled it all the way so it hung from her hip like the ear of a sad dog, and a little cloud of tissue dust spilled out and swirled in the sunbeam.

This is a black and white photograph.

It’s creased at the corners and faded in the middle, but still crisp and dark and high-contrast where it was covered by the frame.

A girl lifts it out from a wooden box that smells of pencils.

“You were hot, Grandma!”

And the other two giggle, and you blush.

But the sun is hot and the sky is blue and the sand is bright. And your bikini is red and scratching at the back. Fred tucks in your label.

This is a black and white photograph. Your tattoos are still fresh and crisp. The piña colada slips down your throat and tastes like seven different colours at once.

It is July seventh, 1967. A woman with a very large red hat stands at the counter of a diner. It’s the only building for about fifty miles.

“A coke.”

“A coke?”

“A coke, please.”

The waitress nods quietly and looks up and lingers on the hat, maybe slightly too long, and then looks back down, and smiles again and nods quietly again, but this time letting out a little half sigh, half laugh. But it’s not funny. It really isn’t funny how large her hat is.

In the back of the diner, the swing doors to the kitchen flap open. Danny looks up from his arugula to see what Katy has to say.

“There’s… there’s a lady out front..” she pauses and forgets to keep talking and just stares at the floor for a while. A few seconds, probably.

“A lady? What lady? She want somethin’ cookin’?”

“No…” says Katy, “she wants… a coke.”

“Just a coke? Why you in here for? Just give her a coke?”

“Not just a coke… she wants a coke…. please.”

“Was… was she wearing a hat?”

“She was wearing a hat, Danny. A really, really, really big hat.”

I put my jumper on for the first time in three weeks.

It has been cold at night. I wake up at 4 every day, pretty much. I go to the bathroom and crawl back into bed, double fold the single sheet like puff pastry and swathe myself in it like a sausage roll. And then I sleep a couple more hours and then I get up and I start doing Things.

I’m on a boat to the far peninsula. It’s cold and windy and I have put on my jumper. For the first time in three weeks. I’m wearing shorts, still. Shorts and a jumper. I think that’s me. It’s a look I don’t see often but it’s how I feel most comfortable, I think. It’s me.

It’s not a particularly nice jumper. Just grey.

The sun has gone now. It’s got work to do in the Pacific. Meetings in Japan. But it put on a good show. I’ve never seen a sky so undeniably the colour of fruit. Peaches, reds, pinks, yellows. Even some aubergine, at the end.

Back home the sky is only blue or grey. No fruit that colour. No healthy fruit anyway. But it is like my jumper. Maybe that’s why I feel at home.

“I’m not from round here.”

“I can tell.”

“You can?”

“I can tell.”

“Is it that obvious?”

It isn’t that obvious, I can’t really tell. I’m trying to appear aloof, aloft, cool, cold. Calm.

“It is to me.”

“Why? What am I doing differently?”

“Well, for starters,” I pause. I glance up at the moon. I can’t see it because it’s 11am. “For starters, you’re wearing black shoes. We wear white shoes here.”

She swivels her not-from-round-here eyeballs down to our feet. He’s right, she thinks. Probably. Just then Pablo arrives with the bread. “Hola amigo!” He says. He’s wearing blue shoes.

“Where is Pablo from?” Asks Alyssa.

“Pablo is from Russia. Do not trust him.”