You climb the last few branches to reach the top of the canopy. As you poke your head over the crust of the forest, through the membrane of leaves, a light drizzle dampens your cheeks. You angle it upward to let the mist flow over your nose and neck. You see Sarah emerge a few metres away. You turn to face her, you meet eyes, and neither of you says anything, neither with your face nor with your mouth. But you both know. Sarah was always good at knowing. Sometimes you wondered if anyone else really ever knows. The fog and drizzle block anything further than about five metres around you. But you don’t need to see any further than that. You know.

She ran her fingers over the tops of the spines of the clothbound hardbacks on the shelf just below eye level, facing the wall with her front and sandwiching a thick chunk of awkward silence between the two of them. Clara, now that she’d cooled down a little and her anger had transitioned to disdain, through pity, and now to boredom, was waiting for her to say something useful. She began to notice the way she’d gently flicked the tops of the books inward, sort of pinching, but not quite, only half way there, an action for which she realised there was no word in the English language, and it would be hers for the taking should she choose to make one up.

It had been more than a month since he’d seen her in the freezer aisle. He’d by now worked his way through the all the peas and fish fingers and green beans and chips and steak and kidney puddings. And each bite had sent him back there, stood stock still by the potato-based goods and vegetarian kievs, her by the ice cream at the other end. He’d Tippexed over the truth, what good would it have done her, it read, for me to have said hello. But underneath that chalky liquid paper, he knew he’d just been scared.

I saw your face in a Woolworths window. But it wasn’t yours, it was mine, and it was all cracked and covered in shards and discount pens and cheap sweets. Barely worth breaking into. Like one of those new Toblerones. Same sized packet but full of air. I heard you in a traffic jam, stationary and late and covered in soot. I liked that about you, full of oil and passengers and mixtapes. I hope you get there in the end. I tried you on in a Topshop changing room. You were baggy and itchy and not my colour. Or a perfect fit. I put you back on the rail. You were the buffet car and the quiet carriage, everywhere and nowhere, always on schedule but never on time. My chicken goujon, milk of magnesia, can of steam, never what you seem.

“I bet they didn’t teach you that in school.”

“Actually, they did.”

“Really? What kind of school did you go to?

“The kind of school where they teach you to lie.”

“What kind of school teaches you to lie?”

“What did you learn at school? Long division? Split infinitives? We learned the useful stuff. Like how to set a bear trap.”

“Figures,” said the bear.

Every week by Thursday he’d finish the last of his loaf, dipped in hot soup and smothered in butter, as it was by this time too stale to really enjoy any other way. And each Friday morning he’d amble to Reed Street to pick up another, and for a day he’d enjoy it crusty on the outside and soft and warm in the middle, before it gradually grew weary and worn and grey.

Today I washed you off my sheets. Cottons cycle, 3 hours 12 minutes. Hot pink wash syrup, fabric conditioner with ylang ylang. Sweat stains and skin dust and menstrual blood sucked out and washed down the drain. Coffee rings from the Saturday crossword swept away in the vortex. Tear stains swept back out to sea. I’ll dry them by the radiator, 35 degrees. The sheets, not the tears. Tears don’t need radiators. Amy said it best. They don’t even need ylang ylang.

“We’ll go to Italy.”

I paused and made that very specific head movement, where you tilt your neck slightly so your face is pointing just  to the side and below, but you move your eyes up and to the other side, so that you’re still looking at him, and you lift one corner of your mouth, specifically the corner corresponding to the direction that you’ve tilted your head, and you lower your brow and squint your eyes a little. This look usually says something like “Are you sure?” or “Um, I don’t think so!” or “That’s a foolish suggestion unless you very clearly explain otherwise.” So I asked him to explain otherwise.

“What’s in Italy?”

“What’s in Italy? A city made of canals! The collosseum! Pisa. Pizza! Pasta. Mascarpone. Montepulciano! Mozzarella? Gelato, sunshine…”

And then I put on a more symmetrical mask of disdain.

“Yes. Great. Mascarpone is not going to save our marriage, Rob.”

“How much is this one?”

The shopkeeper peered over the rims of her rimless  glasses and closed her book, marking her page with a pen. She jumped off her stool, which scraped slightly on the gritty tiles, opened the hatch, and shuffled over to the reddish looking man hunched over the rack.

“That’s five dinar.”

The man looked at it, shook it up and down a couple of times as if to check its weight, and looked back at the shopkeeper. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, it says right there.” She turned it over in his hand to reveal, quite clearly, the five dinar sticker. “See, five dinar.”

The man looked a little confused. He blinked hard, sniffed twice the incense-infused air, and put it back on the rack. “What about that one?” He pointed.

“Yes, that one is also five dinar. It’s the same.”

“Are you sure?” He asked.

You look behind you and pull in to the left, behind a red parked volvo. You wish you’d worn mittens. They’re in your coat pocket. Why didn’t you wear them? You lower your fingers to your right jeans pocket to pull out your phone. Your hand is limp and immobile, like a medical glove filled with sand, attached to your sleeve by a string. You bash your appendage against your leg as you try to enter the pocket, to little avail, like one of those grabber arms at the arcade that no one ever wins on. You try again. Bingo. You force your ornamental fingers deep. The heat from your leg begins to tickle your palms and bring them back to life. You hold them there for five seconds or so, until the tiniest amount of control returns to your extremities, and you pull your arm up again and back down so that now the phone is between your hand and your leg, and then you pull it out with your phone in tow, unlock your screen with your nose, and check Google Maps.