You slow to a gentle halt and bend to the cooling dirt path. You pick a fallen leaf from the ground. It’s after sunset. You smile with your face and your mouth and you hand me the leaf. It’s slightly caterpillar-chewed on one side. Red veins flow from the brownish-green stem to the yellow outer fingers. The underside is covered in grit from the gravelly road. I thank you for the leaf. “Thank you for the leaf.” I say. You nod and smile with your mouth and your face. And you walk away.

You bought two hundred thousand packets of Haribo Goldbears off the internet. You employed twenty-five people from Nottingham for a third of a year to organise them by colour. You commisioned four heated pools in which to keep them. On Sunday you turned on the heaters.

You stand before the red pool. The bears have turned to a viscous liquid. Goodbye bears. You dip your toe in the goo. Not just yet, you say. You eye up the green pool.

A rivulet of sticky juice trickled down her inner arm. She smelt it before she felt it – a somehow soft and prickly odor, not sweet per se, uncomfortable in its unfamiliarity. There were three stops to go. She could make it to Reinyolk Bey, where the majority of the carriage would empty out onto the platform. Maybe no one would notice. And then just two stops to home. She clasped a hand onto the remaining fruit under her jacket to make sure they’d be safe – another breakage and she’d be done for, besides, she could not afford to lose another. The carriage drew in to the Bey. No one got off.

I caught the dance of reflected ribbons of fountain-bounced party light on your jaw. You were holding a cheap plastic cup a little too tightly. It buckled slightly in your hand. You were chatting with someone taller than you. Behind me Kate dropped a bottle. You pinged your head in my direction, and noticed me looking. You smiled. You craned your head back up and guillotined your conversation. And you came to sit on my bench. “Nice bench.” You said. It was a very nice bench.

I forgot you at a bus stop.

We’d been to the grocer’s and had been waiting for fifteen minutes. I got us angel hair pasta. I was going to make pomodorina sauce.

I left my card at the store. Damnit. I had to go back. It was only across the street. I let three cars go by on the one side and lingered at the centre line for another three in the other direction.

I scuttled through the rain and pushed open the door. The bell at the top made a tinkling sound. The shopkeeper gave me a nod and held up my credit card. With flustered relief, I thanked him, and quickly checked that the bus was not about to arrive. “Parmesan.” I exhaled.

Parmesan. I can’t believe I nearly forgot you.

You trip on the curb and scrape your knee on the pavement. You catch yourself with your hands and fall on your shopping. Your baguette is bent in two and specked with asphalt. A cherry tomato rolls toward the road, crying for her crushed love. A beer can springs a tiny leak, hissing and spraying a fine mist. You catch a bit with your tongue.

In between two parked cars, one yellow, one pinkish, you turn yourself over, and sit on the slabs. A cat asks you if you’re fine. “I’m fine.” you say. You are, you think. You dust down the bread and fish out the brie. Not much can go wrong with brie. You layer up and take a bite, and crack open the can. The blood from your knee is saturating your leggings. It’s a wide, shallow wound.

Everything is nice.

You rub your teeth with cotton buds, something squeaks and squeals. Is it the bud? Is it the teeth? Something else..?

They’re cleaner now I imagine. This is a slow train. It’s about three hundred and fifty kilometres from Munich to Prague. It would have been quicker by bus, probably. You got on in Linz.

The compartment is empty but for you, me, and your bird, who has ceased squawking at me and now is either fixated on the dusty purple seats or has died with her eyes open.

Maybe you hypnotised her.

With your squeaky, squawky teeth.

I followed their advice.

I bought 400 pairs of socks, 200 of tights, and a box of stockings. I bought slipper socks, too, just in case.

I got a giant winged armchair, of green leather, brass-studded. Six deckchairs in striped Scarborough canvas. I bought in enough barstools to host a brawl. Fancy ones, mind, so only fancy brawls. With polite put-downs rather than broken teeth. A booster seat for the car. An old dusty sofa. I’ll do it up.

When I asked them what was the best thing to do with the inheritance, they told me, and I listened. Socks and chairs, they said. Invest in socks and chairs. So I did.

She scrapes snow off her soles and onto the grate. She peels off both shoes together, one with each hand. She hits them against each other. Little cold beads escape from the rubber heels.

Inside smells like a heater that hasn’t been turned on in a long time. It’s all the bits of dust, fragments of hair, clothing, skin, that have settled on the filaments, suddenly finding themselves cooked. The smell of old, burning skin. She sets her sack by the mantel in the front room.

Little Otter, nestled among the hedgerose and gnawing on the fuzz of morning, paints eggs to sell today, to earn money, to buy crack and meth.

Her mother would have cried had she known. But what did Mrs. Otter know? A PhD in woodland politics? So out of touch.

Beaver, beside otter, hasn’t moved since yesterday. Hope he’s not dead, thinks Little Otter. She wipes the crystals from her nose fur, and reaches for the blue.