She had never before considered the mortality of her lovers. In her less recent youth she had been somewhat intrepid with her sexual adventures, racking up numbers and nights and falling in love over and over again for just a few hours, and then folding each love into a little box and putting it on the shelf, or, on rarer occasions holding it to herself like a hot water bottle. Most of them she never saw or heard of again. Some of them she did. She had seen this one only once since their extended encounter, and it was a pleasant meeting, warm and familiar, and convivial. She learned of his death through a mutual friend, and on the occasion she was hit by a sharp sorrow. Not just for him, though he was nice and good and the recollections of him were treasure, but for each and every one, with each of whom she created a little pocket of another world, each of which would become extinct, one by one, each widowing another of her memories.

In the early days of telephony, before they had the good sense to invent the buzzer, or ringer, every telephone owner would have a specially bred telephone owl, which would sit on a perch at specific times of day to alert its master that someone was trying to ring them. The owl would watch the receiver patiently, until the little light flashed, at which point it would spring into action, swoop over to its  owner, who was perhaps in the next room, or at the foot of the garden, and say “twit-twit-twoo-twoo!”  and “twit-twit-twoo-twoo!” and then “twit-twit-twoo-twoo-twoo!”, at which point the phone owner would know there was a very important message and they would rush to the receiver and converse at a distance. If round-the-clock coverage was important, the owner may choose to have two owls working in shifts. And if no-one was home, the telephone owl would say simply “twoooo”, and then try as best it could to remember the message given to it by the disembodied voice, and then relate it to its master once they got home. Through mime.

On the sixth day of June, a Wednesday, just as morning awoke, the insurgents, having broken through the night before, detonated their pulse. Screens dimmed to a static fuzz, cars didn’t know where to go. And the sky cleared. The swarms of drones, delivering, watching, gently landed, all at once. For the first time in memory, the air was quiet; the sunrise painted itself onto the tired eyes of the a.m. commute. Amid the debris of crumpled machinery and broken windows, she, like the rest, still, watched the morning conduct its symphony of light: reds and pinks and blues, punctuated with pearlescent streaks of vapour, the curtain briefly lifted.

There is an old children’s game in which an orange peel is used to find the first initial of your true love. The idea is to remove the peel of the orange —  or clementine, or tangerine, or satsuma, all work equally well, though some are easier to undress than others — in one continuous piece, and to throw it over your shoulder, behind you. Supposedly, the shape formed by the peel on the floor indicates the first initial of your future spouse. I misunderstood this game and married an orange. It was the best mistake I ever made.

In the morning there are no buses, you walk home. Seven miles, you don’t mind. The morning is quiet and the air is fresh and new, as if a box of it has just been opened. You enter the house to find your mother, sitting at the kitchen table, sorting through a mound of buttons of every flavour, grouping them by colour and shape. You find deep satisfaction and calm in the order and regularity. “What are you going to do with all those buttons?” you ask. She doesn’t know. These things just accumulate, from dead relatives, dead clothing, anyhow, best keep them tidy, she adds. “I know a seamstress” you say. You do.

Oh sticky pan,

Wherefore dost thou stick?

Didst thou lose thy teflon shimmer?

Or something?

At the weekend, while she was away, her father removed all the doorknobs from all the doors in the house, and put them in a box at the foot of the stairs. “Why did you remove all the doorknobs from all the doors in the house, and put them in a box at the foot of the stairs?” She enquired. He didn’t tell her.

You reach into your pocket to take out your watch, to find that the time is 3:52pm, but also to find that watch’s stopclock has been started in your pocket, and that it’s been running for about forty-five minutes, still counting. You follow the hands as they continue their circuit. You think back to forty-five minutes ago. At that point you were still having lunch with Alice, a long lunch, longer than intended, because there was much to catch up on, and your mutual disinclination to curtail the encounter called for another cake, a second coffee, a chocolate wafer, until eventually she had to leave lest she fail to catch her bus. The watch must have been started accidentally, in your pocket, perhaps as you leant over the table to share your eclair. Maybe that was the start of something, you think: perhaps this is the forty-fifth minute of your future. It would be imprudent to interrupt it. You leave the clock running.

I will wait until morning. As the amber glow strokes the dew from the first blades, and the night mists convalesce and rise and lay in wait to fall as rain, and the curlews sing their tributes to the dissipating gloom, and the street lamps flicker as they head once more to bed, I shall crawl from my nest, and sing my own song, not out loud, quietly, to myself. But no, not right now. Only then.

Between the shuffling hooves of ibex, past the kneeling okapi and gemsbok, darted a mouse, late, holding high above her head a foil-wrapped parcel with a bow. She skidded to a stop beside an antelope, who turned to her, and smiled her a sympathetic smile.

“Sorry sorry,” she panted, “sorry!” She scurried to Robert. “Happy birthday!”

“Thank you, little mouse.” He replied.