Chapter 1

Walking along this shore, which makes the same arched curve as a cat's tucked, sleeping body beneath a sunny windowsill, Isaac breathes with difficulty into the tearing wind. When was the last time I went to the beach? he thought. I must have been with others. Certainly I was with others. He cannot remember something that simple, and yet remotely frightening: the last time he was alone at the beach. I was with others. His feet sink quietly into the dry, grey sand as the occasional cry of a lonely gull would interrupt the drone of the surf and his spiralling thoughts. With others. He walks along, waiting for an encounter that he knows will be another disappointed dream, but for which there is still a dim underglow, like the small red core of a fire that is not yet out, telling him to wait also for this to pass, like the others before whose smoke every now and then drifts over him uninvited but wanted.