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taken to waiting outside her apartment building, seeking to meet her at all times of the day and night. She had imagined their lovemaking was a tender goodbye, but it had unhinged him, somewhat, so that he seemed always to be waiting below the window, without purpose, desultory,standing in the freezing air with his hands in his pockets, shuffling from foot to foot.
    â€˜This is harassment,’ Alice said, when he pinned her against the wall outside her doorway.
    â€˜I just want to talk,’ Stephen responded.
    â€˜You don’t. You want more.’
    â€˜Yes, I want more.’
    â€˜Leave me alone, Stephen.’
    She wondered if she sounded mean. With his face so close, she could tell that he was drinking early in the day. His eyes were red-rimmed. He seemed aged and dishevelled.
    â€˜Fuck you.’
    â€˜Please,’ Alice said quietly. ‘I don’t want to have to fear you.’
    At this, Stephen backed away. He looked down at his feet. His hands were shaking. ‘Jesus,’ he said.
    Alice watched him turn, walk past the school and around the corner. She unlocked her door, then quickly locked it from the inside, her heart pounding as if she had just embraced a lover. Outside an ambulance sped past, pulling its Doppler effect siren behind it. A reminder of how things separated: object and sound.

    Dear Norah,
    There are days here when I truly long for your company. The studio is perfectly adequate, but I find myself alone, talking out loud, and listening to the scraps of late-night television that filter unintelligibly through the ceiling and the walls.
    My writing is not going well. I think my project folly and am struck every day by the profundity of orders of experience and sensation that are unconnected to my vainglorious jottings.
    Stephen is still unaccepting of my distance, and this has led him into misery and me into guilt. It was a mistake, seeing him. Today was only the second day for a long time that he has not stood outside my building – perhaps this is a sign he has given up hope, or come to his senses. I was beginning to dread each time I saw him beneath my window, but now, to be honest, I dread not seeing him, fearing he might have done harm to himself.
    Recently I recalled something that I wonder if you too remember. We were quite small – I would have been nine, you would have been seven, and we were on holiday at the beach, in that rugged area near Smith’s Point. We must have wandered off together, because we came across a whale skeleton, bleached and partially intact, high up, past the watermark. It was a beautiful thing – sculptural and strange, the ribcage a kind of chamber, the dorsal bones still interlocking with fragments of cartilage, all neatly descending in size, all ivory and unblemished. We stepped inside the belly of the beast, as it were, this blasted, open, monumental space, and were happy together. We were sharing our discovery. Two little girls in floral sundresses and floppy cloth hats. Later we found Dad and with his help laboriously carried one of the backbones up the beach, up through the sand-hills, and back to our hut. I remember it sitting there, outside the hut, with our bathers and goggles, a pure thing, like a stone, a pure deep-water thing. I don’t know what became of it. Perhaps we just left it there, where it lay. Do you remember, Norah? Do you know what became of the whale bone?
    Do send me news of the children. I have little toreport here – I’m leading a somewhat cloistered life – partly in recoil, I think, from Stephen’s behaviour – which has disturbed me more than I care to admit – and partly to find again the quiet sequestration that will enable me to write. And tell me about yourself, and Michael, and how you are both getting on. Your letters are important to me, even though I am a poor correspondent.
    My love, as always,
    Alice

    In the middle of the night she heard it again – the