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room – “...this new-age crap is just filling a hole. It’s blind faith, Cora – if you choose it, go ahead, but not me. I need proof, not fantasy.”
    “You can’t prove everything.”
    “Yes, you can, Cora.”
    “Really?” She reached for the silver ring that hung from the black leather cord around her neck. “What about love?”
    She held my stare for a moment, waiting for me to answer, and when I couldn’t, she lowered her eyes and left the room.
    A leaden silence rang out between us that night. I hated it, the edge that hung in the air after we argued. It flaunts the side of me I don’t want to know. It leaves me feeling deflated and irritated. I wish I could have let go of it, but I didn’t know how. I scowled for most of the evening and banged things when I put them down, frustrated with Cora and bitter with myself. Why couldn’t she just accept that I see things differently? She passed the evening reading a book by the window, although she seemed to spend more time staring at the rain on the glass than at the pages on her lap.
    That night when I lay next to her, I couldn’t sleep. The anger dissolved into guilt and it clawed at my insides. Still, in the darkness, our exchanges played over in my mind. I turned to watch her, as she lay sleeping, her skin pale and smooth against the pillow, and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. Couldn’t you just have let it go, let her think you believed her? Would that have been so difficult? The truth was something I didn’t want to face, and there, in the silence of the darkened room, it was surfacing. When did we become so different? It wasn’t always this way, was it? Or did I just dismiss it before; think it didn’t really matter? A part of me, somewhere deep and unsettled within, wondered who she was, and how we ever ended up together. I rolled away from her and closed my eyes. It would be alright in the morning.
     
     
    B UT IT WASN’T alright. We barely spoke for the next few days. She stayed out more and more, and Tibet became the escape route I was aiming for. Until then, I was marking time. I hated myself for it. Sometimes I’d catch her crying, then she’d brush the tears away in angry shame and push past me, and I knew it wasn’t about Sarah. We slept in different rooms, each making the excuse that we didn’t want to keep the other awake. If it weren’t for that picture on the hall table, I’d have said we were flatmates who barely knew each other. I couldn’t think of anything we had in common anymore. Not a single thing. Is that what happens to people?
    But the day I left for Tibet, I got a glimpse of something that was there before. She kissed me on the cheek, and that kiss, soft and simple, had more tenderness than all the others we’d shared before. She took the ring on the leather cord from around her neck and handed it to me. She was letting me go. I needed to go, and she knew it; that kiss was her permission. She wouldn’t be there when I got back.
     
     
    S OMETHING SHARP IS needling my face. A taste of copper in my mouth, a throbbing upper lip. Ignore it, it’ll go away.
    Nope, it’s still there, pushing against my cheek. Is it pushing me or is it the other way round? Either way it feels like I’m bouncing. How odd. Open your eyes.
    What the...
    The whole earth is bouncing nearer and further away, nearer and further away. What way is up? Below, something black and furry, the smell of musty leather. A thudding sound – hooves beneath me. What the hell? A man’s lined, weathered face, dark pebbles for eyes peering in; grey rocks and shingles on the hard ground below. If I lift my head a little. Shit, it hurts – a nail in the skull with each bounce. Sunlight floods in, sets my eyes streaming again, as I squint up. Is that a lake? Why so black, in all this light? Not even a glimmer on it. I remember it, black water with no light. Uneasiness crawls under my skin as the thick grey mist parts for a moment, and behind it...