I requested a steak tenderiser – one end diamonded with wooden spikes, the other flat – or more exactly a branding iron with one central wavy line, to push the mexican beans into a hash, to be fried into a thin hard cake like a piece of metal, the size of the glass of a wing-mirror perhaps. A brittle thin sliver of metal held together by skin and pulp.

I understand now. How the days without her were ten days without company. It took two days to realise to turn off the stereo at the mains to kill the hum. To talk to others was to be bodily distracted, to not share completely the moment.