[...] Her friendship with Anna. Folk records they used to listen to together, French novels they would lend one another after school. Adolescent dream of attending university in Paris: sunlit boulevards, tempestuous love affairs, autumn afternoons at the Louvre. Went instead to Galway, hung around in poorly ventilated apartments smoking hash with boys who played acoustic guitar. The romance of those years. Her first boyfriend, the American, with his ironed shirts. His accent she thought glamorous. Fifteen years ago, more. Anna didn’t like him, she said he was arrogant. Actually he was arrogant, but I liked that about him. I suppose it made me feel special, that he liked me. They were eating dinner together, and Ivan was smiling. It’s a stereotype, I hope you know, he said. Pretty girls always go for the most arrogant guys. But go on, what happened? Crisp bedlinen, fragrance of cut flowers, cold winter sunlight. Her simple physical sense of being in the world again: renewed, as if after a long absence. Turning of the seasons. At work, the dim buzz of her phone against the desk.