That Autumn, Catarina was alone for the first time in her life, and it felt to her like a threshold. All this quiet. A new city as old as history. She felt a lightness in her body. She wrote for hours in the library. Words came to her like water. Decisions were easy. She would finish the new academic term and then she would move into a new apartment in the new year. She would do groundbreaking research. She would make herself a new London life. She would throw herself into the city. Every event, every exhibition, every evening lecture; she would fill her life with new words and new people. In December she messaged twenty-five different people on the spare room site, including a girl with a Brazilian-looking surname and purple hair.

Around her, outside the windows of the library, red and yellow fell, from the sky, settling on the ground. Hours later, on her way home, she would walk over the loose, dismantled firmament.