We went for a walk, early. Fresh morning: glossy water, tide high, clouds scattered, air spiked with perfumes from invisible flower-ing plants. We were both yawning. Coming up the steep part of Yarranabbe I said, ‘You know why we’re always tired? We’re exhausted from flogging a dead horse. Can’t you see it’s time we parted?’ ‘What? Just because I happened to run into X in the street when I was putting the rubbish out?’ I said, ‘Things between us are too fragile for something like that to have no meaning.’ It was nothing serious, he said, it was trivial; I was overreacting as usual, it wasn’t worth getting upset about, it wasn’t worth having all these feelings.