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.

On the way home Catarina was almost singing.

Let’s walk through the park, she said when they emerged from the mouth of Mile End station.

Spring was breaking across the trees in tiny green buds that looked orange under the streetlights. The sounds of a saxophone. Cherry blossom fell too early on the ground, also orange. They followed the lilac, blue and yellow flowers down the park towards their flat.