Old Habits

The week that followed was the best working week of the entire six months. I am going to set out what we did in it, with the page counts, because the numbers are the only part of it anybody could have seen from outside.

There is a thing that happens to me on the morning after I have said something true. I wake at about five with the whole of the previous evening in the room, every sentence of it audible, and the feeling is not shame. It is exposure in the plainest sense: a man standing in a field. There has only ever been one thing that works on it, and it is a list.

On the Friday morning at twenty to seven, from the flat in Stockbridge, I answered Amalia Sanchis and told her I would do all three events in Madrid with Ximena Belda, the thirteenth to…