Alasdair's Shop

We stopped on the twentieth of December and started again on the sixth of January, and in between there were seventeen days, of which eleven contained nothing at all.

I went to Turin for a week and slept in my old room under a poster of a swimmer from 1994 and ate four meals a day, which is what happens there. My mother asked twice whether I was eating, once whether I had seen anybody, and once, on the last evening, wiping the table in long flat strokes, whether I would still be coming in February.

“I always come in February,” I said.

“Lo so,” she said. I know. And went on wiping the table, and did not ask what she wanted to ask, which is a thing she and I have agreed on without ever discussing it.

On New Year’s Day an email arrived at 11.42 with no greeting…