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21. Maybe Loss

In a dream I was looking into a long, long dimness that stretched back to before the beginning of the world. Lost, lost, lost, I thought. There was something before this and now it’s all lost. ‘Maybe’, I said, and woke up as I heard myself saying it, ‘loss is where everything starts from.’

‘It’s where it ends, too,’ said Serafina.

I rolled over and there we were, face to face in a strange bed, under the same duvet. I lifted it a bit: Serafina was in her knickers and a long Minnie Mouse T-shirt and I was wearing underpants and a T-shirt. Maybe all our troubles had never happened? ‘Have they?’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Have all our troubles really happened?’

‘Yes, and they’re still happening. Go to sleep.’

So we slept — uneasily.