My computer’s hard drive broke just before we came away and the equivalent of a filing cabinet of photos and letters were as vanished as if the house had caught fire, but there’s no wreckage, no lingering smell, just a sudden utter gap. Curiously cruel.

Sitting here in the mornings on shiny new laptop, with coffee, wi-fi plugging me into the galaxy, I find myself thinking about all the objects this smug white thing is in the process of hoovering up and replacing: cameras, telephones, televisions, typewriters, post offices, filing cabinets, bookshelves… the chunks of bakolite and metal and plastic, the carefully designed knobs and casings, the crates of paper…

Death is a clear cut loss, though sometimes I wake from dreams with the smell of him on me and reach out for him lying beside me and then know that he isn’t.

Today in the sunshine, our last full day here, the girls splashing and giggling in the water, Yoshko in the distance waving, everything around me says be happy, and everything inside me says that can’t be.



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