90.

She stares at the screen for so long her foot goes to sleep. When she gets up she lurches across the floor like Frankenstein’s monster. Frankenstein is the doctor, which is easy to forget.

She’s weary of the confessional. Can’t she get up off her knees now? It’s not like she doesn’t have plenty of other things to do. Moving day a faroff train with its single purposeful light bearing down. And her, stuck on the crossing with taped-together boxes.

Just let me get this stuff.

She’s waiting for phone calls or to make them. For once she hasn’t planned anything. She’d better start cleaning. She’d better start a lot of things. She’s always hated moving. Begin packing things she needs between now and then, and later go helplessly through boxes trying to find them? Or wait until the last minute, keeping out everything she might possibly need, and do it in a rush and forget things and pack them sloppy so she can’t figure out where anything is when she needs it later? The jumble box, the last one, into which you thrust everything that remains in despair, and then keep on a shelf for years or decades, until the next time you have to look in.

She’ll need to make a bunch of phone calls. She’ll call her father. He can’t help but he listens. She’ll go to the neighbours’ wedding. They didn’t invite her but it’s fine, it’s casual. Time like a tap: so much, suddenly cut to nothing. This weekend will be different though. Not her usual Saturdays and Sundays, the leaden weight of days undone, followed by the inevitable last-minute panic.

Believe it or not at half past six it was beautiful out here. Beautiful. Now the sky is filling up, cloudy and white. The colour of the day leached away bit by bit, turned down by degrees. Don’t forget. Need a coat.