Later that evening Charlotte left Julian on his own – not pointedly, without a scene: she simply crossed the room on Konstantin's arm and did not come back for twenty-three minutes. I know the number exactly: Julian looked at his watch when they left and again when they returned.
He held up well, I will give him that. He took a glass of water from a tray and held it like a prop. He studied the evening's programme as closely as if an answer were hidden in it. He tried to work his way into a conversation between two trustees; they parted just far enough to signal politeness, and closed again. At Eberwald even the walls could do it: let you in without taking you in.
In my first life I would have gone to him. I remembered how it was done; I remembered it with my body. The winter reception at the town hall, our first year: Julian stood exactly like that, alone, by a column, and I came to him with an invented question, asking him to explain a problem I had already solved at home. He explained it for twenty minutes, coming alive with every sentence, and then talked to me about himself for the rest of the evening, and I counted that as my victory. I was fifteen. I thought I was saving him. I was training him to believe that other people's loneliness was my job.
In this life I talked to an editor from the Foundation, a small woman with lively eyes who ran reading programmes for schools on the outskirts. I knew those schools. I had grown up in one of them.
"Behind the freight yard, then," she said without condescension, simply checking the map. "We have a book bus out there once a fortnight. Not enough."
"Not enough," I agreed. "But better than nothing. In my childhood there wasn't even a bus."
We talked about what estates like that go without, for longer than etiquette allowed, and I caught myself in a strange feeling: I was being spoken to as a source of knowledge, not as a touching example. The difference was enormous. My whole project, strictly speaking, rested on it.
At 21:08 Julian left the hall. At 21:12 my phone vibrated: unknown number, a short "can we talk?". I deleted the message and put the phone away in my bag. The symmetry came out almost beautiful: at 16:12 my second life had begun, and at 21:12 I did not give in for the first time in it.
Home smelled of ironing and camomile tea. My mother sat in the kitchen over a heap of receipts, pretending she had not been waiting up. From how evenly the receipts lay it was clear they had been counted three times.
"Well? How was high society?"
"It glitters. Their water costs more than your roses."
"Then it's the wrong sort of society." She pushed the receipts aside. "Supper's on the hob."
I sat down opposite and, while the food heated through, said it as though in passing.
"Listen, I've been finding out. The insurance company runs a programme: a full examination, everything in a single day. For women your age it's free."
"There you go again."
"Mum."
"Klara." She looked at me over her glasses. "I'm as healthy as a horse. I've got orders, I've got shifts, I've got you growing up. I haven't the time to sit about at doctors'. After the holidays."
"After the holidays you've got the stocktake. Then Valentine's Day – the shop will be packed. Then Easter. I know your calendar better than my own."
"Good, then you know. So you understand: there's no time."
After. That 'after' again. In my first life 'after' lasted three years and ended in a diagnosis that no longer asked anybody about being busy. I watched my mother gather the receipts into a stack – deftly, out of long habit, with hands tired to death – and understood that nothing here could be won by arguing. Mum held our life up herself, the way a load-bearing wall holds up a house. To suggest she 'find the time' was to ask that wall to move.
"All right," I said calmly. "After the holidays."
That same night, by the light of the desk lamp, I filled in the insurance application in her name. The form was a pedant: length of service, shifts, family history. Over the box marked 'family history' I held the pen for a second, and then wrote 'don't know'. That was the only lie: I knew. The date I chose myself – the second Thursday in January, the hour when the shop is quiet. To the form's question about the reason for the appointment I answered honestly: 'Prevention.' The real reason, the one only I knew, the form would not have survived.
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