i. Hetty was writing a poem but she was finding it hard, she said, hard. So I said, ‘Which hard are we
talking here? A 16th century German woodblock hard? Quartz, topaz hard? Where are we on the
Mohs scale? Or is this more of a stainless steel spade that could both murder you and then dig your
grave while your head continues to swell hard?’ Hetty tilted her unamused head. She said ‘You know
full well what I mean, why is everything some half-baked encyclopaedic joke to you?’ Then I felt bad.
For encyclopaedia. For her, with her sunken eyes, doughy pallor, she clearly hadn’t slept. I began to
suspect there might’ve been pills involved. I thought I’d suggest we hit the beach, feel the soft warm
sand chafe at our respective gaps but we lived inland. Then I thought of a walk, about the lake, lake
air, some lake air…

ii. Hetty and I took the train, well we hitched a ride on a shunter that was going right through the past,
headed for future past. And it had all the feeling of a film set because it was one. We were shunted
along leisurely, our cargo heads exposed to a movie sky. Then we came to a siding where a man was
sitting alone on a cart, a man made up to look like a man from the past. He wore a hat which was a
good idea and he wasn’t smoking at all. His face was smeared in fake grime that must’ve been
intended to suggest a life of honest labour, but in the sun, the dirt that rimmed the valley of his cheeks
betrayed a bronze Egyptian shimmer. As we passed him by he raised his head slowly and the shadows
of his face went scrambling to their new homes. Then he said simply ‘What happens on the page,
stays on the page’ but Hetty didn’t hear a thing. Hetty has small ears.

iii. The future past station was busy. It was summer of course. Groups of students were milling about,
their energy unleashed at last from the tomes that trapped it during long winter nights of
incomprehension. We were standing close to one group seated near the ticket kiosk. They looked like
they were heading off on an orienteering expedition with a spiritual twist. They were chatting and
laughing easily when one girl, 15 or 16, stood up. She had a wealth of hair and wore a knitted tank
top‒ the sort that would look romantic in black and white but in real life was itchy and uncool and a
nightmare to wash. The girl, looking at no-one in particular, only gazing off to some imagined
horizon, began to speak but no sound came from her mouth. She didn’t seem to notice, just kept on
going, then sat back down. I looked at Hetty. I went to say something, wanted to, but couldn’t.