Chapter 1: Friday

We are on the A9 north of Pitlochry by the time the rain starts, and Saoirse swears at the windscreen wipers because Saoirse swears at every windscreen wiper she has ever met.

"I told you last year. I told you we need to get a different car for the September weekend."

"This is your car."

"Yes."

"That you bought last year."

"Yes."

"After saying we needed a different car for the September weekend."

"This is exactly my point."

Bex is in the back seat. She is reading the new Maggie O'Farrell on her Kindle. Bex has been reading the new Maggie O'Farrell for three weeks because Bex is a primary teacher in Bristol and she reads two chapters before bed and that is the cap. She has not looked up from the Kindle in about thirty miles.

"How much further," she says, without looking up.

"Half an hour. Less. If the road past Aberfeldy is not flooded."

"It will not be flooded."

"It might be flooded."

"Saoirse."

"Yes."

"You are forty-two miles from the cabin and twenty-eight years old. Stop borrowing trouble."

"I am twenty-nine."

"You are twenty-nine in November."

"That is twenty-nine."

Bex puts the Kindle down on the seat. She has a small black hairband round her left wrist that she has been twisting between her fingers for an hour. She looks out at the road. The rain has set in and the road is the long Perthshire dusk that I have driven up with these two every September since 2020. The lochside will open up on our left in twenty minutes. Saoirse will turn the radio off as we come to the lochside because Saoirse has done that every year since I have known her.

"Lex."

"Yes."

"Did you bring the cards."

"I brought the cards."

"And the good ones."

"I brought the good ones."

"Saoirse. I bring the cards. You bring the food. Bex brings the wine and the Maggie O'Farrell. Do not insult me about the cards."

"All right."

The road goes quiet. Twenty minutes later the lochside opens up on our left. Saoirse turns the radio off. We come down the small descending lane to Kenmore at quarter past six in the wet grey twilight and the loch is the colour of slate someone has stopped polishing halfway through.

Bex looks at it.

"All right. I had forgotten about the loch."

"You say that every year."

"I forget it every year."

"That is not how memory is supposed to work."

"It is how mine works."

She picks up the Kindle. She reads for the last mile.

Saoirse looks at me. She does not say anything. She glances in the rear-view at Bex, then back at the road. She puts her left hand on my knee.

"Lex."

"Yes."

"Quietly. Listen."

"All right."

"You are going to tell her this weekend."

"Saoirse."

"You are."

"I do not know if I am."

"I'm not doing another September of this."

"What."

"You heard me. I am not doing another September of this. If you do not tell her this weekend, next September is not happening for me. I am tired of carrying it for you. I love you and I love her and I am also tired."

I look at her.

"All right."

"This weekend."

"All right."

She takes her hand off my knee. She turns the radio back on, low. We do the last mile of the lane in silence.

The cabin is at the end of a small dirt road on the east side of the loch, half a mile past the village. It belongs to Saoirse's late grandmother. It is a single-storey log cabin with two bedrooms, a small bathroom, a wood-stove in the living room, and a kitchen with a view across the loch. It is not a fancy cabin. There is no internet. There is one bar of phone reception if you walk to the bend in the road.

Saoirse's grandmother bought it in 1978 with money she had not expected to have. The previous owners put the pier in in 1996. Those are the two dates Saoirse will mention if you ask her about the cabin.

We park. We carry the bags in. Saoirse takes the small bedroom because Saoirse took it on the first weekend in 2019 - she had got there first that year and had picked it and the arrangement stuck. Bex and I share the larger bedroom, which has two single beds with a thin gap between them and a wool blanket on each. We have been doing this for seven years.

I put my bag on the bed on the right. Bex puts hers on the bed on the left. She unzips it. She takes out the small soft kit-bag with her wash things in. She takes out her pyjamas - the same flannel ones in dark green check she has had every September I have known her. She puts them folded on the pillow.

I watch her do this.

I have watched her do this in this room every September since 2020.

She turns to me. She catches me. She smiles the way she smiles at me when she catches me watching her, which is a thing she has been doing for ten years.

"Lex."

"Yes."

"What."

"Nothing."

"You were watching me put my pyjamas on the pillow."

"I was."

"All right."

I had told myself, in the car, that I would not do anything tonight. That I would let the cabin settle. Saoirse has rearranged the timing.

Bex sits on her bed. She takes her shoes off. She puts them under the bed. She looks at the small window above her bed, which faces the road and not the loch.

"Saoirse is going to make us go for a walk in the rain in a minute."

"She is."

"You and I should walk slow."

"Yes."

We go through to the living room. Saoirse has put the wood-stove on within ninety seconds of arriving because Saoirse is from Cork and has decided that the entire Highlands of Scotland is a place where one is in danger of dying of cold at any moment. She has a bottle of the white on the counter and three mugs from the dresser because the wine glasses are kept on the high shelf and nobody has reached them yet.

We drink the white out of mugs. We talk about the drive up. We talk about the rain. We talk about Saoirse's restaurant project in Manchester, which is in the middle of a planning permission row. We talk about Bex's school. We talk about my charity. We do not talk about Bex's marriage, because Bex does not talk about Bex's marriage in the first ten minutes of any conversation, and we have learned to wait.

By half past seven the rain has dropped to a drizzle. We put coats on. We walk down to the pier and stand at the wooden boards, looking at the water.

The loch is still. The drizzle is making small concentric rings on the surface. There is a single light across the loch at the cottage at the far side.

"All right," Saoirse says. "That is enough fresh air. Bex, you are cold. Lex, you are cold but pretending. Stew."

We go back. We make the stew. Saoirse makes the stew, properly. Bex makes the salad. I lay the table.

We eat. We drink a second bottle of the white. Bex goes to bed at half past ten. She kisses Saoirse on the cheek and me on the cheek and goes through to our bedroom and shuts the door.

Saoirse and I stay at the kitchen table.

She pours the last of the second bottle into my mug.

"Saoirse."

"Yes."

"In the car."

"Yes."

"You were not joking."

"I was not joking."

"All right."

"Lex."

"Yes."

"What is going on with her marriage."

"I know less than I think you think I know. I know that Tom is in Manchester next weekend for his sister's hen do and that Bex told me last Friday that she had not minded him going. I know that she rang me on the Monday morning and asked me what I had brought to read, the way a woman who is planning to be on the loch for three days asks her friend what her friend is bringing to read."

"You think she is wondering."

"I am not going to say what I think."

"All right."

We finish the wine. We do the washing up. Saoirse goes to bed at quarter to twelve.

I go to the bedroom. Bex is asleep on her side under the wool blanket with her Kindle on the floor by her shoes. The light from the road is coming in through the curtain that does not draw all the way. Her hair is in a fan on the pillow.

I lie down on my bed in my t-shirt and my pyjama trousers. I turn off the lamp.

I do not sleep for a long time.

Bex breathes. She breathes the way she has been breathing in this room since 2020. It is the breath of a teacher who is tired on a Friday evening at the end of the first hard weeks of term. It is steady. It is the breath of a person who is asleep beside the person who has been in love with her for ten years and who does not know it.

I think about the way she had said I had forgotten about the loch.

I think about Saoirse saying I am not doing another September of this.

I do not sleep until two.

Chapter 2: Saturday

The walk is at ten.

Schiehallion every other year, the Falls of Acharn on the off years. This is a Falls year. The Falls path is a four-mile loop. It is wet today and we are in walking boots and waterproof trousers.

We walk three abreast where the path lets us and single-file where it does not. Saoirse goes ahead, then Bex, then me. We do not talk much for the first mile.

The path follows the burn up the side of the hill through birch woods. The bracken at the side of the path is the colour of weak tea. There are small mushrooms at the foot of the trees and a single wren going off ahead of us through the bracken.

At the lookout above the second falls we stop. The water is heavy from yesterday's rain. The pool at the bottom is whitened. The drop is about forty feet.

Saoirse hands the flasks round.

"Lex," she says. "Did you ever take that man to Mull."

"What man."

"The man you mentioned at the party."

"I did not mention a man at the party."

"You did. The man at the gallery."

"I did not."

"You did."

"Saoirse. I am gay."

"I know you are gay. I was checking you remembered."

Bex laughs. It is the small laugh she does when Saoirse is being Saoirse.

"There is no man at any gallery," I say. "There was a man at the gallery in September last year. He was straight. He was forty-six. He had a daughter at Bex's school. We did not go to Mull."

"I see."

"You are doing a thing."

"I am doing nothing."

"You are doing a thing."

"Bex, tell her I am doing nothing."

"You are doing something."

"All right. I will go ahead. The two of you can do the next mile at your own pace."

She picks up the daypack. She walks. She goes round the next bend in the path and out of sight in about thirty seconds.

Bex and I are alone on the path above the falls.

She looks at me.

"She is being terrible."

"She is being Saoirse."

"She is being terrible."

We start walking.

We walk for a few minutes without talking. The path narrows past the lookout. The burn is on our left. There is a small smirr of rain that is not quite rain.

"Lex."

"Yes."

"I am going to ask you a thing."

"All right."

"Do not lie about it."

"All right."

"Are you in love with anyone at the moment."

I look at the path.

I had not been expecting this question on the Saturday morning. I had been expecting to ask the question, perhaps, on the Saturday night. I do not lie.

"Yes."

"All right."

"Is that the question."

"That is part of it."

"What is the rest of it."

She is walking. She is not looking at me. She is looking at her boots on the path.

"The rest of it is that I have not, in twelve years, asked you whether you were in love with anyone. You have not, in twelve years, told me. You have told me the broad shape. You have not told me that you were in love with anyone, ever, in twelve years. So I had been wondering if there was a reason."

I look at the back of her head. She does not turn round.

"There is a reason."

"I thought there might be."

"I had not been going to talk to you about it on this walk."

"I know."

"You ambushed me."

"I did not ambush you. I asked you. There is a difference."

"All right."

"Saoirse is going to come back and pretend she did not abandon us in five minutes."

"She is."

"We do not have to talk about this on the walk."

"All right."

"Lex."

"Yes."

"I am asking you because I have decided to ask you. I have been thinking about a thing all week. I have been thinking about it since last weekend. Tom went up to Manchester and I sat in our flat on the Friday night and made myself a pasta and watched two episodes of something and went to bed at half past nine. I had the best Friday night I have had since I was twenty-four. And it was the best because Tom was not there."

"All right."

"That is the thing I have been thinking about."

"All right."

"It is not Tom's fault. He is a good man. He has done nothing wrong."

"I know."

"I had not been able to say what I had been thinking about to anybody until I said it to you in this sentence and to Saoirse in a sentence three weeks ago at a coffee."

"All right."

"Three weeks ago Saoirse asked me, at a coffee in Manchester, what the marriage was. And I had said the marriage was good. And she had said, Good for what. And I had not answered her."

"All right."

"I am telling you because I am going to need someone to talk to about it over the next few months, and you are the person I am going to need. Before I ask you to be that person, I am going to know whether the thing I have suspected for some years is true."

I look at her.

She is still not turning round on the path. She is keeping us both moving and not looking at me, which I think she is doing as a kindness, because it would be unbearable for either of us to look at the other one in this minute.

I think for fifteen seconds.

"Bex."

"Yes."

"Stop walking."

She stops.

She turns round on the path. She has her hood up because the smirr is on. She has a small drop of water on the end of her nose. Her hair is darker at the front under the hood because the smirr has wet it.

She is looking at me.

"I am in love with you."

She nods.

She does not say anything for ten seconds.

"All right," she says.

"You knew."

"I had been wondering. I had not known."

"How long had you been wondering."

"Years."

"All right."

"How long has it been true."

"Since the day after your resit results when you came to find me in the lane outside Pearce's and you sat with me until midnight. That was October the eighth, 2016. So almost ten years."

She thinks.

She does not move. The smirr is on. The drop of water is at the end of her nose.

"Lex."

"Yes."

"I am not telling you tonight what I am going to do."

"I know."

"I am thinking about it tonight."

"I know."

"You will not push me."

"I have not pushed you in ten years."

"You will not push me this weekend."

"I will not push you this weekend."

"All right."

We stand on the path. The birch wood is gold and wet. The burn is loud below us.

"Bex."

"Yes."

"I am also not going to behave as though I had not said it."

"I would not want you to."

"All right."

"Saoirse is coming back round the bend. She will be here in thirty seconds."

"All right."

"We will walk to the top of the falls and we will go back down."

"All right."

We walk. Saoirse comes round the bend and slows her pace and falls into step three feet behind us as if she had only just caught up. She does not say anything. The three of us go to the top of the falls in silence.

We stand at the top for two minutes. Nobody says anything.

We turn and walk back.

At the cabin we have soup and bread and Saoirse goes to her room for a nap because Saoirse takes a nap every Saturday of the September weekend. Bex goes to our shared room and lies down with the Maggie O'Farrell.

I sit at the kitchen table with my hand around a mug of tea.

I look out at the loch.

I have said it.

I had been carrying the unsaid thing at the centre of my life since I was nineteen and Bex was nineteen and we were two terms into Bristol and I had thought, with a clarity that surprised me, I will not get over this woman.

I had been right.

I have said it now.

I had not known, twenty seconds before I said it, that I was going to say it. I had said it because she had asked. I had said it because she had asked in a way that left me only the option of saying it or of lying about it.

I do not know what she is going to do.

I do not know what the next twenty-four hours are going to be.

Bex comes through at half past four.

She is in the same jumper. She has taken her hair out of the ponytail. She is in her wool socks and has tea in mind.

She sees me at the table.

"Tea."

"Tea."

She makes the tea for both of us. She brings the new one to the table. She sits down opposite me.

She puts both her hands round the mug.

"Lex."

"Yes."

"I do not regret asking you on the walk."

"All right."

"I do not regret you answering."

"All right."

"I am thinking about it."

"I know."

"Tonight, after Saoirse goes to bed, will you sit at the wood-stove with me for an hour."

"Yes."

"I will not tell you what I am going to do tonight."

"All right."

"I am asking for the hour because I have not talked to anybody about it yet. I would like to talk to you the way I would have talked to you about it if I had been talking to my best friend about it. You have been my best friend for twelve years. Whatever else you are now, you are still that."

"All right."

She drinks her tea.

I drink mine.

We do not say anything for a while.

"Bex."

"Yes."

"You can also have changed your mind by tonight."

"I have not changed my mind. I am going to ask you tonight."

"All right."

"You are anxious."

"I am."

"Sit with it. I am not going to do you the favour of telling you something you can settle to."

"All right."

Saoirse comes through at five. The three of us make dinner.

Chapter 3: Saturday Night

Saoirse goes to bed at quarter past ten.

She kisses us both on the cheek. She says, "I am going to read for twenty minutes and then I will be asleep, and the two of you are going to do what you need to do, and I do not need a report in the morning." She goes through to the small bedroom and she shuts the door.

Bex and I are alone in the living room.

The wood-stove is at its second hour. The room is warm. The lamps are low. There is one bottle of red left and Bex has opened it and put two of the small glasses we found on the high shelf this afternoon on the table by the wood-stove. The Maggie O'Farrell is face down on the arm of the chair.

We sit. I am at one end of the small sofa. Bex is at the other end. There is the width of a cushion between us.

She drinks her wine.

"Lex."

"Yes."

"I am going to talk first. I am going to talk for a while. You are not going to interrupt. When I am done I am going to ask you a question and you are going to answer."

"All right."

She thinks for a moment. She looks at her wine.

"I married Tom because he is the best man I have ever met. He is patient. He is kind. He does not raise his voice. He has been quietly worried about his sister since she had the postnatal thing and has been managing that worry without making it a thing other people have to be in the room for. He is good in the small way you want a husband to be good."

"All right."

"And I have been, since the wedding, slightly bored. Not unhappy. Bored."

"All right."

"In May I had a thing with a colleague at school. Not a thing thing. A coffee thing. He is not a man I would have. We had a coffee at the Pret after a CPD thing. We talked for forty-five minutes. And it was the most interesting forty-five minutes I have had with another person since the day Tom and I came back from our honeymoon. And it was the most interesting because the man was reading me. He was reading me the way you read a person you are interested in and not the way you read a person you have known for four years."

"All right."

"That night, in our bed, with Tom asleep beside me, I had thought - I had been missing being read."

"All right."

"And Tom does read me. He is not stupid. He has been my husband for two years. He reads me, in his way, on a domestic register. He is not failing to read me. He is just not reading me with heat."

"All right."

"Lex. I want to tell you a thing about him because I do not want him to be a list of virtues in this room tonight."

"All right."

"He plays the piano. He has an upright at his parents' house in Bristol. When my grandmother died two years ago I asked him if he would play I Am Stretched on Your Grave at the funeral - the Sinead version - because my grandmother had liked Sinead. He had two weeks. He learned it. He played it. He had practised it alone in the spare room every night after work for two weeks because the spare room had the upright his parents had given us as a wedding present. I had not asked him to do it because I had thought he would say yes. I had asked because I had wanted to know if he would. He had said yes the way he says yes to things. He played it at the funeral with the sound the kind of pianist plays with who has been practising in the spare room every night for two weeks. He did not look at me once during it because he had been afraid he would cry. That is who he is."

"All right."

"He is not the obstacle. He is the husband. He is also the man who learned that piece for me in two weeks. I am telling you because I am not going to pretend the marriage is small."

"I know."

"Lex."

"Yes."

She looks at me.

"I have not decided to leave Tom. I am telling you because I cannot think about what you said this morning honestly with you unless you know what the thing is on my side."

"All right."

"You said you have been in love with me since 2016."

"Yes."

"That is ten years."

"Yes."

"I had been wondering for some of it."

"I know."

"Did you wonder, in the wondering, whether I had been wondering back."

"I had decided not to. I had decided that if you were I would have seen it. I had decided I would rather have you as my best friend and not lose you than have a wondering of my own."

"All right."

"It has been a good deal."

"For me, too. You have been one of the best things in my life. You have."

"All right."

She drinks. She refills her glass and mine.

"Lex."

"Yes."

"I am not sure I am straight."

I do not say anything.

"I am not telling you that as a thing I have decided. I am telling you as a thing I have noticed. I had noticed it at university and I had filed it and then I had not noticed it again because I had got into the Tom thing and the Tom thing had been easy and I had thought the question was settled."

"All right."

"This morning on the path you said the thing you said. I had not been - shocked by it. I had felt - heat."

"All right."

"I do not want to give you something to hope for if it is not there. I do not want to take something away from you if it is."

"All right."

"I am bisexual, probably. You have just told me you have been in love with me for ten years. I am not going to do anything to either of us tonight that I have not thought about properly first."

"All right."

She thinks.

"Here is the question."

She looks at me. The wood-stove is at its slow place.

"Lex. If I asked you tonight to sleep in your own bed in our room, and to not knock on my side of the gap between the beds, and to let me sleep the night out with what I have just said to you, and to come into the kitchen at first light if I came down at first light, and to not do anything else - would that be all right."

I look at her.

"Yes."

"All right."

"Bex."

"Yes."

"Yes. That would be all right. That would be what I would prefer. That is a better ask than I had thought I would get."

"Why."

"Because at no point in ten years did I think I would get the chance to find out what you would say. I would now rather know what you will say after you have thought about it than have you say a thing tonight that you would unsay in the morning."

"All right."

"I would also rather sleep in our room and not knock than not sleep beside you tonight at all."

"All right."

We sit for a long time. The wood-stove pops once. Bex finishes her wine. I finish mine.

She gets up.

She comes to my side of the sofa. She does not sit. She bends. She puts her hand on the side of my face for two seconds. She does not lean down to kiss me. She puts her face against the side of my head briefly. Her hair is warm and smells of the smoke from the wood-stove.

"I am going to bed."

"All right."

"You will come in in twenty minutes."

"I will."

"You will sleep in your bed."

"I will."

"You will not say anything else to me tonight."

"I will not."

"All right."

She goes to the bedroom. I hear the bathroom. I hear the brushing of teeth. I hear her shut the bedroom door.

I sit at the wood-stove for twenty minutes.

I do not weep. What is happening is too undecided to weep about. I sit with my hands round the cold glass and I think about her hand on the side of my face for two seconds and her saying that would be a better ask than I had thought I would get.

I get up. I bank the wood-stove. I rinse the glasses at the kitchen sink because I cannot do the washing up tonight because I will be too loud. I leave them on the draining board.

I go to the bedroom. Bex is in her bed under the wool blanket on her side facing the wall. The lamp is on at the lowest setting on her side because she has left it on for me to see by.

I undress in the dark. I get into my own bed. I turn the lamp off.

I do not say anything.

She is awake. I know she is awake. She knows I am awake.

We do not speak.

I lie on my back and I listen to her breathe in the bed three feet from mine.

I sleep eventually.

Chapter 4: First Light

I wake at quarter to six.

The room is the grey of just-before-dawn. The window is showing the line of the road and a thin sliver of the loch beyond, and the sky above the hills on the far side has the first thin band of pearl.

The bed beside me is empty.

The wool blanket is folded once at the foot of the bed. Bex's small kit-bag is gone from the chair. Her pyjamas are not on the pillow.

The bedroom door is shut.

I lie still.

I had been told to come into the kitchen at first light if she came down at first light. The bed is empty. Either she has gone to the kitchen, or she has gone for a walk. The cars are in the lane.

I get up.

I put my jumper on over the t-shirt I slept in. I put my pyjama trousers on. I put my wool socks on. I do not put trainers on because the kitchen is wooden floor.

I cross the living room. The wood-stove is at a slow embered burn from the bank I gave it last night.

I cross to the kitchen.

The kitchen is dim. The light is the pre-dawn grey at the window and the low warm light from the small under-cabinet bulb.

Bex is at the kitchen table.

She is in her flannel pyjamas and a thick cardigan I have not seen before. Her hair is loose. She has a mug of tea in front of her, untouched, on a coaster.

She looks up.

"Lex."

"Bex."

"Tea."

"I will have tea."

I make tea. I sit down opposite her.

She has both her hands round her mug.

"Did you sleep."

"A bit."

"I slept three hours."

"All right."

"I have been at this table since five."

"All right."

"I am going to tell you what I think now."

"All right."

She thinks.

"I want to kiss you."

I look at her.

"All right."

"I am also not going to leave my marriage in this kitchen this morning."

"All right."

"I am not asking you to wait for me to leave Tom. I am also not telling you that I am going to."

"All right."

"What I am telling you is that I want to kiss you this morning and I want to spend the day with you on this loch and I want to find out what the thing is. The conversation I am going to have with Tom about this is a conversation I have not yet had with myself and I am not going to have it badly or quickly."

"All right."

"I am asking you to hold a thing for me that I am not ready to hand over yet."

"All right."

"Can you."

"I have been holding a thing for you for ten years. The thing I would have to hold now is a smaller thing than the thing I have been holding for ten years."

"All right."

"Bex."

"Yes."

"I want to kiss you too."

"All right."

She gets up. She comes round the side of the table. She kneels at my chair, on the wooden floor, on her wool socks, with her cardigan loose around her. She puts her hands on the top of my thighs.

She looks at me for a beat.

I put my hand on the side of her face.

I kiss her.

I kiss her slowly. I am kissing her the way I would kiss the person I have been in love with for a decade, which is to say with the focus of a person who has been thinking about a thing for a long time and is not in any hurry to be done.

She kisses me back.

She kisses me back in the way of a person who has not kissed a woman before, which is to say with a small slight hesitation at the start that resolves in three seconds when her mouth understands her.

She makes a small sound in her throat.

I do not move my hand from the side of her face.

She breaks the kiss.

She is still kneeling. She is looking at me. Her hair is loose round her face. The cardigan is open at the front. Her flannel pyjama top has a small button at the throat undone.

"Bex."

"Yes."

"It is six in the morning."

"It is."

"Saoirse will be up at half past seven."

"She will."

"I am going to ask you a thing."

"Ask."

"Come back to bed with me. To our room. Not your bed. Mine. We do not have to do anything else. I would like to lie with you for an hour."

She thinks for two seconds.

"Yes."

"Yes."

We get up. I take her hand. We do not look at each other on the way back to the bedroom. She shuts the door behind us. She slips her cardigan off and lays it on the chair. She gets into my bed first. She lies on her left side facing the wall. I get in behind her. The bed is narrow. We fit because we have to fit. The wool blanket is over us. The room is still grey.

She is warm. Her hair is on the pillow. She smells of sleep and of the wood-smoke from last night and of herself.

I put my arm round her waist.

She puts her hand on top of my hand.

She does not move it.

"Lex."

"Yes."

"I have been awake since five."

"I know."

"I would like to sleep for half an hour."

"Yes."

"Wake me at seven."

"I will."

She sleeps.

She sleeps in about ninety seconds, because she has been thinking for nine hours and has decided what she has decided and the body of a woman who has decided a thing she has been thinking about for nine hours sleeps when she is allowed to.

I do not sleep.

I lie behind her with my arm round her waist and her hand on top of my hand and her hair on the pillow under my mouth and the wool blanket warm and the grey at the window going to the first thin pearl of dawn.

I do not move.

She breathes.