She could not get warm.
Life was this dark conspirator, laying wait for all joy to be crushed. She tried wearing the oldest perfume in the world. Jicky at her wrist, beneath her hair, even a slash of its civet across her stomach. Yet the cold remained. How could it leave.Not even a qurestion she felt. She sat in front of the small fire, reading about a man who thought swimming across a county of dilapidated pools would somehow help to rescue bits of memory which had much better things to do than remain in his head, with its riot of appointments, all misplaced.
She had never owned a cellar and today she wished she had one, wished she could step down into some musty , shadowy place where she could hide.
The swimmer finally got home and knocked on his own door and everyone had better things to do than wait for him, so they had all gone out, perhaps for a very long time.
Her scent made her sad. Even too old for her perhaps. But the cold made her feel terribly alone. An old alone that sank down into her bones, dragging with it those fingertip memories which had once promised and found so much joy. There was no other word. She missed the prints across her neck. Her heart sat on the step and wept.
The fog came and it began to rain.