She woke me with a kiss, only to lie back into the darkness. She wanted me to touch her but I didn’t know how and as I sat there, looking over her, she made me feel as if I were a man brooding in the night. Wondering what she was thinking.

Later, at a quarter-past-two in the morning Nate came home. Thudding down the hall. She was now wide-awake. He sat at the end of my bed. I could see her eyes looking at him. He wore a baseball cap. His chin was wagging. He told us how we should all get to know one another better. I felt his hand slide beneath the blanket. He touched her. So I pushed my foot into his thigh, and he ignored me.

There is a horrible beating life behind people’s actions and traits and I saw this in Nate. How he talked about his interest in philosophy. I wanted to kill myself. He talked about his new hard drive, he discussed the problem of writing and how sometimes, once things are written they are permanent, but not true. 'Not true,' he said.

He asked us what we wondered. I said nothing. She said that she often thinks about whether we are in the middle or at the end of evolution.

I rolled over and feigned sleep.