Chapter 7
A Fragment
He put the phone down to find he was out of breath. As if having run a marathon. But he had the sudden urge to find something. He wanted her letter. Proof of their time as a couple, or rather, the first record of their separation.
He hadn’t looked at it in years. It was under the eaves of the attic, behind a door.
He went there and crouched down on his hands and knees to crawl deeper into the cupboard, passing a chaos of old bills and documents and Trade magazines.
Motes of dust floated around his head like a miniature galaxy.
‘What are you doing, Wilbur?’ he muttered to himself. ‘Silly old fool.’
Then he found it. Or at least one of its pages. The last page. He tried unsuccessfully to find the others, ignoring the fact he felt increasingly unwell. He was panting now and his head spun when he stood up. He gathered himself and went downstairs with the yellowed page in his hands.