On the top of our fiction bookshelf is an alabaster vase. Its rim is broken. Inside it is a single dried flower, and beside it a faux peach, under a large bell jar. The vase is Egyptian and three thousand years old. I broke its rim a few years ago. Each time I reach for a novel I am reminded of the power of carelessness to undo eons of completeness.
At thirteen I was sent to Lo’s school. Lo’ is my fiancée. We have been engaged since we were twenty-one and we are now both approaching our thirties. We “got together” soon after I joined the school and have been near constantly in one another’s presence since then. Like a medieval romance—somewhat creepy, somewhat sweet.
The school was in a Georgian townhouse at the top of the high street in Ashburton. Ashburton sits on the side of Dartmoor, the region where The Hound of the Baskervilles is set, and its round-shouldered moorlands hedge the town’s northern views. It feels held and contained. In my memory it is always cloudy, near raining, about to break. On the other side of the town is the Exeter Inn, where in 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh was arrested by new King James’s men in 1603, and from there taken to the Tower of London.
