Voices on the fringes of frustrated rage, accusations and concessions until we reach the calm inside an argument, not quite impasse but exhaustion. We haven’t shared eyes in some time and the absent contact crests about us as both shield and threat. Are you going to leave me? I say. She takes my hand and flattens it between each of hers. Twenty-four carats settle in the curve between knuckles, calculated frisson in an occupied hollow. ‘I could never do that,’ she tells me, sighing with the piquant firmness of an avalanche, ‘it’s going to have to be you.’