I know that floor better than I know any other surface in my life.

I know which tile has the chip out of the corner.

I know that the cold comes up through it faster near the pipe.

I know that if you sit with your back against the bath and your knees up, the towel rail is exactly close enough to grab, and I know that because I grabbed it.

That particular morning the stick was balanced on the lip of the tub about eight inches from my face, with its single stubborn line in the little window, and I remember thinking, with a sort of detached professional irritation, that they ought to make the window smaller so that there was less white space for the second line to be missing from.

I was forty minutes on that floor.