And she said: “Then you decided without me.”

And she put it in gear.

I said her name and reached for the door handle and she rolled the window up and backed out of the gravel, and I stood there with an empty laundry basket and watched her tail lights go down the mountain.

Twenty-two days later she gave me the ring back in a car park outside the post office and did not cry, and I did, and that is the only time in nineteen years that I did.

Part Six: Georgetown, Six in the Morning